Alcohol and Bar Options: Open Bar vs. Cash Bar vs. Drinks Package

Alcohol is one of the more elastic parts of a wedding budget - it can be a small controlled cost or a genuinely significant one, largely depending on which of the main approaches you choose and how clearly you communicate it to guests.

A fully open bar (all drinks covered by the couple, all day and evening) is the most generous option and the one most likely to blow past budget if it isn't capped in some way, since consumption at a genuinely open bar is difficult to predict in advance. If you want this approach without an unpredictable final bill, ask your venue or caterer about a capped tab (a fixed total spend, after which it switches to a different arrangement) rather than a truly unlimited one.

A cash bar (guests buy their own drinks) is more common at UK weddings than people sometimes admit out loud, and it isn't the etiquette breach some older wedding advice suggests - what matters is communicating it clearly and in advance, ideally on your wedding website rather than leaving guests to discover it at the bar. A cash bar that's sprung on guests unexpectedly reads badly; one that's clearly flagged beforehand generally doesn't.

A drinks package or table service model - a set wine and toast allowance during the meal, with drinks paid for separately afterwards, or a fixed number of drinks tokens per guest - is a genuinely popular middle ground in the UK, because it caps your cost precisely while still covering the meal and toasts, which is the part of the day guests expect to be hosted for. This is probably the most common approach among UK weddings that aren't running a fully open bar all day.

A common hybrid worth considering: open bar (or a drinks package) for the wedding breakfast and speeches, switching to a cash bar for the evening reception once the more heavily-attended, all-day-guest portion of the day is over. This is a genuinely practical way to control cost without feeling ungenerous, since it hosts guests fully for the part of the day that's most clearly "yours" while leaving the later, more optional evening portion more flexible.

What I'd actually do: whichever approach you choose, communicate it clearly and early rather than leaving guests to guess - see invitation wording and etiquette for how to phrase it - and confirm with your venue exactly what's included in any package versus billed separately, since "drinks reception included" means different things at different venues.

See also drinks and toasts for the toast side of this, and evening reception food for how drinks and evening catering tend to be planned together.