Cash bar

I think buying alcohol and giving it to your guests will be much cheaper for you (and them!). You can bulk buy loads depending on how many guest you have, or you could ask the guests to bring a bottle of wine or something with them if its a smaller ,family wedding.

We bought our own booze, we got it from Majestics, they had some really good deals on wines and delivered to our venue a few days before

We bought our own for our village hall reception, as it was easier than getting the license, and cheaper by far! We were going to put money behind a bar anyway, so this worked out a better option as the money went further!

Stock up on beers when you see the 3 for £18/3 for £20 deals, and often most supermarkets do good offers on wine. If you're within an easy enough reach, why not do what we did and have a little trip to France to stock up on wine? We managed to get all of the wine for our wedding breakfast/reception for £180 in Calais (and to be honest even this was too much wine as we gave about half to my SIL for her wedding!!)

xxx

We were going to buy loads of alcohol and then let guests help themselves but we are on such a tight budget that we cant do this, so we are hiring a bar. AS we have over 115 guests for the evening it will only cost us £50 (the deposit and the money for them to sort out the license).

I think it depends on you and your guests, and how much your guests are likely to drink. I would hate to run out of alcohol half way through the nigth because people are drinking a lot as it is free.

Bx

To apply for a temporary events noticed (refered to as a T.E.N.) only costs £21 and takes about 10 minutes to fill out.

We do provide bars as well as other services and can tell with a lot of expereince buying your own booze can lead to many problems.

1. What happens if you run out?
2. Cost of buying enough for everyone
3. deciding what drink to provide, spirits, wine, beer?
4. What happens if someone has too much? With bar staff they should not serve anyone who has drank too much.
5. You have to clean up whereas the bar company should take everything with them.
6. Hiring in glassware.

By hiring a proffesional bar company you will get the reassurance that everything is taken care for you.

Im just about to leave for holiday but feel free to pm me after the 26thand i maybe able to recomend some companies in you area,

Hello,

We too are having reception in village hall and we have decided to provide booze oursleves. We are getting booze from France on a booze cruise, you can get nice table wine for £2 a bottle (I know, it has been tried and tested by me).

If you don't want to go to France you can get some excellent deals online- the big supermarkets have half price deals all the time.

I'm doing both i.e. buying our own booze but charging for it. We cant afford to do a free bar, plus we dont want people to go crazy and get really wasted. So we have bought our own booze and have some extended family friends who are going to work the bar for us. Our venue already have a licence but we applied to extend it. The forms are very simple to fill out.

We got all our booze from supermarkets when offers were on. We priced up going to france etc and decided it wouldnt really be worth the hassle going to France to get the wine. We watched out for offers and kept a spreadsheet of cost per unit etc and worked out the cheapest place to buy it from. We got our stuff from Tesco and Sainsbury's mainly. It is time consuming but we didnt want our guests to have to pay £4 a pint from a bar you hire in as I dont thinks it fair bearing in mind how much they pay to come to your wedding.

If you need any more help/advice just give me a shout.

xxx

We are having a pay bar which is costing us £100 purely because then there will be a good choice of drink rather than just wine. We will have to provide drinks for the wedding breakfast and toasts though. We're just keeping our eyes peeled for the offers in supermarkets although I did fancy a booze cruise just for fun!

The guy I sit next to at work is also getting married. He's researched these French wine hypermarket places where it all seems very very cheap. A few of them we looked at even paid for your ferry over or did package deals with a mix of red&white. Think I'll steal his idea and might even make a bit of a weekend of it.

How does that compare to how much it costs you to have them there though? When you divide the total cost of your wedding per guest you probably aren't far off £75-£100 per person - which at £4 a pint is (hopefully) far more than they'll drink in an evening.

You could do what we have done and said we will make beer and wine available but people are free to bring their own if they wish to drink anything in particular...

Its not just about drink though is it AJ. A lot of our guests are travelling considerable distances to come to our wedding, plus hotel cost, plus price of a new outfit for the ladies, plus cost of taxi's etc it all adds up - to way over what I'm paying for them to be there. My WB is £30 a head, plus venue hire and evening buffet - we arent talking anywhere near £100 a head, and just their hotel room is £80 for the night and a lot of people are staying the Friday night as well. Expecting them to then pay out £4 a pint is a bit much in my opinion.