Honesty Bar

I think it's a nice idea. I think suggested donations are a good starting point as if people just said 'a donation' I would have no idea what to put in! I would expect to spend at least £20 each (me and OH) if we were at a wedding all day and we like o get a bit merry!

Sadly I think your idea has too many potential problems.

People may plan to drink a moderate amount, pay up front, then get carried away. How many drunk people say they've only had a couple? You could easily end up very our of pocket, especially if you buy enough so as not to run out of anything.

Secondly, as a guest I am happy with a pay bar, and I'm also happy with the bride and groom provide free booze. What I would NOT be happy with is having to pay for drinks that I couldn't choose myself. For example, last wedding I went to, there was some wine on the tables. However, it wasn't the best quality. No problem, it was free, so I had one glass and was then happy to go to the bar and buy my own. Had the bar only had a limited selection (if any choice at all) of red wines, and they weren't to my taste, I would resent having to pay.

Finally, to ensure you can cater for everyone's drink choices (which, if you are expecting guests to pay, you really need to) and not run out of anything, the amount you'll have to spend on booze will be wayyy higher than £300 and you'll have an awful lot left over.

I'd get some more mobile bar quotes. I think we paid about £175 for ours.

I've never been to a wedding with an honesty bar but I'm sure your loved ones would be responsible with it. We were going to organise our own bar but then found a company that only charge £150.00 for set up of a really smart bar with three mixologists (no extra for the staff, that's included), a really nice cocktail menu and prices are only £3.00 beer / wine, £4.50 cocktails, £1.50 softies. I don't know how far they cover but if you decide this is too much organising for you I can pass on the details.

When my friend got married she actually got a guy from a local pub to run a mobile bar for free, and he just worked on the profits.

Also I'm not sure if you would have to get a TEN licence for this as you'd effectively be selling the alcohol? They are very easy to get and only £20-ish but it's something worth mentioning. Usually if you get a professional bar in they will take care of this.

Are you planning on making a profit from the bar that you plan to keep/absorb into your costs or do you mean that you have saved a lot of money this way?

I think a bar needs to be one thing or the other. Either hire the bar to come and save the hassle (although I don't agree with paying them a huge amount then them having high drinks costs) or do it yourself and just charge cheap prices. This would be a pain though, as someone said you'd need to cater for all tastes if you are charging. Although if it was a cheap bar, i'd not mind if there wasn't a huge choice.

I think your idea of the 'honesty' box wouldn't work in this situation I'm afraid.

Ok, I'd never heard of making a profit out of your guests before. I doubt though that your guests will mind too much though if they are getting drinks that are cheap on the day. As a guest I'd be happy I'd only be paying £2 a glass of wine, but also a bit weird that they were making a profit from me.

This! Completly agree!

But not too affordable eh? ? Seriously I am a bit agog at the concept of making a profit out of your friends and family at your own wedding. Are you selling slices of cake too? ? Each to their own though.

I too don't think the honesty bar will work and will be a massive faff for you.

I agree, there is always that one person who gets a free meal when you split the bill with a large group of people and they conveniently "forget" to put there share in ?, I imagine this will be a similar situation.

I think fundamentally wrong to make a profit out of guests. Either charge them what you paid or have a paying bar. Profit is not right.

I'd be well happy paying £2 for a glass of wine. Most weddings I have been to, I have had to pay at least £3.50 for a glass of wine.

And if the hosts break even on their costs for the bar then all the better, it's no skin off my nose.

Agree with this. I think it is unethical to make a profit out of people you have invited to share the happiness of your wedding day - not the cost. Do you charge people if they come over for dinner at your house? Same principle to me. I confess my jaw dropped a very long way when I read you intend to treat your wedding as a commercial exercise.

Either you get them paid for (hence free to them) drinks, or you have a pay bar, which most people do not object to these days.

Glad I'm not alone in thinking it was very odd to make a profit from wedding guests, I hadn't even considered the legality of it!

