Helpful Tips for your Wedding Bar Plan

Raise a toast to the couple!

After many years producing hundreds of wonderful weddings, we have time-tested guidance about serving alcohol at weddings. We can help you plan the perfect celebration, and budget just enough to ensure your guests have a fun time celebrating you – safely! Use the following tips and ideas to help you create the right bartending plan and alcohol package for you. 

Setting a Bar Plan budget

First, decide if you will pay for none, some or all of your guests’ beverages. The choice is yours, and there is no stigma for having your guests pay for some or all their own drinks. If you do decide to prepay for any of the bar drinks, you can:

  1. Provide prepaid drink tokens for each guest;
    1. unused tokens are refunded to you
    2. guests can give theirs to someone else if they’re not drinking
    3. there’s no time limit or budget to run out, so it helps avoid a rush or over consumption
    4. You can decide what type(s) of drinks are eligible for the Token. Beer, wine, cocktails, and premium “top shelf” or regular. Guests can top-up their own top shelf brands, if they want.
  2. Provide a “full open tab“, for any beer, wine or cocktail, including “top shelf” spirits and liquors;
  3. Provide a “limited open tab“, for some or all beverage types – you can decide:
    1. Beer & Wine only; guests purchase their own cocktails;
    2. Any beer, wine, or cocktail,  but no “top shelf”; this conserves your budget longer
    3. Beer, Wine and the signature cocktails – this conserves your budget longer
    4. Any combination of the above…

 We recommend that you do not time-limit the tab (which can create a distracting rush at the bar, incentivize people to drink faster, and could create longer lines right after the ceremony), but rather set a fixed amount that lasts most of the celebration. When it runs out, guests buy their own. 

A good rule to calculate your bar plan budget is to: multiply 1 drink per adult x number of hours from reception to after dinner. We suggest about 4 hours at most.

Barn Lights wedding bartending open tab calculator

This example “Open Tab” calculator can help you budget for your bar plan. Prorated refunds are given for unused amounts.

This example represents probably the most you’ll want to prepay, because this represents the upper limit of safer drinking for the same group of people drinking in one place for many hours, likely 7 hours – from 3pm or 4pm  reception start time, to a 10pm conclusion. If they are drinking for free, some guests could drink too much, and waste drinks–and your money. 

Safe Drinking – know your crowd

“Know your crowd” is our best advice. Most weddings are amazing and run smoothly. Rarely, there are a few heavy drinkers in the guest list. If you know of any, please let your wedding coordinator know ahead of time. An open bar tab is discouraged with this type of crowd; give out a couple of Tokens to each guest and let them buy their own after; paying for their own will help slow them down to a responsible level. You don’t want drunk guests ruining your special day! 

All bartenders, everywhere, are required by law to not serve anyone who appears inebriated/intoxicated. Therefore, it’s part of their job to prevent inebriation (drunkenness). Did you know that? 

Keeping the celebration safe

Our professional bartenders are trained to keep drinking guests within safer alcohol limits – and the law requires it. We have several techniques to help keep drinking within safe limits. 

  • No shots are served; spirits are served only on the rocks.
  • Two drinks per person can be ordered at a time, until we switch to 1 drink per person.
    • Why? So that guests do not buy too many drinks for other guests out of sight of the bartenders; we need to assess each person for legal drinking age 21+ and for their wellness.
  • If the crowd is starting to over-imbibe, the bartenders may switch to “beer and wine only” for a while, or pause the bar to let the crowd take it easy for a bit.
  • Before your wedding day, in the contracts,  you both to pledge to assist us in handling any compromised guests. This helps to ensure that all guests remember why they are there on your special day: to celebrate with you, and not to become a problem. 
Barn Lights wedding bartending and bar tabs

For extra convenience, add an outside bar service for beer and wine

Barn Lights wedding bartending and bar tabs

Barn Lights has a full-service bar right inside the venue