Another bar question

[JerseyGrl81]

I was reading Smurfy''s thread about the bar at her wedding and it made me think of the bar at mine. We are definitally going to have an open-bar at our wedding for 3-4 hours. Our wedding is a destination wedding in Bermuda, which we are taking a cruise to. There will be about 40-50 guests with us. The hotel offered us two options to pay for the open- bar we can either pay hourly per person, or upon consumption. What option do you think would be the best to go with? Thanks!!!Here are the prices they gave us.

Open Bar – Prices are per adult
Time Premium Ultra-Premium
1 Hour 24.95 28.85
2 Hours 44.85 51.45
3 Hours 60.90 69.80
4 Hours 73.50 84.50
or

Consumption Bar (price per drink)
Premium Ultra-Premium
Soft Drinks 3.50
Fruit Punch 55.00 gallon
Btl. Beer/ Coolers 6.25
Wine 9.00 13.00
Liquor/Hi-balls 7.50 10.50
Rum Swizzle 95.00 gallon

 

[neatfreak]

I think it really depends on how your friends/relatives are. For mine I would pick consumption because no one is a big drinker. But for other families that might cost triple what the all inclusive price would be ya know?

 

[kama_s]

Hmm..given that no one would be driving home, and since they are on vacation, people would have a tendency to drink more than they would usually. I would suggest not going for consumption based prices

ETA: holy sh*t....73$ per person for the 4 hours?!?!?! That's MADNESS!

 

[meresal]

Just looking at those prices, I would go with consumption.

I don't know many people that drink wine at the beach (beach wedding??), much less 8 glasses in 3 hours. You also would have to average 9-10 drinks (beer or mixed) per person in 3-4 hour period if you paid pp/hour. That is ALOT of alcohol.

Just for comparison purposes, our venue is $10 per person, for 4 hours, for top shelf open bar (on top of the meal of course, but still our entire meal and open bar is $75).

 

[rockzilla]

How much do you trust the venue to not inflate the consumption prices?

 

[emeraldlover1]

Ok, here is how I look at it. 84.50 for 4 hours for 50 people is over 4K. Seriously, I would just go with consumption. It think that is outrageous. You are serving food right? So if you added that in what would it be per person. I guess the other way you could figure this out is find out what you want to pay per person and figure the drink cost in. For example...we are getting married in the Catskills and our place is pretty expensive per person. However, our reception is 6 hours and the premium open bar per person was less than $20. Granted...still very expensive but that is one of the things that turned us on to this place. For our rehersal dinner the place was $10 per person per hour for 4 hours. So technically $40 per person and we haven''t decided what to do about that yet. Hope that helps.

 

[JerseyGrl81]

Wow- I had no idea that other venues charged that so much less for an open bar! I will definitally be going with the consumption bar then. I am thinking that maybe we should not offer shots, because at $8.00 a piece that can add up quickly!

 

[emeraldlover1]

Date: 11/4/2008 7:36:22 PM
Author: JerseyGrl81
Wow- I had no idea that other venues charged that so much less for an open bar! I will definitally be going with the consumption bar then. I am thinking that maybe we should not offer shots, because at $8.00 a piece that can add up quickly!

Its possible that some of the cost was included in the per person charge, not sure though. Like I said figure out what you can afford to pay for each person. For example I said that I wanted to pay no more than $235 per person for drink and food. Its possible that if your venue is charging you $75 per person that $84 on top of it isn''t that bad. Don''t really know but if you don''t have a lot of big drinker for 50 people 4k seems like a lot.

 

[neatfreak]

Date: 11/4/2008 7:36:22 PM
Author: JerseyGrl81
Wow- I had no idea that other venues charged that so much less for an open bar! I will definitally be going with the consumption bar then. I am thinking that maybe we should not offer shots, because at $8.00 a piece that can add up quickly!

That is a very good idea.