Wedding drink planning is three separate problems wearing one budget: the toast (one precise round for everyone at once), dinner wine (steady table service), and the open bar (a normal party appended to a formal event). Treat them separately and the numbers get easy; blur them together and you either triple-buy or run dry during the speeches.
The three services
1. Toast
Guests ÷ 6 bottles of sparkling, plus one spare per 30 guests. Pour no earlier than 10 minutes before the speeches. Full toast math in the prosecco guide.
2. Dinner wine
Half a bottle per adult across a 2-hour dinner — that's the planning figure used by nearly every venue. Split 55/45 toward whichever colour suits the menu; buy the buffer, because tables that want white when you're left with red will drink neither.
3. Open bar
The standard party formula from the alcohol guide — 2 drinks first hour, 1 per hour after — applied to the hours after dinner, minus the drinks already served. Dinner counts as roughly 2 of each guest's drinks.
Shopping lists for three wedding sizes
Assumptions: 80% of guests drink, 5-hour reception (1h cocktails, 2h dinner, 2h dancing), beer/wine/spirits bar.
50 guests (40 drinking)
- Toast: 9 bottles sparkling (8 + 1 spare)
- Dinner: 20 bottles wine (11 white / 9 red)
- Bar (≈120 further drinks): 2 cases + 2 beers, 8 bottles wine, 2 bottles spirits + 4 L mixers
- Ice: ≈ 100 lb / 45 kg
100 guests (80 drinking)
- Toast: 18 bottles sparkling
- Dinner: 40 bottles wine (22 white / 18 red)
- Bar (≈240 drinks): 4 cases beer, 15 bottles wine, 5 bottles spirits + 9 L mixers
- Ice: ≈ 200 lb / 90 kg
150 guests (120 drinking)
- Toast: 27 bottles sparkling
- Dinner: 60 bottles wine (33 white / 27 red)
- Bar (≈360 drinks): 6 cases beer, 22 bottles wine, 7 bottles spirits + 13 L mixers
- Ice: ≈ 300 lb / 135 kg — at this scale, order block ice delivery; bagged ice runs are how groomsmen disappear
The decisions that move the budget most
- Signature cocktails instead of a full spirits bar. Two batched options (see the batch guide) cut the spirits bill ~40% and serve three times faster. One should be spritz-shaped in summer — the calculator scales it.
- Sale-or-return. Most wine merchants offer it on unopened bottles for weddings. This converts every "should we buy extra?" into yes.
- Corkage vs BYO. If the venue charges corkage above ~$15/bottle, their house wine is usually the cheaper real cost. Do this one piece of arithmetic before anything else.
- The 30% who aren't drinking still need something good in hand for the toast and the night — sparkling grape juice for flutes, and proper non-alcoholic options per the quantities here.
For your own numbers, run the wine calculator for dinner and toast, then the party drink calculator for the dancing hours.