Buying alcohol for a wedding can be daunting. How do you know how much to buy? A good rule of thumb for the amount of beer, wine and liquor to buy is to assume each guest will consume about two drinks for the cocktail hour and one drink per hour every hour after that, according to BrideBox. After that, it’s important to take a look at your guest list. Do you have more beer drinkers than wine drinkers? Does most of your crowd enjoy cocktails? Do you and your crew always order a signature drink? Keep this in mind as you read on, as you may need to tweak the recommendations to fit your guest list.
1. Beer. Beer generally appeals to a wide range of drinkers. The post popular domestic beers include Budweiser and Bud Light, Coors and Coors Light, Trumer Pilsner, Miller and Miller Lite, Blue Moon, Sam Adams, Yuengling, Fat Tire, Shock Top, Sierra Nevada and Michelob Ultra, according to BrideBox. Likewise, the most popular imported beers include Modela, Corona, Heineken, Stella Artois, Newcastle, Amstel Light and Dos Equis. BrideBox also says you can estimate that 100 guests will need about 30 to 40 beers per hour. If your reception is 3 hours long, then you can estimate that you’ll need about 100 beers to accommodate 100 guests.
2. Wine. Next on your list should be wine. Wine Folly recommends dividing the number of guests by 2.15 to determine the number of bottles you need for an event. Additionally, for fall, winter and spring weddings, Wine Folly says people tend to drink more red wine and advises to consider a mix of about 50% of red wine for this type of wedding. For summer and outdoor weddings, however, it recommends a mix of 30% each of red, white and sparkling. Finally, cut your wine bottles by 30% if you’re serving cocktails.
3. Liquor. If you allot for one ounce of liquor per mixed drink, you should aim for three to five liters of popular liquors, such as rum, vodka and gin and one to two liters of whiskey, bourbon and tequila per 100 guests, according to Zola. And don’t forget mixers! Most guests prefer to mix their liquor with non-alcoholic beverages, such as tonic, club soda, ginger ale, soda or orange, cranberry and pineapple juice.
