I know open/cash bar questions get asked here a lot, and mine probably has too, but I can't find it on the boards at least not recently, so I wanted to see what you all thought of this:
My venue only allows a completely open bar (pay by the hour), or no bar at all (at least it isn't cash!). Initially I thought this would be fine since we were planning on having an open bar anyway. However, my mom has recently been diagnosed with a very rare disease and my parents are not able to contribute as much to the wedding as first thought. Totally fine! I budgeted for this like a good TKer! We'll just have to cut a few things here and there.
So my question is whether it would be rude to have an open bar for the cocktail hour (6:30-7:30) and then 3 hours after that (until 10:30), and then close the bar from 10:30 to midnight (when the wedding ends). We would provide advance notice of the bar's closing, and we would continue hosting non-alcoholic drinks. FI thinks this is a good idea since it will give people a chance to sober up, at least a little bit, since our venue is not at a hotel and we are not providing a shuttle. I'm worried that this will be either an etiquette breach or at very least, tacky. However, we have to cut somewhere and it's either this or not having a photographer (we've already downgraded flowers to baby's breath... not much lower we can go on those, and I'm learning to do my own makeup for the day). I'd really prefer to have an open bar for at least part of the night if possible since our friends are HEAVY drinkers (I'm in law school... enough said).