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The traditional view on this is very straight forward, a wedding should have a host bar. You would not invite someone into your home for dinner and then ask them to pay for a glass of your wine. However, the traditional view on financing the wedding has changed. With more and more couples financing their own weddings, alternatives to host bars have become more popular.
I believe there are some situations where a cash bar should still, if at all possible be avoided. For example, 90% of the guests attending my wedding will be flying out to Banff from Ontario. In my opinion, if it costs your guests $1500.00 to attend your wedding, you should offer them drinks. That was simply something that we needed to work into our budget.
For those of you who are holding your weddings relatively locally and are on the fence about the bar situation, some popular options have been opting for a corkage fee if available. This is when the venue will allow you to bring in your own alcohol and also take any left overs back at the end of the night to return it. The venue will typically provide you with all juices or pops needed for mix and a bartender. They will normally charge you a fee per person along with a bartender fee for their supplies and service. Not all venue’s will allow this, infact there are few that do so I would definitely suggest that you take them up on this offer if it is available to you.
Other couples have worked out to cover up to a certain ceiling amount and then have the tab cut off at that point. At which point, your guests would start paying for their own drinks should they desire to continue drinking. Some couples will offer a tooney bar where their guests pay $2.00/drink and the rest is covered by the host. Sometimes the hosts will cover the whole tab and the money raised by the tooney bar is donated. Some couples have even opted to have completely alcohol free weddings and offer mock-tails instead.
Whatever your decision, the general consensis is this, if you are having a cash bar it must be stated on the invitation. Your guests need to know that they should be bringing cash with them.
