Friend is picking up the whole tab--but conditions apply.

In My Humble Opinion
61

Was that an “open bar” as the term is used around here - an additional charge per person of drinking age which may depend on exactly what is offered at the bar and the length of time* - or was it an open bar only from hte guests point of view? The whole point of getting an open bar is the predictability - my siblings and I recently threw a milestone birthday for my mother, and my brother objected to paying for an open bar as it would cost close to $2500 just for alcohol. He wanted to know why we didn’t run a tab and pay per drink. And the answer, of course, was that running a tab could cost us $5000.

  • At the party mentioned in the post drink prices went like this : 4 hours of unlimited soda was $5 per person, beer,wine and soda was $12, an open bar was $30 and open bar with top shelf liquor was $40.
62

At my sisters wedding, she did an open bar. It turned out we don’t drink enough. She paid an upfront fee for the service that was non-refundable. Towards the end of the night I was talking to the bar tender and found out she was well below budget. I couldn’t convince him to let me take bottles of hard alcohol.(said some law applied) I could get full bottles of wine to bring back to my table. I made a half dozen trips doing so. I don’t drink wine but it gave me a collection of wines to give out as gifts.

63

As said, free food and cash bar isn’t an unusual party arrangement.

But, if this was one of my five or six closest friends and it wasn’t clear to me, I’d probably just ask them whether this is about limiting their expense (totally cool), or that they prefer I don’t drink alcohol at the party (also totally cool).

64

Well, here’s how it came out:

P and I showed up on time and we carpooled with Sally to the pizza place. The other guests couldn’t be bothered to show up there; they came later to her condo for desserts.
The three of us shared two salads; P had a calzone and a glass of wine; I had a beer and veggie lasagna; Sally had spag and meatballs and a non alky limonada; we also split a side order of meatballs.
Sally insisted on picking up the whole tab even though we wanted to help with it.
I texted her the next day and asked if she would have picked up the entire tab if the other guests had bothered to show at the pizzeria. As it was, ours was somewhere in the $70 range.
She replied with a smiley face, “You only turn 50 once.”