Honesty boxes are pretty good in general but I don't think the format you've suggested will work. Essentially, they work by guilting people into paying - they don't want others to think they haven't. Lots of studies show that when people don't think they are being watched, the don't cough up the appropriate amount of money.

Your format might fall under the 'not being watched' category, given you are asking for a single donation to cover the whole evening. Once they've chucked their money in, there are no eyes on them. I think asking for donations for each 'transaction' would work better - each guest will immediately become 'more honest' as they realise that there is no opportunity to legitimately leave the bar without putting money in the box!

Having said all that, there's something that doesn't sit right with me with buying loads of booze and selling it on. And selling it on to your cherished guests for a profit is, to be blunt, a disgrace.

I think it is different though. If I went to a wedding (or any party/function) and there was a proper or mobile bar then I would of course be happy to pay for my drinks. However, if the bar is pretty much no more than a table and a bucket of ice* then I would not be expecting to pay for my own drinks - sorry.

*I have nothing against make-shift bars - it's what we had at our own wedding, but we didn't ask guests to pay.

It is different because a venue/bar is a business and your guests are not your customers! And 'the overall wedding pot' is your own responsibility. What you are doing, really, is overcharging your guests on booze in order to pay for your dress. You should give your guests the drinks free or at cost price and pay for the rest of the wedding yourself imo.

Also I really would double check with the venue about the legalities. I'm sure THEY have a licence but it's not them selling/profiting from the drinks, it's you. There may well be tax implications, as suggested above.

As I touched on earlier, there are legalities - if you are selling alcohol then you temporarily become the licensee and have to apply to the council for a TEN (temporary events notice). We had to do this even though we have a mobile bar because it was in the terms of our venue hire - the bar would have done it for us (even they have to have one) but our venue wanted the TEN in our name so that we were responsible for it. If a venue has its own license then they usually have to be the ones selling the alcohol. If you are just giving it away you don't need one at all but you do if money changes hands.

I have often had mobile bars for events at the dance school and the rules have always been this way to my knowledge. You should also declare tax on any income you make from providing a product or service. I think the only way you could get around it would be to say that the money was a gift from your guests but you might be on dodgy ground there.

We are having an honesty box for our wedding. Our reception venue and style wouldn't really suit a formal bar and the markups on mobile bars seem ridiculous, so we chose to buy our own drinks. Originally we were planning for it to be completely free, so if no one puts anything in the honesty box we won't be over budget, but as we have such a small amount to put towards our wedding we hope some people will donate (which will go towards our honeymoon). As most others have said we didn't feel comfortable selling on the drinks we'd bought for a profit or a set price, it would just seem a bit off considering it would be obvious we had bought it all. I'm not too bothered if people take advantage, as long as most people put something in, it doesn't matter. I'm by no means expecting to make all the money back.

Plus our beer is being made by OH and his pals so if it turns out rubbish we'd want for it to be free! ?

It annoys me when posts are removed, it stops the flow of a thread.

In my cabbage, you either have a bar (venue provided or mobile) or provide all the drinks. I don't like the idea of an honesty bar, and I certainly don't like the idea of making money out of your guests.

If it just the issue of the mobile bar costing £150-£300, I would cut something somewhere else.

I don't think anyone has reacted in any way, people are just giving their opinions and honest thoughts. You certainly haven't insulted or offended me.

I am not insulted or offended on this thread....but I probably would be if I was one of your guests and you were using me to pay (unwittingly) for some aspects of your wedding through your profit-making bar.

It's surely not worth upsetting your friends and family over, is it?

Don't want to sound harsh, but making money back on your wedding through your friends and family is a bit, well, cheeky.

You speak of an honesty bar, yet if you're making a profit from it, you're not being honest with your guests about the cost of it.

It's 2 different posters, thread was hijacked slightly. OP is on about an honesty bar, but another poster has said about making a profit from the bar they are doing.

I think an honesty bar could work - could you let them know that any 'profit' will go to charity?

Honesty bar seems like a good plan.

I'm not sure how I feel about suggested prices though. I think I'd just trust my friends and family to be honest.... as the name suggests.

I would NEVER make money from my guests and frankly think it's rude to.

