bill on cosumption vs. per person open bar

[oochr1soo]

anyone know for an hour which will work out cheaper for us for a call brands bar? we plan to do an hour open bar for the pre reception and currently are setup for the bill on consumption but im hitnking it may work out cheaper for us to do the per person charges instead for 1 hour..

we have about 55 people expected at the wedding if that helps..

thanks,
chris

 

[mermaidbride1108]

This depends on a LOT of different variables. When is your wedding - breakfast, lunch, dinner, late night?

Are your family & friends drinkers?

I'm tossing back & forth too because DF's family is Wine & Beer drinkers, but mine is Cocktail drinkers. But honestly, I don't want to have to worry about counting drinks at my wedding reception so I can figure out how much money it will cost me.

So I'll probably suck it up and do Call brands. I think you need to provide more info before we can really give you advice.

 

[lurkyloo]

BOC almost always works out cheaper. Disney has a formula for estimating how many drinks your guests will take so they can bill you for the BOC bar in advance, which eliminates some of the price guesswork and usually means you get a refund.

They figure on 2 drinks per person for the first hour and one drink per person each hour thereafter. Then you just pay the difference or get a refund.

 

[lpizzuro123]

It definately depends on when you cocktail hour and reception is. Our ceremony was at 9:00am so our cocktail hour was from 10:00 to 11:00. We served coffee, tea and champagne punch at our cocktail hour. We did BOC for our reception. We prepaid for our drinks using the formula lurkyloo mentioned and we got back alot of money. But, our food was also brunch style so most people drank the punch. I think there was under 20 beers, 6 glasses of wine and about the same of mixed drinks. Most was soda and water.

Linda

 

[StitchBride]

Really look at your guest list too. We had an evening reception and ended up having BOC that worked out to be a lot cheaper for us than the package based on alot of people having only one or two drinks (we did a champagne toast, so they didn't have to get something from the bar beforehand) We had 56 people and did call brands bar but with premium available if someone asked for it.

I ended up winning $50 from my dad on a bet of how much the bar would be (He said $4k, I said $2k and I was right )

 

[tiggerrifficheidi]

I posted this on another thread just a few minutes ago...

DFTW really pushed me to package "because it would save money." But, we have friends who have all been to Germany and lived all over the world, and cheap American beer won't cut it (I apologize to anyone who likes it!). The Signature/Premium packages were pretty expensive. So, against my planner's advice, I went BOC on both the Welcome Dinner (at night) and the reception (lunch time).

We ended up getting $2500 back from Disney on their estimates! I had about 60 guests at the Welcome dinner and about 65 at the reception. We spent $510 on alcohol at the WD and $520 at the reception.

And bear in mind if we had cut out alcohol, all those people would have drank sodas, so THAT cost would have gone up. So, it wasn't really $1K EXTRA on alcohol. It was probably only $500 or so.

 

[oochr1soo]

hmm good info.. sounds like BOC is a better option.. for one hour i hope people can keep it to 2 drinks haha..