Alcohol and Soft Drinks Calculator for a Wedding or Party in the UK in 2023
How many alcoholic and non-alcoholic drinks will you need for your party or wedding?
Enter the number of guests attending your party or wedding below. This Alcohol Calculator instantly calculates how much soft drinks, beer, wine, cocktails and spirits you need and what the approximate costs will be.
.Alcohol Calculator for a Party or a Wedding with Cost Estimator for UK in 2023
How many adults?
How many children?
What is the duration of your party in hours?
USE THE PRICE SETTINGS AND ADVANCED SETTINGS TO CUSTOMIZE TO YOUR PERSONAL SITUATION.
Disclaimer: please use at your own risk. See site terms of use
What does the number of alcohol and soft drinks for a party or wedding depend on?
1 - The number of guests
The first step to take when calculating the drinks needed is to decide on your guest count. You also need to make a distinction between the number of adults and children. Of course, the children do not count when calculating the alcoholic beverages. A higher children count will lower your budget significantly as alcoholic beverages are more expensive than softdrinks and vice versa.
2 - The duration of the party
The next step is to estimate the length of time that primarily drinks are served (for example, reception, cocktail hour or party). If you use this calculator, for example, for calculating drinks served at the dinner, you have to go to the Advanced Settings and change both the ratio between the different beverages and the drinking rate per hour and estimate it for your specific situation..
3 - Double drinks in the first hour
Guests tend to drink more for the first hour. A rule of thumb is that a guest will drink two beverages in the first hour, and one beverage every hour afterward. Therefore, the default setting in the Advanced Settings to double the drinks in the first hour is set to YES. However, if your situation is different, you can change this setting to NO.
You can also leave this setting on YES if you want some extra margin when calculating the beverages needed.
4 - What do the guests drink?
In the Advanced Settings of this Party Drinks Calculator, you can change the ratio of the different drinks you expect your guests to consume. The default setting is based on drinking demographics data 2020 on alcohol consumption in the UK. However, your specific situation may vary depending on your guests' drinking habits..
If you have some insight in the drinking habits of your guests, use the Advanced Settings to improve the accuracy of the calculation. For example, if your guests tend to drink more wine and less beer than the average, you should change the default settings by decreasing the percentage of beer consumption and increasing the percentage of wine consumption.
5 - How much do the guests drink?
The same is true for the rate per hour setting. The default setting is for average party drinkers the UK and is set to 2 drinks in the first hour and 1 drink per hour thereafter. Your specific situation may be different. For example, if you know that your guests are heavy drinkers, you will need to increase the rate setting in the Advanced Settings. And vice versa, decrease the setting if your guests consist mainly of light drinkers.
What do the costs for alcohol and soft drinks at a party or wedding depend on?
1 - Where do you buy the drinks?
The cheapest way to buy the beverages is in a shop yourself. For example, if you host the party all by your self.
However, more common for larger parties is to hire a caterer and have them serve the beverages to your guest. As a rule, they have a selling price for the beverages that is approximately four times the purchase price they pay. If your party is in a bar or a restaurant, the prices are approximately five times the purchase price.
In the Prices Settings of the Party Drinks Calculator allows you to set different prices for a store, catering and bar/restaurant. You can easily compare prices by clicking on one of these three buttons in the Budget Needed block as well in the Price Settings block.
2 - The prices of the different drinks
Also, in the Price Settings block, you can set the price of the different drinks. For example, the actual liquor or wine prices in your location are likely to deviate from the average prices in default settings. If you know the exact prices of your caterer or bar / restaurant, you can use them in the Price Settings to improve the accuracy of the budget calculation.
3 - Minimum order amount
Sometimes there is a minimum order amount for the drinks. This is especially common in catering and at party or wedding venues. The caterer only delivers if, for example, you have a minimum of 50 guests and/or your minimum spending amount is $ 1,500, for example.
This in itself is understandable from their point of view. They have to incur costs such as personnel, equipment and transport and that can only work for them if at your party their turnover can exceed a certain minimum amount.
What is the average cost for drinks at parties in the UK for 2023?
We have composed a table with average prices of popular settings.
Guest | Time | Store | Catering | Bar |
50 | 2h | £175 - £275 | £600 - £700 | £900 - £1,000 |
50 | 4h | £275 - £375 | £1,050 - £1,150 | £1,500 - £1,650 |
100 | 4h | £600 - £700 | £2,150 - £2,300 | £3,000 - £3,250 |
150 | 4h | £925 - £1,050 | £3,250 - £3,500 | £4,500 - £4,850 |
250 | 4h | £1,550 - £1,700 | £5,450 - £5,800 | £7,600 - £7,900 |
350 | 4h | £2,200 - £2,400 | £7,700 - £8,000 | £10,800 - £11,200 |
| 500 | 4h | £3,100 - £3.400 | £11,000 - £11,500 | £15,400 - £16,000 |
The aim of this table is to give you an indication of common prices. However, the exact number can vary quite a bit depending on a number of factors, such as your location, low/high season and package deals.
How to download and open the results in Excel or Google Sheets?
After you have made your own drink calculation using the Party Drinks Calculator on this page, you can download a spreadsheet with your drinks and budget needed. After you press the DOWNLOAD button, two files will be downloaded, both in a so-called "CSV" format.
1 - In the first file whose name ends with '_comma', the cells in the spreadsheet are separated by commas.
2 - In the second file whose name ends with '_semicolon', the cells in the spreadsheet are separated by semicolons.
You can import the downloaded spreadsheet in both Excel and Google Sheets. Excel in US and Google Sheets can usually automatically open CSV files with a comma separation while Excel in Europe usually needs a CSV file with a semicolon separation.
Click on this Youtube link for a demo how to import a CSV file in EXCEL.
For a demo how to import in GOOGLE SHEETS, click on this Youtube link.
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