Happy Memorial Day to you, Cathy,
... and thanks for permitting me to collect the fee for your question.
What follows is just a cut and paste of what I've already told you.
Once again, I truly hope your family and friends have a great
celebration on the occasion of your brother's marriage.
Here's what my son did when his and his bride's 300 dinner guests
arrived at the hotel for the reception line and cocktail hour. They
set a limit for the bar of $1000 for that hour. Believe it or not,
they fell under that limit. It helped that both families and most of
the guests knew there was a cutoff point. Those not so close learned
of the limit as the hour went on, just through casual chat with other
guests. This limit was arrived at through consultation with the
hotel's catering service who, through experience, said that to allow
for one drink per person was reasonable since there would be a lot of
pre-dinner activity, lots of family re-acquainting going on, and many
older people who would opt for coffee, tea or the non-alcoholic punch
which would be provided.
My daughter's evening wedding was much smaller -- about 80 people.
There was no dinner but prior to the startup of the music for the
dance while wedding photos were being taken, servers walked through
the crowd with trays of appetizers and red and white wines. There WAS
a bar from which people could purchase beer or liquor -- only the wine
was free, and it was delivered by the servers. As well, there was an
urn of coffee and free soft drinks for the kids and tee-totalers.
During the dance part of the evening, wine was still free, but
everything else was a cash bar. They paid a bar bill for the wine for
the whole evening (7 p.m. to 2 p.m.) of under $600. The wine cost them
about $25 a bottle.
I think that if the guests were important enough to the bride and
groom to be invited and the guests felt close enough to them to
accept, then they should understand the situation and be perfectly
happy to accept it. (As an aside though, I think that if you invite
people to anything, you should consider that all, not some, will come
when you are setting a budget for the affair.)
That being said, perhaps the bride and groom could come up with at
least another $300-$400. My three kids all received a great deal of
cash via the Wishing Well (do you do that in Arizona?), so a short
term loan from parents or a doting aunt might be in order and could be
repaid from monetary wedding gifts.
Your brother could maybe make a behind-the-scenes arrangement with the
caterers to 'delay' the start of the cocktail hour by 15 minutes or
so, thus reducing the amount of time people have to access the free
bar which would end as the seating for dinner commences. (In my son's
case, the door to the room in which the bar was located was closed to
traffic.) This would reduce possible charges to the tab by 25%. (Make
sure the receiving line moves slowly and is situated far from the bar
area, to slow things down even further.)
A check into Arizona liquor regulations revealed to me that nobody can
be served more than two alcoholic drinks for personal consumption at
one time. By ensuring that bartenders respect that regulation, thus
requiring individuals to stand in line to get their own drinks, it
could prevent people from taking advantage of an open bar by stocking
up on freebies at the expense of everyone else.
Best regards,
revbrenda1st |
