Wedding Central Forum

Just curious how much is the norm for a bar tab?
We have around 100 guests, we will only be having a light and a full strength beer (not all the beers) a red, a white and a champers and soft drinks.
FH's parents are paying the tab and are curious how much they should have...

well we are only havign 50, ten of which will be children.

we are doing a 500 dollar bar tab of jsut beer and wines soft drinks and juice.

then after it will be a cash bar.. its all we can afford

100ppl - 1drink each per hour - drink costs $5 = ****

I honestly dont know how anyone can really afford a bar tab - its just me, but thats $500 an hour give or take....
I know ppl sometimes dont have the option of a package which sucks.

If you do a search on here this post has been done a few times & there are links to sites to work it out...maybe dan murpheys???

It really depends on who is coming to your wedding, what time of day etc.

For example an evening wedding with family who like to drink will need a bigger bar tab than say a smaller lunch reception where people won't be drinking much at all.

If you have family that like to drink too much a smaller bar tab may be a good way to slow them down a bit as they are likely to drink less if its coming out of there pocket.

For our wedding of 70ish people, an evening reception we will have $1000/$1500 bar tab for beer, wine & soft drink and then it will be a cash bar. We can't really afford any more than this and im happy paying this amount.

i'm having a lunch wedding with 60-65 people we hoping $1200 is ok i think it should be because drinks are pretty cheap

We are having 1500 for our guests that's for beer wine and softdrink then after that it's a cash bar

Our venue told us that without a doubt every single wedding works out $30 per person, give or take $5 either way. So with our 70 guests, it should have been (going of what the coordinator assured us) $2100.

That said we put $1000 on the bar and it came in at $988. We had a pretty even mix of big drinkers and non drinkers, the drinkers did not hold back and the non drinkers were happy with a soft drink or two.

At our engagement party we only had about 60 people and spent over $3000 on the bar. But everyone drank quite a lot.

We are having about $3 000 on the tab. With the option to add another grand if it finishes to soon.

We're at a club so drinks are quite cheap, but we do have quite a lot of guests (about 150 we think will attend)

We had $1500 on the bar tab for 48 guests, a friend of mine had $2000 for 100 guests. It depends on how expensive the drinks are, and if your guests are big drinkers.

Put what you can afford, you can usually add more if it runs out too early, otherwise people understand that there is only limited money and are happy to pay for their own drinks later in the evening.

it all depends on your guests...

we had one for our engagement party - there were about 3 beers (pints/half pints of local boutique beer, not bottled beers), 2 whites, a red, sparkling and soft drink and coffee. the wines were about $25-30 a bottle. We had about 80 people for a cocktail function and planned on initially putting $1500 on the tab with the option of adding more. We didn't even get through the first $1500..i think our tab came to $1100!!

i was surprised - everyone seemed to be drinking something and quite a few of the boys were drinking quite a lot of beer!

we are also having one at our wedding - the tab will automatically be about $2500 as we have minimum spend to meet!