Working out how many kegs to buy for a wedding bar...

R.O.S.S.I

R.O.S.S.I

R.O.S.S.I

Soldato
Joined
16 Nov 2002
Posts
11,286
Location
The Moon
Tying the knot this summer and we've decided we want to run the bar for our wedding and its my task in figuring out how much booze to buy so that we don't run out.

We're hitting a stumbling point however when it comes to figuring out how many kegs to buy.

Were getting all of the equipment from a supplier and he gave me a rough estimation to work out drinks, saying if you had 200 guests you will need an average of 400 drinks per hour as everyone will drink 2 drinks per hour, but I think that is a bit keen given people will already have consumed a fair bit of wine with the meals, fizz for toasts and then bottle beers and fizz earlier on.

We were planning on having a lager, a session/pale ale and a cask ale on tap and my gut instinct is to go 2:1:1 as lager tends to be the clear fav at weddings imo.

But if it were your event, how would you work out how many kegs you need? I'm not averse to running out of something later on as we can have a backup supply of bottles and there will still be spirits and mixers left plus any surplus wines.
 
I put some money behind the bar and got somebody else to worry about it :D

This is a generalisation but most of my female friends don't drink lager and pints at all. A few do, but I can count those on one hand

But then some guys can drink 4+ pints an hour, especially if it's free.
 
Last edited:
Whatever you think, double it, then double it again, if it's free, it goes quick. We did free drinks across our 3 day wedding in Poland and had to do a lot of top ups.
 
Last edited:
SixTwoSix said:
Whatever you think, double it, then double it again, if it's free, it goes quick. We did free drinks across our 3 day wedding in Poland and had to do a lot of top ups.
Click to expand...
Yeh, i'm half inclined to just make a guess and have some bottles as back up if anything runs out.
I also think as its a free bar, once something runs out people will just move onto something else.

No lager? Pale ale it is.
No Pale ale? G&T me up.

I find people tend not to be too picky when its free and just take what they want.
 
Last edited:
All of it and then a bit more for good measure.

We ran out of all the good stuff at our wedding because the venue didn't believe us when we said whatever you can get in will be drunk so don't worry about having open kegs left over.
 
We went to a wedding a few years ago where the bar was free until 8pm, after that we paid up.

It was at one of those ridiculously remote lodge things in the sticks where they probably have a 6 week trek to restock the bar. We drank all of their jagermeister, 12 bottles of the stuff. We turned that boring AF wedding around, thank god.
 
I can drink though, at a party, probably the equivalent of 3 pints an hour, very much depends what type of beer, it was some Carlsberg (insert any generic light mass produced **** lager) then probably.

I wouldnt drink a stronger IPA like that I'd be completely ******, but even then I could go through, hmmmmm, at a party, 6 pints of stronger beer?
 
BUDFORCE said:
How long is the event for, or how many hours the bar open?
Click to expand...
We were thinking of opening the bar after the wedding breakfast, between 5pm and 6pm, for the day guests.

Evening guests arrive from 7pm (of which there is only likely to be around a max of 30).

Last orders at 11pm with booting out time at midnight, so a good 5-6 hours of open bar time.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom