Alcohol allowance per person

How long is all day? As in, at what point will you start offering drinks?

Going from past BBQ's which have been late evening into nights, some friends will happily get through a crate each - so say you can get a crate for £10 - and add a bit more time for them to drink more, I'd say £18.50 will be plenty per person.

Sorry, that was probably worth mentioning.

I don't anticipate that we'll be kicking things off before 12, and we need to have the noise toned down from 11pm, so it'll be no more than 12 hours.
Thanks Chedi

x

I would have thought that £1500 would be ample. It may be worth your while contacting a brewery as you may be able to buy a barrel of beer which may save you money.

That's not something I'd thought of Andy, will definitely look into that. Thank you

My wife's cousin did it........They even went to the brewery a few months before and made the beer! They are from Braintree so not too far from you. I'll ask which brewery it was and let you know.

You're a star, thank you very much!

Cannot really help with the amount you need, but £1500 is really dependent on what you get for that.

I know others on here have mentioend some retailers (might be Majestic wines or tescos) that will buy back cases you dont use. This is a warehouse place near Ipswich (I think this is the one, but not 100% sure) http://www.ipswich-wines.co.uk/. It reminded me of the many wine warehouses in Calais & had very good prices when I went a few years ago.

You can often get special offers at tescos, aldi, lidl & asda, so keep an eye out there also.

If you are serving wine from the bar, you can use cask wine. Some can be surprisingly good & unless you see the cask, no one knows its not from a bottle. Any left over casks keep for ages & will work out cheaper than bottled wine.

Thank you Teal

Any more suggestions welcome.

I am rubbish at this stuff as I don't really drink and didn't need to order in for ours but as someone else mentioned, breweries are a good place to go.

One of my couples even named an ale after themselves for a giggle.

Apart from that, have you got a costcos card? ?

I'd second Aldi and Lidl for Prosecco and spirits. Their Prosecco is £5 a bottle and really nice, and their spirits are absolutely fine, all under £10 a bottle. Having said that, I wouldn't trust my tastes as I'd drink lighter fluid if it came in a nice bottle ?

I think the amount you've budgeted seems fine, but if it was me, would be tempted to overbuy as the worst thing would be to run out at 10pm, and everyone sitting with nothing to drink! It's very generous of you to be laying on so much, and I'd love it if I were a guest. As someone said, if you can sell any surplus on afterwards or take it back, this would be ideal.

I also think barrels wins over crates of bottles and cans, purely because of the cleaning up side of things. That's a lot of rubbish there!

They used Mauldons in Sudbury www.mauldons.co.uk/

Brilliant Andy, thank you very much for that, i'll get onto that now!

Thanks for the other suggestions guys, OH's mum has a Costco card so we'll be looking there and Aldi is great for alcohol. I'm a bit of a fuss pot with alcohol as I don't drink much myself and their knockoffs aren't half bad!

If I tracked mine right we spent 1300 on Alcohol + some Beer which Boy got through work for free. And that was from 1:30 - 12:00 and we have quiet a bit left over.

That was for 90 people

And where is your wedding report missus?!

Pavone, highly recommend the Aldi Tempranillo for a red wine...£3.59 a bottle.

We did this, I do have a drink list somewhere possibly on laptop but that sounds like a good amount.

We bought most of our drinks from supermarkets on various special offers eg half price wines and deals on beer and spirits. We also got a keg of bitter from local pub which went down well. We had Loads left over too, but I wanted people to have what they wanted and we've used it for events after.

We will be doing the same as you Pavonne - We only have guests from 4.30 to when they leave, which will probably be about 11. We will have 60 for the whole thing.

We are going to get barrels of an ale called TEA which is local to us, in homage to OH's dad for the boys with some lager too.

I do like to idea of casks of wine. I think our caterer can supply a 'bar person' so someone would be on hand to serve this. I would want to know approx how many glasses you get from that. A bottle is supposed to serve 6 glasses with bar measures, much less if poured without measures.

I am going to keep an eye out for fizz offers at supermarkets and bulk buy - Sainsbury's does 5% off for 6 bottles.They will do a use or return but the bottles would need to be sealed for that.

For spirits, we will just do jugs of Pimms and G&T. I think that anyone who drinks will like something from that lot and it's all fairly easy to serve.

The only drawback of providing free booze is that people keep topping up, putting down their glass, then getting another one so there is more wastage.

You're all fantastic. Thanks very much for the suggestions, personal experience and recommendations of when and where to buy

Numbers & timings are very similar to yourself Sloth, so hoping costs will be around the same.

Thanks again

I know its terrible -where did January go! Coming soon promise