How to calculate Wine & Beverage costs

One of the more common questions that couples (and organisers of events) ask is how to assess how much the spend will be on Wine & Beverage.

This is a pretty easy thing to work out, however, it does depend largely on the drinking habits of your people. That’s where you need to assume the amount they’ll consume, and you know your guests better than we do.

Let’s start with the bubbles:

You get 6 fills of a champagne flute out of a bottle.

So, let say you have 100 guests and want them to have 2 glasses each. That would be 200 glasses divided by 6, equals 33 bottles of bubbles.

It’s always a good idea to have some Sparkling Grape Juice available at this time of proceedings for those not drinking as it looks the same as the real thing! The same calculation above applies.

Table wines with dinner:

There are 5 standard pours from a bottle of wine (150ml pour from a 750ml bottle). Therefore, if you estimate that your guests will have about 2 glasses over their dinner you would want to spread about 40 bottles of wine throughout the tables.

A good idea is to have 2 bottles of red wine and 2 bottles of white wine per 10 people. At The Riverhead, we have a good selection of the popular varieties of wine (Sauvignon Blanc, Pinot Gris, Chardonnay, Pinot Noir & Merlot).  If someone from another table wants the variety of wine on an opposite table, they can swap with those people.

You may want to make some beers available if this suits your crowd, in which case we suggest either putting some on the tables or having a free-standing ice barrel with beers for people to help themselves.

The Bar Tab:

You decide what you would like to provide your guest ie house wines and tap beers, or you can add in spirits and craft beer, or have an open bar.

You tell us if you want the Garden Bar to be open before the ceremony or after the ceremony for those who might like to have tap beer and something other than the bubbles.

If one of your guests want something that you haven’t approved for your tab, then they can pay for their choice.

You can nominate a spend for your Bar Tab, and we’ll advise you (or your responsible representative) it is nearing its limit. You can either increase the Tab or the bar can simply revert to a cash bar.

Rest assured there won’t be any surprises when you wake up the next morning to find you’ve had such a good night you’ve overspent your budget.