I really agree with this. I would prefer to have no alcohol than to have people need to have money with them.
My brother and his wife just offered beer and wine and they had their reception in a place that allowed them to bring it in from inexpensive retailers. It was a very good solution, IMO.
An open bar can be set up either per person or on consumption. Some caterers offer one or the other, while others give you the option when you settle on your package.
Per person is what you had – it’s X amount of $ per person per hour. This is a good option if you expect your crowd to be moderate to heavy drinkers. It’s often presented as part of a package, so there might be one price for dinner and beer and wine, and then a higher price for dinner and beer and wine and premium hard alcohol. Sometimes there is a limit … it’s $X per person per hour until you hit a certain point of consumption. This is something that people should ask about very explicitly, IMHO. I understand why caterers do that, but I have always found it better to go with a caterer who gives a slightly higher rate, but with no limit at all (that’s probably because my guests are always drunken louts, so a no limit bar is a very high priority for me).
On consumption is when a running tally is kept of the alcohol consumed, generally each bottle of beer and bottle of wine/hard alcohol opened. The total is then added to your bill after the fact. Your contract outlines the prices per bottle for the beer, wine and hard alcohol you select, so you know what the rates are in advance. This is a good option if you are very, very certain that your crowd will be light drinkers. I always reminded wedding couples that people who are generally very light drinkers will often drink more than usual at a wedding reception.
In either scenario, the bar is an “open bar” as far as your guests are concerned.
–delphica, former catering manager
If it’s the norm, then it’s not tacky.
But, refreshments are being provided. Water and soda is available and free. Booze is available for a price.
What’s potluck got to do with it? Nobody is being asked to bring anything.
I’m frankly tired of arguing the point. We clearly disagree. Had you not mentioned how very tacky it is for guests to load up on free drinks, I wouldn’t have felt compelled to point out that it’s tacky of the host not to provide them.
Tacky is not determined by “the norm”. It’s become fairly “normal” (god help us all) for people to request cash gifts on the invitation, but it’s still tacky as hell.
You have a point if you don’t like a big party. I guess we all do, is all. We just figure that a wedding party should be fun and not put any kind of pressure on guests; and hotels are an extra expense that we’d rather not have the guests pay.
If we booked rooms at a hotel, we feel that we’d be obligated to pay for the rooms, and my folks and my friends’ folks prefer the kegger route. Cleanup is way cheaper than hotels! And probably not *everybody * who comes will get so blasted that they need to stay. It really is fun all in all. And the guests can escape whenever thay want; nobody’s insulted if they leave even before coffee and brekkie. Hey, they’re the guests; it’s totally their call.
Annie Xmas, also: I’ve seen wedding couples stay for the fun and/or leave. Mostly they do stay until the last guest has hit the road. They’ve planned the honeymoon accordingly: no immediate planes trains etc. to catch, so it’s all good!
Like I said, Creaky, I’m old. I probably would have loved the idea when I was 25. At 35, I’m all “Get Out My House!!!” 
I do see your point about the expense. I’d also be inclined to cover the rooms for my guests, and that’s not a viable option for everyone. Many people, for instance, won’t even cover alcohol. 
This is the reason for the receiving line that so many people seem to hate. It’s the guests’ chance to say something nice to the bride and groom, and it makes sure that any guest who wants to do so can.
Actually, I’ve lucked out that most of the weddings I’ve been to have been more or less nice and unobjectionable. Yeah, I’ve heard some incredibly silly personalized vows and done the macarena, but for the most part, the couples I’ve known have been nice, well meaning people with nice, well meaning families (perhaps that’s how they found each other), and while I might think “there’s no way I would ever choose that color,” I haven’t ever had to think “what horrible people.”
There doesn’t seem to be any right solution for the bar, so I would say do what you want, based on your own preferences and finances. (Due to our local liquor licensing laws, we had an open, free bar with a tip jar. We ended up taking a bunch of alcohol and money home. )
I’m just waiting for someone to suggest making the invitation a check-mailer and upon remittance, send the guests the conference call number of the reception to dial into. That way they don’t even have to drive or be fed.
(Make it a 900 number, and you can get even more money out of 'em.)
Or don’t have an open bar. It’s perfectly OK to serve wine with the dinner, but not have an open bar.
Wow, lotsa hostility about weddings here. I’ll make 2 comments, one based on my own wedding, and the other based on my nearly 10 years of experience working at a place that hosted weddings almost every weekend throughout most of the year.
