paying for bar tab by consumption?

[RebeccaLynn]

So we''ve just ventured in to the headache of venue shopping-- it was fun for about an hour!

My main question here-- so far we found 1 place that we love, but their food and liquor are seperate charges. I haven''t seen this anywhere else...are any of you paying for your liquor based on consumption?
I''m totally conflicted whether this will turn in to a huge bargain, or a complete budget buster...?

 

[Prana]

We had to have our wedding catered, and we paid for alcohol/soda/drinks by the BOTTLE...meaning whatever bottles of booze were opened, we paid for (and then owned). We had 120 guests at our wedding, a lot of people got drunk, and the liquor bill only came to roughly $1,000.

I''m not really sure if that is good or not, I have no idea what people usually get charged for an open bar.

Hope that helps!

 

[so cal girl]

I got married two years ago, and we did alcohol by consumption. It was a good deal for us, as our venue charged an arm and a open bar. We had a rather big wedding (235 people), so with their open bar charge ($40/person), if we would have just had a straight open bar, it would have been $9400!

What we did instead was set a certain amount ($5000) aside with the venue for alcohol by consumption. Once that amount was close to being reached on that night, the venue would let us know, and we''d assess if we wanted to add more to it. We figured if everyone had blown through that set amount in an hour, we probably wouldn''t have continued open bar. If there were only an hour or so left of the reception, we would add another $1000 or so. This ended up working really well for us. Our total bar tab at the end of the night was $6500. So we saved almost $3000. And that was for a 5 hour reception with a bunch of heavy drinkers!

Whether or not it will be a bargain for you depends on what the cost is at similar places for an unlimited open bar. If the open bar charges are cheap, it may not save you any money. But if the open bar charges are expensive (as ours were), it may help you out.

I hope that makes sense!

 

[*peony*]

We had a choice between and open bar and by consumption. Open bar would have been the equivalent of about 2 drinks per person per hour. Some people probably drank more than that, but most people were not going to drink that many so we did by consumption. I know it paid off in the end, but I dont know the exact numbers.

I think the best way to look at it is when a venue charges for an open bar they have to cover themselves. They are going to charge you more than the average by consumption because they dont want to lose money on the deal. An open bar is really only a good deal if you have a significant percentage of heavy drinkers on your guest list.

 

[zipzapgirl]

The are a couple of really long threads about consumption vs. beer&wine vs. open bar, so you might want to do a search to see the finer points of the debate.

I do know that there were three major issues with a consumption bar. First, you really need to trust the venue that they are going to be truthful in what was actually served. Some people came out of a consumption bar with no idea how their friends and family could have sonsumed so much liquor and felt it was somehow padded by the venue.

Second, keep in mind that a lot of people who usually do not drink much will go all out at a wedding, so that will up the average cost.

Third, it might be wise to let key guests know that you are paying a consumption tab so that they don''t "help you get your money''s worth" by taking bottles away from the venue on their way out the door. One poster mentioned an uncle told her later that he took four bottles of wine back to the hotel because he thought she had paid per person, not per bottle. A lot of people will assume that it is a fixed cost and will continue to open bottles or abandon drinks throughout the night, so just be aware that this can kill the tab as well.

You know your guests best and how they party, so as long as you keep them in mind and how they like to celebrate, I''m sure you''ll make the best choice.