Thank you for all your replies, I didn't expect so many people to have an opinion on it

Just wanted to clarify that we are in no way intending to make any money from our guests, just hoping to purely cover our costs.

We are going to be supplying all wine and sparkling wine/champagne free to our guests (This is my Dad's gift to us, 6 weeks until we go on our French wine buying trip!) so hopefully any wine drinkers will be happy with this!

With regards to suggested donations, maybe I should say £1 a drink or something similar, rather than a suggested amount for the whole day, definitely something for me to think about. AS for choices of drinks, we are going to ask on our RSVPs for people to let us know their favourite tipple so we can hopefully provide what people actually want to drink - though we know most of our friends are big cider drinkers!

We will be making it look like a proper bar - the perks of working for a joinery company with lots of show bars - so hopefully people won't feel like they are being ripped of, especially donations will be in-line with what the drinks cost at wholesale prices.

I will definitely look into any legalities that come with providing your own bar, we have told the venue this is what we intend to do and they have no issues with it and also said that other couples had done something similar before.

Thank you for all our suggestions!

I have been thinking about having a honesty bar as well. Basically it is to make it easier as a family friend is running the bar for us and it means less cash handling for him. I was going to put on the sign a suggestion of £2 for all alcoholic drinks and i was going to also state that any additional money was going to go to charity.

I posted on another wedding forum about it and never had a negative response. If you are only asking for a small donation for drinks ie: £2 instead of £4 which would be the going rate I do not think that your guests would think you are profiting from them, as they are benefiting from cheap drink. Also when you think about it, at weddings in hotels the bar is profiting from your guests.

I think the whole honesty bar thing is american from my google research!

Hi,

Currently considering the Honesty bar option myself.

Has anybody on this thread actually gone ahead with the plan at this stage?

If so, how was it run in the end, and how did it go?

In response to the people seeing it as profiteering from your guests, I really don't think this is a fair or realistic view of it. Maybe things are slightly different over here (Ireland), but we generally expect to pay for our own drinks when we attend a wedding.

Personally I would prefer to pay a reduced price to Bride & Groom for drinks, than pay a 3rd party Bar Operator. Over here a pint in a pub, and definitely from a mobile bar would be over €5; we intend on charging roughly €3-€4 for all alcoholic drinks, with free soft drinks/mixers.

The current plan is to have Heineken, Guinness, Red & White Wine, Vodka, Whickey, Rum and Gin at the bar served by a barman, with a selection of soft drinks & mixers available for self-pouring.

We plan to provide champagne for reception, wine for dinner, and a round when we move to the bar. After that people will pay/contribute for drinks

Running the bar this way is not a profit-making exercise. What we are trying to do is provide drinks to people at a reasonable price, while covering our costs for the bar and possibly towards the overall cost of the wedding.

This way, instead of the bar being a cost for us, and a massive money-spinner for a hotel or bar company, it is pretty much cost neutral.

DD

We went ahead with our honesty bar and it worked brilliantly and fitted in with our relaxed day.

Our caterers provided us with a bar person for the night and we asked our guests what drinks they would like and managed to cover most requests!

We did have a fair bit left, but bought more than we needed so we can return the surplus supply!

We had a sign on the bar with suggested donations for the day/night - £5 if you are the designated driver or only having a few! £10 if you plan on making the most of the occasion! & £20 if you plan on joining the groom in getting more than a little tipsy!

When allowing for the drinks, ice, plastic glasses, bar staff costs & constructing a bar we ended up breaking even. A win win all round as everyone got very cheap drinks and it didn't cost us anything.

It was also great fun when guests were behind the bar making drinks towards the end of the night (our bar staff finished around 30 mins before the guests left!)

My brothers wedding had a £1 charge per drink to help towards the cost of the day, and that worked well. Having the charge per drink helped people getting too tipsy without thinking about it, but it was more of a token amount, so still a cheap night for guests. .

I don't see a problem with this at all. As a guest, I'm getting a cheaper priced drink and any profit goes to my friend/family member rather than some randomer. Win win all round surely?!