My own wedding observation: The gap between wedding and reception is quite often a factor of what opens when. We were required to have our wedding ceremony either early in the afternoon or later on, in the evening (after 5pm) because of the mass schedule at church. The banquet hall had a “we open no earlier than this” timeframe…most do. Also, there is travel time between the two venues (not much in our case). So we had a gap of about 2 hours. 99% of our guests were local, and this is a pretty big metro area (plenty to do), so it wasn’t much of a problem that I heard about. I do know it’s tough on the guests, but it’s incredibly hard to avoid nowadays.
My working observation: If you’re staffed for it, table service is much more attractive than buffet style. If you have 200 people, half of them will be finished with their food before the other half has even gotten their food. With table service, we were able to get each course out in a about 5 or 10 minutes, and everyone can chatter away during the whole time (until the toast).
Going.
I dislike the fact that, no matter what you do at your wedding, someone’s going to bitch about it.
I don’t like outdoor weddings in the summertime in hot, humid climates. An outdoor wedding is lovely when it’s 70 degrees and there’s no chance of rain. It’s less lovely when it’s 90 degrees with 95% humidity (yes, I’m talking to YOU, Neville relatives who had outdoor weddings in the summer in Houston, TX and Fort Myers, FL).
I also hate the waiting between the wedding and the reception. To avoid that, we had pictures taken before the ceremony.
I hate hate hate with the fire of 10[sup]12[/sup] suns how all bridesmaid dresses and bridal gowns these days are strapless, have spaghetti straps, or have plunging cleavage-revealing necklines. Some of us don’t find our upper chests and shoulders to be particularly attractive (and don’t really have cleavage- the girls are big but far apart, so no real cleavage). And the ones that do have straps are often not well engineered for those of us above a certain size. I’m really glad that I didn’t have to go through a metal detector to get to my sister’s wedding- I had, by my estimate, five pounds of safety pins making sure my dress stayed up, closed, and concealing my bra. Bras are another rant here, too- these dresses are too revealing even to wear a standard strapless bra that works for someone as full-figured as me (ie, one that covers all skin between bra height and bellybutton, as anything less doesn’t support me). If I had had a dress accident, I would have been so utterly humiliated, I would have had no choice but to change my name and go live in a Buddhist nunnery in Siberia, ideally one where they spoke no English and had no internet access.
I hate bridal photographers (at my wedding and others) who make me take off my glasses for pictures. I can’t focus on the photographer without my glasses, and this is quite obvious in the pictures- I look stoned.
My sister just attended a wedding where guests wre told to give them a specific store card for a specific amount. You can’t get any better at crass than that.
I am a New Yorker, and I think that’s just fine. Serve wine with dinner, have a dry wedding, have bottles on the tables- anything but an open bar. It’s one thing to decide what food and drink you will serve at your wedding- just like any other party, that’s a decison the hosts make. It seems to me to be quite another thing to have the liquor available if the guests want to buy it. It’s like serving chicken , but having prime rib available if the guests choose to pay a few dollars.
Checked with a friend over the weekend. I got the crux of the story wrong. Turns out the garter belt-seeking groom was chuckling–in between long silences–from underneath the bride’s wedding dress. He was not making smooching sounds, although some of us thought he was. :dubious: .
Part of the rationale of the cash bar, as I understand it, is to permit alcohol consumption while still discouraging drinking to excess. It also helps to solve part of the problem of underage drinking, because if people are forced to pay a bartender, the bartender can ask for ID from those people who look like they’re under 21.
The alternative is not to serve alcohol at all. In fact, I’d rather not serve booze and just put the money into better food. But that’s just me.
Robin
Even more annoying, to me, is someone endlessly grousing about the cash bar. I don’t mean posts in a thread like this one, where grousing is the whole point, but people who attend a reception and then complain loudly about the cash bar are an embarrassment. I have attended two receptions where rude and bossy people went on and on about how awful it was to have a cash bar. Shaddap already. At least the food is free.
You can find gowns with actual sleeves (Sleeves! Who’d have thunk it??) online. I got a beautiful vintage-styled gown with full-length lace sleeves for my wedding that’s coming up in December. It takes searching, but it is possible. And in 10 years when everyone else’s very contemporary, trendy styles look hideous, mine will still look like a classic. ← Me being smug.
This I agree with. Two tackies don’t make a classy!