The good news - Ponster and I have, 99% sure, got a date and a place to hold our wedding reception.
The bad news- now we have to sot out the unromantic nitty gritty details. :smack:
The place we’re using doesn’t have a bar so we have to calculate not only how much wine to provide with the meal but also how much ‘drink’ to lay on for the ‘afters’, the rest of the evening.
Our guests are a mix of Irish and British with some Americans and a handful of French. Age range from 5 - 73 with the majority falling in the 25 - 40 range.
The reception, early September Paris region, will start with champange and nibbles late afternoon / early evening. There will be red and white wine with the meal (possibly 4 courses). Then it’s the free for all, dancing /party bit which could go on to the wee small hours.
#1What drinks (beer, cider, spirits, wine) would you expect to be on offer ?
#2 How much do you think you’d drink / we should calculate per person ?
For my wedding, we had champagne and beer on offer, and nothing else. What you do should depend on what you know about your guests - what do they like? Have that on hand. Most of the people we had at our wedding were not big liquor drinkers, so we didn’t bother with spirits at all.
As for #2, if you are having this at a restaurant, or having a caterer do the food, ask them how much you should get. They should have experience in determining the correct amount to buy for your size party.
If you’ve got a lot of Brits and Irish together - you can assume that they will drink much more than their American equivelent. When I say much more I really do mean MUCH MUCH more.
Are you and your other half Brits/Paddies? Cos then you’ll know a lot about this already.
It is traditional in British wedding to have speaches after the meal - these are toasted in Champagne. Also Brits would probably expect an aperitif type drink (eg Gin and Tonic) to be available before the meal.
But as I said - if you are american, double whatever you would provide for the equivelent American event. We do drink much more than you.
As to what i would expect - outside of wine with the meal and Champagne for toasts I would expect beers for the blokes (lagers bitter and guiness for the Irish (and some brits like it too), some bints’ drinks (eg alcopops, bacardi breezers, wine, ) and perhaps a smallish range of spirits and mixers (Gin Whisky/whiskey, Vodka). If yuo are having older people there they may well appreciate a sherry (which is also a nice aperitif).
I don’t know about America but it’s common to get this stuff on sale or return in Britain, and also to hire glasses.
Agreed. Think of a quantity that seems inhuman, double it, and add some extra.
Also, let the waiting staff know about the toast - normally, they’ll set out champagne flutes towards the end of the meal, and come round to fill them up just before the speeches.
romansperson
I’m happy to take the caterer’s word on the amount of wine to go with the food but he’s French and, as owlstretchingtime and GorillaMan hinted, the Irish/Brit contingent view drink in a different way to our continental cousins and so I don’t think he’ll be much help for estimating post food consumption.
owlstretchingtime
Good idea about the sale or return option - I’ll find out if they do that here (France). We’re an Irsh/Brit couple BTW.
You and GorillaMan might like this quote from another French place we saw “Oh yes the Irish can drink - I saw some of them have five beers and a glass of whiskey!” :eek:
Maybe try some of the british supermarkets around the ports, especially Cite Euope near calais - it’s where most brits stock up for weddings and parties.
For our wedding my wife and I paid the caterer to do an open bar. The caterer took care of all the details with some input from us. No one was left wanting.
The thing is, you’re going to have 100 or so people there, kids included, so you’re going to need a bar tender or two who have a knowledge of mixology and can keep track of things (like making sure you don’t run out of something and making sure the young’uns don’t get into the hooch). Maybe even a server or two. Then you have to buy the liquor, wine, champagne, and soda. Then you have to buy glasses, cups, cocktail napkins, swizzle sticks, cherries, olives, whatever. Then you have to get some kind of bar, with ice, water, those soda spritzer thingies (plus the soda, seltzer etc. with which to spritz). Then someone has to clean the mess up.
A caterer can figure all this stuff out. If you think there’s going to be mostly beer drinking, you can specify that. If you can afford it have a professional do all this and save yourself some sanity so you can enjoy your big day. Frankly I doubt it’s all that much more expensive than doing the bar yourself.
As an American, I would expect at a bare minimum
-beer
-wine (1 red, 1 white)
-champagne
If liquor was being served, I’d expect
-whiskey (bourbon, maybe scotch)
-vodka
-gin
-maybe rum
and appropriate mixers
These Americans at your wedding - are they friends and family coming from the states, mostly, or are they ex-pats living in Europe? If they’re the latter, I wouldn’t worry much about trying to cater to American tastes. E.g., you could scrap bourbon whiskey and only offer scotch.
As a youngish American male, I would probably have 8-12 drinks over the course of the affair.
Since when is wine a “bints’ drink”? When I last checked, wine was pretty much unisex. I would never think some guy was at all gender atypical if he ordered a glass of wine at a bar or with dinner or at a wedding reception.
And what the heck’s an alcopop? [/possible hijack, but I’m really curious]
I think what he may mean is the ‘white wine’ ordered by somebody who ‘doesn’t like the taste of alcohol’.
They’re bottled drinks, which use similar flavours to soft drinks, with the added ingredient of (often) vodka. The word has become journalism shorthand for “irresponsible teenage drinking”. The same journalists grew up in a world full of sweetened plastic-bottled cider. Draw your own conclusions.
The Americans are from Boston and Fort Worth, 1st and 2nd generation Irish.
So far we’ve only met the guy who runs the place once, we’ve no end of things to finalise of course. He’s happy to sort out wine for with the meal but, as mentioned earlier, estimating quantities for the after food drinks might be beyond him. As for ‘tending the bar’ we’ll need to find out if one of his staff can do that, if not we have a friend who just happens to be a barman and has already said that he’d be more than happy to ‘run the bar’ area’ for us (it’s his security zone I guess).
Thanks for the estimations on quantities.
BTW Scribble I have to admit that if I saw a guy drinking wine in a pub at home I’d be surprised and assume he was maybe foreign. Wine as an aperitif or with food is accepted but I’d be surprised to see a Brit drinking wine in the same way he’d drink beer, in fact a lot of my mates will drink beer with a meal in preference to wine. Double standards I guess - or maybe it’s just the economics, wine in pubs is hellish expensive
As my mate, the great Al Murray (aka The Pub Landlord), always says: “Pint of lager for the gentleman; white wine or a fruit-based drink for the lady”. If women do dare to drink beer, make sure it’s in a half-pint glass. But, of course, he’s a comedian.
Those women of my acquaintance who drink beer tend to drink lager - or the occasional Guinness - rather than cask ale.
Since forever. British males don’t drink wine outside of a meal (some do but they probably still live with their mums, and have an extensive collection of Judy Garland albums).
I have actually been in a “wine bar” in Hartlepool which refused to sell me a glass of wine on the grounds that it was a “poof’s drink”.
One other thing - if you’re going to buy liquor, you can save some money by getting just a couple bottles of “the good stuff”, and then get “a bit less than the good stuff” for mixed drinks. For instance a couple of premium whiskies for those who like to drink just whiskey, and some lesser brands for mixed drinks.
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