Booze!

Re: Booze!

• lachattefatale member

  

  June 2015

  I'm no help on the amounts, but for beer, I'd say to stick to lighter beers, or at least weight your purchases that way. There are definitely people who prefer darks, but most of those people (in my acquaintance, at least) will still drink the lighter ones, whereas lots of people who prefer the lighter ones can't handle the darks. Most of the specific brands I've tasted are local to me, but things like hefeweizens, pale ales, IPAs, etc. usually go over well. Or something ubiquitous like Corona. 

  
  

  I'd definitely weight the wine toward white as well since it's June and it'll probably be warm. I might even go 4 white 1 red unless you know you have some hardcore red wine fans attending.

  

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• OliveOilsMom member

  

  June 2015

  Usually your light drinkers will help balance out your heavy drinkers with that equation.  But extra wouldn't hurt, if you can save it for later.  Also, if possible, buy from a liquor store who will accept returns.

  
  

  For beer, go with at least a light and a regular.  For our wedding, we had Miller Lite and Yuengling, which is a big local beer you can't always find outside of our region.  So I would recommend getting Sam Adams regular, Heineken, or Stella Artois as a non-light option.  Then either Miller or Coors for your light option.  I would just give two options of beer and stay away from seasonals to keep a wide range of people liking your selections. 

  

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• kvruns member

  

  June 2015

  We had Coors Light, summer shandy and corona. The summer shandy was the only one that was all gone, prolly because it is a summery beer and it was outside. Corona was surprisingly the least drank. There's a thread Over in Food I think where people broke down what they bought for their weddings. And if you have Sams club you may be able to return unopened stuff. We just did that yesterday which was nice

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• MobKaz member

  

  June 2015

  charlottesmom0626 said:

  12 days out!!!!

  
  

  ...and I'm trying to figure out how much alcohol to buy for the wedding. Our venue supplies the bar tenders but we have to buy all the alcohol, soda, mixers, fruit, etc.

  
  

  We have 106 guests coming, reception is 5pm-11pm on a Friday night, and most of my friends I would classify as "heavy" drinkers (i.e. the online forms that suggest 1 drink/per hour/per guest I don't think are accurate for us).

  
  

   I was thinking 300ish bottles of beer, 5 cases of wine (3 white/2 red?) and 12 bottles of liquor.

  Is that good? I definitely don't want to run out, and if we over buy we can just keep it at home for the next party.

  
  

  Also any beer suggestions for crowds- FI and I aren't beer drinkers so I'd appreciate hearing from ya'll

  
  

  thanks!!

  
  

  Both my kids had summer weddings. We switched out Mike's Hard for one of the beer options and it was very well received.

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• novella1186 member

  

  June 2015

  I think we had 109 guests and the order form from out liquor distributor had:
  

  • 2 kegs of beer (one was 312 cuz it's FI's favorite and it's easy to drink, the other I think was something really common like bud light)
  • 16 bottles of red wine (2 different types, 8 bottles of each type)
  • 16 bottles of white (2 different types, 8 bottles of each type)
  • 7 bottles of vodka (the half gallon size)
    
  • 5 bottles of whiskey (the half gallon size)
    
  • 4 bottles of gin (standard size) 

  And then mixers:
  

  • 10 bottles of tonic
    
  • 7 bottles of club soda
  • 11 2-liters of coke
  • 8 2-liters of diet coke
    
  • 4 2-liters of sprite 
  • 2 of ginger ale
    
  • 4 64oz bottles of cranberry
  • 3 64oz bottles of orange juice
    
  • 10 24-packs of bottled water
    

  I don't know what their count was for lemons and limes and all that stuff. And then the caterer took care of coffee, lemonade, and iced tea
  

  We didn't run out of anything, and we had a bunch of leftover wine and a little bit of leftover liquor. About 1/3 of our crowd were heavy drinkers.
  

  

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• charlottesmom0626 member

  

  June 2015

  Thanks everyone for your responses!

  
  

  I read somewhere to only do kegs if you know you have beer drinkers, otherwise it's wasted. If we have bottles left, we can always give them away to friends/family or possibly return them to the store.

  
  

  As for @OliveOilsMom we are in Pittsburgh, so we can definitely find Yuengling  that was actually one of my choices because I think it's pretty popular

  
  

  @novella1186 that breakdown is really helpful because we have almost the same amount of people, I might just take that list to the store actually.  

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• emmaaa mod

  

  June 2015

  We had 175+ guests. We did 2 kegs, one light beer (Budlight) and one "heavier" (Yuengling) beer. The Budlight was floating by the time we got done with pictures (we asked everyone to go ahead and eat while we did pictures) and the Yuengling was done by 10 (which was when we were leaving). We could have had 3 kegs and had some leftover but 2 was good for our crowd. About 1/3 of the crowd actually drank beer.

