How Much Liquor for a Wedding?

Usually your venue would supply alcohol, if not, it's easy to find a caterer who would be happy to do so. However, to buy the alcohol yourself would save you a fortune. You will be surprised how much liquor for a wedding of 150 people could cost. Use this Calculator to get a brief idea, and you would be able to set a budget according to the formality of your reception and your guest list.

 Classic and traditional wedding receptions call for fancier and more formal quality, leaving it up to larger budgets. Casual and smaller weddings that follow their own formula can make some adjustments and considerations that will be friendly to the wallet.

And it's important to figure out who are beer drinkers, wine drinkers, or hard liquor drinkers to simplify the shopping list.

You don’t have to be the one to go down the grocery and stock up on beers – mobile bars are all the rage and will be helpful to manage your alcohol needs. There are really only two kinds of bars you should be considering when thinking about how much liquor for a wedding of 150 you should supply. Get deep into considering what kind of crowd your guest list is made of and you are halfway done with the decision battle.

Open Bar

This kind of bar is a set-up that basically allows you to have a regular bar inside your wedding, free for guests. They will have their regular stock of alcohol, and the choice of drink for your guest will be bound to be available for them. All you have to pay for is the service , and possibly the drink-ware. Your guests will definitely be happy over this proposition!

Limited Bar

If you want to keep your wedding a bit stricter with the alcohol consumption, considering arranging a limited bar to take care of your needs. The bride and the groom will have the choice of the drinks menu. This could potentially cut costs on the bar service, keep the alcohol light and classy, and avoid any rambunctious, drunken accidents.

One thing is for sure, simply forego Cash Bars that require payment of the guest for their desired cocktail. You want your guests to be relaxed and appreciated for their presence, not scrambling around for money to pay for a drink. That is a strange thing to require from your guests and thus should be avoided at all costs.

It’s all about the math when you are calculating how much liquor you need, although there are certain things you need to consider before you start.

Let's explain it with an example: how much liquor for a wedding of 150? 

Things to consider:

1. The budget that the bride and groom have at hand, according to the kind of hotel they want,

2. The kind of alcohol that each guest prefers to drink( how many drinks beer, how many drinks wine and how many drinks liquor),

3. What kind of bar are you having (you would be able to limit the alcohol choices if you are having a limited bar).

Considering that you will probably never be able to call up each guest and ask them directly what alcoholic beverage they would like to have on your wedding day, you will have to make an educated guess. Using some common sense from experience and statistics, you can make the guess that in a group of 150, about 45 would drink beer, 40 might drink wine, 40 might drink liquor, and other 25 people might take soft drinks.

Now if each liquor drinking guest take about 4 drinks, 40 x 4 =160, we'll need 160 drinks.

A 750-ml bottle could make about 20 drinks.While you'll need about 3 mixers for each bottle.

160/20=80, 80 bottles would provide about 160 drinks.

80 x 3= 240, we'll need 240 mixers for 80 bottles of liquor.

So basically you'll be needing at least 80 750-ml bottles of liquor and 240 mixers for a wedding of 150.