🥂 Wedding Alcohol & Drinks Calculator
Estimate how much alcohol you'll need for your wedding reception, based on guest count, event length, and your wine/beer/liquor mix.
The four numbers doing the work
Every result traces back to one consumption rate and three bottle yields, all fixed in the page:
total drinks = drinking guests × hours × 1 drink per guest per hour
wine bottles = wine drinks / 5 (5 oz pours from a 750 ml bottle)
beer servings = beer drinks / 1 (one can or bottle each)
liquor bottles = liquor drinks / 16.9 (1.5 oz shots from a 750 ml bottle)The liquor share is not entered - it is whatever wine and beer leave, so the defaults of 40% and 40% mean 20% spirits. A hundred guests over five hours comes to 500 drinks: 200 wine, so 40 bottles; 200 beers, eight cases of 24 and change; and 100 spirit drinks, 5.92 bottles rounded up to 6. Each category is rounded up on its own, so small shares always cost a whole bottle.
Where the assumptions bend
- One drink an hour is an average, not a curve. Cocktail hour runs nearer two, then the rate falls through dinner - half the wine can be open in the first ninety minutes.
- "Guests who drink" means exactly that. Children, drivers and non-drinkers are yours to subtract first; on a typical list that is 15-25% of the head count.
- A 5 oz pour is optimistic. Self-serve and volunteer bartenders pour closer to 6 oz, which gives four glasses a bottle and puts wine 20% over this estimate.
Frequently asked questions
How much alcohol do I need for 100 wedding guests?
For a five-hour reception at a 40/40/20 split: about 40 bottles of wine, 200 beers and 6 bottles of spirits, from a total of 500 drinks. Buy a little over, since unopened bottles are often returnable.
How many glasses of wine are in a bottle?
Five at the standard 5 oz pour, which is what this page assumes. A 750 ml bottle is 25.4 oz, so a heavier 6 oz pour yields four.
Do I count kids and non-drinkers in the guest number?
No. The first field is drinking guests only. Entering the full invite list inflates every bottle count by whatever share of the room is not drinking.