  
  

  Then we had 3 cases of white wine and 2 of red. Basically all that was drank.

  
  

  We decided to forego liquor and mixed drinks to help save money. A lot of people asked before the wedding and we told them we would have beer and wine. A hand full of people who like mainly liquor drinks, brought their own.

  
  

  We bought our wine from Trader Joe'd and that saved a lot. My friend got hers from Harris Teeter when they were doing a sale.

  
  

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• redheadbride15 member

  

  June 2015

  I was amazed by how LITTLE my "big drinker" crowd actually drank at our wedding. We had a consumption bar and the tab ended up being less than half what I had calculated based on the "1 drink/person/hour" rule mentioned above. I was initially annoyed that I wouldn't be able to buy my own booze because of the venue rules, but in the end I think we saved money because I would have bought way, way more than we needed.
  
  We had 68 adult guests and finished off 16 bottles of wine, ~40 mixed drinks, and (only!) 12 bottled beers. That was over 6 hours (cocktail hour plus reception).
  

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• ElcaB member

  

  June 2015

  If I were you, I'd up the wine. I had about 125 people attending and I believe we bought about 20 bottles (half red, half white). We only wound up with about one bottle of white and several reds leftover. 

  
  

  As far as beer goes, get a light beer (i.e., Bud Light or Miller Lite) and something with a little more oomph, like a wheat beer or IPA. 

  
  

  What is the liquor for? What kind of mixers are you having? I'd suggest fewer bottles of liquor. 

  

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• kvruns member

  

  June 2015

  I'm jealous of you guys with Yuengling.  It's the cult beer here since they don't sell it in IN and people like it so it holds more mythical properties than it should.  I like it because it is affordable and not as bad as a bud light or coors light.  I contemplated driving to OH to get it for our wedding as a heavier option (their black and tan) but DH thought I was nuts.

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• kvruns member

  

  June 2015

  redheadbride15 said:

  I was amazed by how LITTLE my "big drinker" crowd actually drank at our wedding. We had a consumption bar and the tab ended up being less than half what I had calculated based on the "1 drink/person/hour" rule mentioned above. I was initially annoyed that I wouldn't be able to buy my own booze because of the venue rules, but in the end I think we saved money because I would have bought way, way more than we needed.
  
  We had 68 adult guests and finished off 16 bottles of wine, ~40 mixed drinks, and (only!) 12 bottled beers. That was over 6 hours (cocktail hour plus reception).
  

  wow that's not much at all! was the wedding at a non drinking/party time?
  

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• madamerwin member

  

  June 2015 edited June 2015

  I love talking about booze! We purchased our own alcohol, most of it at Costco. We have 80 adults attending. And I am very well aware that we over-bought, so I plan to update this post after my wedding to let you know how much we actually went through... I have a feeling we'll have a basement full of booze after the wedding

  
  

  Liquor - we are having three cocktails available, plus any combo of liquor and mixers available

  12 vodka (1.75L)

  6 bourbon (1.75L)

  6 rye (1.75L)

  
  

  Wine:

  20 bottles of Pinot Noir

  20 bottles of Pinot Grigio

  10 bottles of Rose

  
  

  Beer

  2 cases of Sierra Nevada Old Chico Crystal Wheat

  2 cases of Sierra Nevada Old Chico Pale Bock

  1 case of Widmer Hefeweizen

  
  

  Mixers

  32 Coke

  32 Diet Coke

  6 gallons lemonade

  3 gallons cranberry juice

  3 gallons grapefruit juice

  6 liters tonic

  6 liters diet tonic

  lemons and limes

  
  

  
  

  ETF words are hard

  
  

  

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• redheadbride15 member

  

  June 2015

  kvruns said:

  redheadbride15 said:

  I was amazed by how LITTLE my "big drinker" crowd actually drank at our wedding. We had a consumption bar and the tab ended up being less than half what I had calculated based on the "1 drink/person/hour" rule mentioned above. I was initially annoyed that I wouldn't be able to buy my own booze because of the venue rules, but in the end I think we saved money because I would have bought way, way more than we needed.
  
  We had 68 adult guests and finished off 16 bottles of wine, ~40 mixed drinks, and (only!) 12 bottled beers. That was over 6 hours (cocktail hour plus reception).
  

  wow that's not much at all! was the wedding at a non drinking/party time?
  

  Nope! 5pm-11pm cocktail hour followed by traditional dinner & dancing reception. My family are BIG drinkers, so I think that almost all of that damage was done by my brothers & cousins (and groom...). My other guests & H's family must have had very little to drink. The mixed drinks were almost all gin & tonics, which is a tell-tale sign that it was my family. Oh and I suppose I should add a champagne toast was done as well, and I think a glass was poured for everyone, so that's another 68 drinks.
  

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