The honest, complete guide to figuring out exactly how much booze to buy for a wedding — without over-spending or running out mid-toast. Covers the golden formula, beer vs wine breakdowns, every guest count from 50 to 300, and a free Wedding Alcohol Calculator.
The Golden Formula: How Much Alcohol to Order for a Wedding
Let's start with the rule that every bartender and event planner uses. It's simple and it works for almost every type of wedding, crowd and location:
Buffer = Add 10–15% extra
The Split = 40% Wine / 30% Beer / 30% Spirits
This formula accounts for something most guides miss: guests don't drink at a flat rate. They typically drink more in the first hour — often 1.5–2 drinks per hour during cocktail hour — then settle into a steadier pace of roughly one drink per hour for the rest of the evening. Averaging it out across the whole event, one drink per guest per hour is the number that holds up consistently across thousands of weddings.
So for a 100-guest, 5-hour wedding reception:
- 100 guests × 5 hours = 500 total drinks
- Add 15% buffer: 500 × 1.15 = ~575 drinks to buy
Now you need to split those 575 drinks across wine, beer and spirits. The standard wedding ratio for a full open bar is:
How Many Beers in a Bottle of Wine?
This is one of the most searched questions for wedding planning — and it matters because it helps you think about quantities in a way that's easy to visualise when you're shopping.
The answer depends on whether you're comparing by volume (servings) or by alcohol content (standard drinks).
| Comparison type | 1 bottle of wine (750ml) | Equivalent in beers | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| By servings (glasses) | 5 glasses (5 oz each) | ≈ 5 beers | 1 glass wine = 1 standard beer pour |
| By alcohol (12% wine, 5% beer) | 90ml pure alcohol | ≈ 4.7 beers | Standard 12oz beer = ~19ml pure alcohol |
| By cost (planning purposes) | ~£8–£18 per bottle | ≈ 5 standard beers | Both serve roughly the same number of guests |
For practical wedding planning, the simplest way to think about it is: one bottle of wine pours 5 glasses, and one case of 12 beers serves 12 people. So for every case of beer you'd otherwise buy, you could substitute 2.5 bottles of wine.
- Standard wine bottle (750ml) — 5 glasses
- Magnum (1.5L) — 10 glasses (great for toasts, very popular visually)
- Champagne bottle (750ml) — 6–8 toasting flutes
- Standard spirit bottle (700ml) — approx 25 single measures (25ml) or 17 doubles
How Much Wine to Buy for a Wedding
Wine typically accounts for the largest portion of drinks consumed at a wedding reception — particularly evening receptions with older or more formal guest lists. Here's the formula for wine specifically:
| Guests | Total wine drinks | Bottles (+15% buffer) | Cases (12 bottles) |
|---|---|---|---|
| 50 guests | 100 | 23 | ~2 cases |
| 75 guests | 150 | 35 | ~3 cases |
| 100 guests | 200 | 46 | ~4 cases |
| 150 guests | 300 | 69 | ~6 cases |
| 200 guests | 400 | 92 | ~8 cases |
Splitting your wine order: red vs white vs rosé vs sparkling
- Red wine: 40% of wine bottles (more in winter, less in summer)
- White wine: 40% of wine bottles (more in summer, goes faster at dinner)
- Rosé: 10% of wine bottles (hugely popular at summer outdoor weddings)
- Sparkling / Prosecco: 10% of wine bottles (plus champagne for the toast separately)
How Much Beer to Buy for a Wedding
Beer is the easiest thing to miscalculate at weddings — people tend to either massively over-buy or run out at exactly the wrong moment. The formula is simpler than wine because you don't need to divide by servings:
| Guests | Beers needed | With buffer | Cases of 24 |
|---|---|---|---|
| 50 guests | 75 | 87 | 4 cases |
| 100 guests | 150 | 173 | 8 cases Most common |
| 150 guests | 225 | 259 | 11 cases |
| 200 guests | 300 | 345 | 15 cases |
How Much Liquor to Buy for a Wedding
Spirits are the most complex to plan — and the most expensive to get wrong. A standard 700ml bottle gives roughly 17 doubles (40ml measures) or 28 singles (25ml). If guests are mixing cocktails, each one typically uses 1.5–2 measures, so plan on fewer serves per bottle.
| Guests | Spirit drinks | With buffer (Bottles) | Recommended spirit split |
|---|---|---|---|
| 50 guests | 75 | 7 | Vodka 3, Gin 2, Whisky 1, Rum 1 |
| 100 guests | 150 | 12 | Vodka 4–5, Gin 2–3, Whisky 2, Rum 1–2, Tequila 1 |
| 150 guests | 225 | 17 | Vodka 6, Gin 3–4, Whisky 3, Rum 2, Tequila 1–2 |
| 200 guests | 300 | 23 | Vodka 8, Gin 5, Whisky 4, Rum 3, Tequila 2 |
Complete Table: Alcohol by Guest Count
This is the table most guides don't include — a comprehensive overview for a standard 5-hour wedding with a full open bar, 40/30/30 wine/beer/spirit split, including the 15% buffer already baked in.
| Guests | Wine bottles | Beer (cans) | Spirit bottles | Champagne | Est. total drinks |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 50 | 23 | 88 | 7 | 7 | ~290 |
| 75 | 35 | 130 | 10 | 10 | ~435 |
| 100 | 46 | 175 | 12 | 13 | ~580 |
| 125 | 58 | 217 | 15 | 16 | ~720 |
| 150 | 69 | 260 | 17 | 19 | ~860 |
| 200 | 92 | 345 | 23 | 25 | ~1,150 |
| 250 | 115 | 432 | 29 | 32 | ~1,440 |
Open Bar vs Beer & Wine Only: How the Numbers Change
Not every wedding runs a full open bar, and adjusting your quantities based on the bar type you're offering is one of the most important decisions you'll make in planning the drinks.
Know Your Crowd: Adjustments That Matter
The formula gives you a baseline — but your actual guest list might deviate significantly from the average.
- Heavy-drinking crowd: Add 20–25%. Unopened bottles can usually be returned.
- Older/conservative crowd: Reduce by 15–20%. Spend more on quality rather than quantity.
- Daytime wedding: Reduce spirits by 30–40%. Prosecco, white wine and light beers dominate.
- Summer outdoor wedding: Increase beer by 20%, reduce wine by 10%. People gravitate toward cold beer.
- Children: If 15–20% of guests are children, remove them from the alcohol calculation entirely.
What Most Couples Forget to Buy
Every wedding planner has a story about the couple who budgeted perfectly for wine and beer and then realised on the day they had no ice or bottle openers.
- Non-alcoholic options: Budget for at least 20% of your total drinks to be non-alcoholic — sparkling water, soft drinks, juices and mocktails.
- Ice (far more than you think): Rule of thumb is 500g–1kg of ice per person for a summer event. Most couples buy about half the ice they actually need.
- Mixers, garnishes & equipment: Tonic water, soda water, Coca-Cola, lime cordial, lemons, limes, mint, olives, cocktail straws, coasters.
- Corkscrew, openers & glasses: Budget for one corkscrew per two tables being served wine simultaneously. Have a backup.
- Water: Plan for at least 1.5 large glasses of water per guest per hour.