Wedding Blog

I spent some quality time with brides from all over the United States over the past couple of days during my free Wedding Budget Boosters webinar. They had some interesting questions that I would like to share with you.

After discussing the importance of guest lists and targeting and planning a good budget, we moved on to the topic of “Wedding Budget Busters.” A “budget buster” is an expense that you may not have thought about, but that can really take you off target when it comes to planning what you are going to spend. The brides were really interested in how to deal with the bar, so I’m going to do a follow up to that topic today.

There are typically three options from which you can choose when paying for your reception bar:

• Hourly Hosted Bar: This option means that you are paying per guest over the age of 21 by the hour to drink as much as he wants. This is a great option if you want to know your bar bill upfront (this makes planning your bar budget very straight forward). There are some things you need to watch out for — If you have a lot of guests who don’t drink alcohol, you may pay less with a consumption bar option (see the next bullet point), Also, people tend to drink very heavily during the first couple of hours. Caterers typically account for this by reducing the hourly rate after the first one, so make sure that your hourly rate goes down with each passing hour.
• Consumption Bar: This is a great option if you don’t have many heavy drinkers. You will pay for what your guests drink. The downfall of this option is that your catering manager can only estimate what your guests are going to drink. You will not know your final bar bill until after the event is over. If you need to know your budget to the penny, this is not the option for you.
• Cash Bar: This is a less popular option for social events. Your guests will pay for their own drinks, however, you still have to account for this option in your budget because you will likely have bartender and/or cashier fees.

Your reception site may let you combine the bar options as well. For example, you could have an hourly, per person bar for the first two hours and switch to consumption or cash later on. Study your guest list before making your final bar decision and don’t forget to account for the service charge.

For more tips on serving alcohol at your wedding reception, check out this article on PerfectWeddingGuide.com

If you have comments or questions on this or any other wedding related topic, please post a message here or email me at susan.southerland@pwg.com.

Your Partner in Perfect Planning,

Susan