Cheers!

Weddings and booze go together like peanut butter and jelly, or you and your finance. 

How to provide said booze can be quite the challenge. In the past it seemed that everyone had an open bar, but I've only been to one wedding in the last 5 years that treated guests to an open bar. Etiquette dictates that providing an open bar is an essential part of being a good host. You wouldn't have guests pay for their food or drinks at a dinner party, so why would you at a wedding?

The problem is that beyond being a good host, couples need to consider the safety and comfort of their guests and the overall tone of the event. In BC, we have very strict drinking and driving laws and our venue is a long taxi ride from the city. This makes me reluctant to have an open bar as it can be a delicate balance between guests enjoying themselves and guests becoming a nuisance or danger to others.

Our venue has flexible alcohol service and we're able to go with an open bar, a cash bar or almost anything in between. We plan to offer complementary non-alcoholic beverages all evening and wine with dinner so we need to decide about before and after dinner service. Standard drinks at our venue are only $5.25 so it feels cheap to have a toonie or loonie bar and expect guests to subsidize an already low cost to us. This option also doesn't solve the over-indulgence issue since getting 10 or 20 drinks for $20 has been very appealing to me when I was a wedding guest!

Another possibility is to set limits on the free-flowing alcohol. This can be done by offering a smaller selection of alcohol (like just beer and wine or a signature cocktail), offering an open bar only during the cocktail hour, or using drink tickets to provide guests with 1 or 2 complementary beverages.

I feel it's important that guests are able to enjoy a complementary drink or two when they first arrive at the venue as a welcoming gesture. We could do this with either drink tickets or by offering an open bar before dinner service begins. The majority of our guests aren't big drinkers so I think providing a cocktail or two before dinner and a glass or two of wine with dinner is good hospitality.