I never thought that we would think to save on our wedding reception by cutting back on the alcohol. But after looking at more food and beverage proposals than I care to admit, we found that the bar was exactly what we needed to take a closer look at in order to save on the overall tab.
Now, I’m not saying to not having any alcohol at all, because let’s just admit it – that would be ludicrous. I’m saying that there are a couple of different ways to look at how you want to pay for this.
Most of the proposals I saw charged us on a cost per person for 1-5 hours depending on how long you want to pay for everyone to have a good time. It wasn’t until I saw a proposal with the costs broken down “based on consumption”, or per drink, that I really understood what we would be paying for.
If your party is full of heavy drinkers, by all means, pay per person. Our calculations showed that most packages based on per person would have covered anywhere from 3-5 drinks. That’s a lot of drinks, especially if we wanted to try and factor in who, or how many, of our friends would make up for the cocktails that the conservative side of the family won’t drink.
In the end, we decided that paying based on consumption was the way to go. We would know exactly what we were paying for and how much we were paying for each drink. A Bud Light certainly won’t cost you as much as a Grey Goose dirty martini so why should you have to pay for it?
Ultimately we will have saved thousands of dollars and we’ll get the venue we want too. I can’t wait for the real wedding planning to begin now that we almost have our reception spot nailed down! :)
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