bar/alcohol cost

[caryndisneydiva]

does anyone know how much bar and alcohol is figured into the cost of a reception?

 

[PrincessLinds]

I believe that for open bar it's based on the amount of guests you have, and they figure it out based on an estimate of how much each guest will consume. If money is tight, an alternative to a full bar is to just serve beer and wine as well as a signature drink, which could match your wedding theme or colors. The cost should be significantly less, because you won't get charged for all the different kinds of liquor that is needed for a full bar.

 

[DisneyDeeFL]

there are lots of options for alcohol....if you do open bar they charge per person for unlimited drinks, depending on how many hours you want the bar. for example, if you want 5 hours of an open bar that includes beer, wine, call brand liquor, soda, and water, i believe its $40 pp. you could also do bill on consumption (AKA a hosted bar) where you prepay a certain amount. Disney estimates that a guest will have one drink per hour. so, if your reception (incl. cocktail hour) is 5 hours, they will have you prepay for 5 drinks per guest. they multiply that by an average number for a drink, say 5 or 6 bucks. Then they keep track of how much everyone drinks, and after the wedding, if they consumed more than what was estimated, you owe Disney the difference. But, if they drank less, then you will get a refund for the difference.

From what I understand, the open (package) bar is a better deal if you have a LOT of big drinkers. If that's not the case, then i believe hosted bar is the better deal. This is one area of wedding planning that always makes my head hurt . In any case, hope this helps!

 

[Laurafoster]

I wouldnt have said you had to have a LOT of big drinkers for an open bar to be worth while. It depends on what people like to drink. We chose to do a beer and wine open bar as i knew all my family would be happy to drink that.

For 5 hours it was $30 a person. So $6 an hour. As mine was an evening reception i figured guests would probably drink quite a bit more than if it were a lunch reception.

I worked out if each guest had one glass of wine or beer per hour that was an average of $5.50 per drink, so $27.50 per guest. So i was paying $2.5 extra per guest. Over 20 guests that was only an extra $50.

The other thing you have to consider is the bartender fee. For all hosted or packaged bars you ahve to pay a $100 bartender fee. This fee will then be waived if your bar sales go above $500. So if your saving $50 by going with a Billed on consumption bar just to be hit with the $100 bartender fee it wouldnt be worth while.

Really it comes down to your guests, are they likely to have 1 or 2 drinks and thats it or are they likely to have more? And the time of your reception, if its lunch time people arent as likely to drink as much as a evening etc.

 

[Skylarr29]

We are doing our bar BOC - Billed On Consumption. I am pretty sure it will come out a TON cheaper and if not... well then we still only paid for what people actually drank etc.

 

[StitchBride]

We did BOC rather than package which made me nervous pretty much through the day of the wedding. Halfway through I asked the planner where were at, just to see if one, it was okay and two, if I won the $50 from my dad (he bet our bill would be $4000, I said $2000 with a $500 over/under...by the end of the night, he paid up) We really sat down and looked at our guest list. Yes there were some people that would drink A LOT but in the end, it was over balanced by non drinkers (and who knew the bride and groom would be one of them....we were so hot from walking around, or at least I was, I kept drinking water and sprite) But our BOC was $2000 including tax and tip for 56 people, while a package bar would have been about $2800, so we were much better off!

 

[mhcueball2]

We did package water/soda and BOC for beer/wine. We should have went with BOC for the entire thing since everyone ended up drinking the wine the waiters were pushing . Its just the way it worked out for us, but the difference wouldn't have been that much.

 

[autumnbride2B]

We are going with the package open bar for our reception. I am a planner and a worrier and didn't want to spend the whole reception watching how much people were drinking and hoping the bar charges wouldn't be way over what we had planned. I think the peace of mind will be worth it even if we could have saved a little money with BOC (which I don't think we would)

 

[MistressOfAllEvil]

I was told that a per person bar package isn't available for the Wine Room at Jiko and I have to do BOC. I was freaked at first, but the more I though about it... I think we'll come out ahead. The one or two heavy (by heavy I mean more than one drink with dinner ) drinkers will be far outweighed by the non-drinkers. I think is is actually a better option for us anyhow. (did I sound convincing? B/c I'm still trying to convince my self a little, i think.... idk.)