Calculating for the Happiest Hours

Over the last few weeks I’ve been thinking about what beverages we will be serving and how much we’ll need. I looked over our list of guests and came up with a breakdown of who would drink what.

Of 121 guests:

21 won’t drink – most are underage but a few don’t drink at all
25 are beer drinkers
20 would definitely do one of our signature drinks
15 would do either our signature drinks or have wine
50 would do wine but 15 of them would only have one glass.

I played with several online beverage calculators and came up with the following beverage needs:

2 cases of both red and white
3-4 bottles of Pimm's
3-4 bottles of Gin
1.5 cases of bubbly
1 keg of beer
Assorted 2 liter bottles of soft drinks

We have a budget of about $720. Our red wine selection is only $6 a bottle. When we had it, we were surprised it wasn’t a $8 or $9 wine. We’re buying the gin at the Coast Guard station and are hoping they carry Pimms too. If not, we can buy it at the state liquor store or have some of our European visitors bring it in for us.

Over the weekend, we visited a wine shop our rehearsal dinner caterer suggested. They recommended the $6 Cabernet Sauvignon we really like.

The visit was OK but a little shocking. The person who helped us obviously knew his wine; he suggested some good wines we could try in the $8 range. The shocking part? The amount of wine he thought we needed.

I shared with him the breakdown I came up with and he suggested a whopping 7 cases of wine. I think my jaw literally dropped. I asked him how he came up with the math and here’s his breakdown despite what I shared about our guests.

Of 100 people:

75 people would drink 1 glass of wine
50 people would drink 2 glasses of wine
25 people would drink 3 glasses of wine
12 people would drink 4 glasses of wine

Um, is it me or does that add up to 162 guests?

We left the recommended wine shop scratching our heads but 4 bottles of wine/bubbly richer.

After some conversation in the car, we decided it may be best to visit some other local wine shops.

The second place we went to confirmed that we weren’t crazy. We shared our guest breakdown and the salesperson said 1.5 – 2 cases of red and white for a total of 3-4 cases. Phew! That was much better! We also walked out of there with 3 more bottles of goodness.

On the way home, we decided to stop by one more shop. We presented our numbers and thankfully they reconfirmed what we heard at shop two more or less. They said 1 case of red and 2 cases of white. Happy with the news, we also walked out of there with 3 more bottles.

11 bottles of wine later, we’re pretty confident that we’ll only need 3-4 cases. We may go with 4 since we were offered some amazing deals from each shop. We’ve yet to decide what to serve – that comes Friday. We’re having friends over to taste the whites and the 3 kinds of bubbly.

How did you figure out how much liquid goodness to buy? Did you rely on an online beverage calculator, a local wine shop or did you just pull it out of thin air?