How to minimize bar spend

If you're going to be having alcohol at your South Asian wedding, we have a few tips to share to help you reduce your spend at the bar and to help manage the logistics of the bar.

Open Bar vs. Consumption-Based Bar

Usually, you will have to pick between an open bar package and a consumption-based bar package. In an open bar, you're charged a per-person, per-hour rate; in a consumption-bar, alternatively, you're charged for the total number of drinks that are poured.

Open bars are great if you're having a huge wedding and you want to know exactly how much you're going to be spending on alcohol, but a consumption-based bar should be considered if your guest list is a little smaller, or if not everybody drinks, and so you'd rather pay for what's actually poured.

Tip #1: Close the bar during Sangeet performances & Reception speeches.

Open your bar for an hour at the beginning of the Sangeet event, and then when the performances start, close the bar. This way, people are engaged with the performances, and you can take a one-hour break from the bar expenses. Then, you can re-open the bar when the performances are finished and dinner is served. You can follow the same structure for your reception / cocktail hour: open the bar at the beginning, close it during the speeches, first dance, and cake-cutting, and then re-open it again afterward!

Tip #2: Have your wedding coordinator track the spend throughout the night.

Tell your wedding coordinator how much you're willing to spend on the bar beforehand, and then have them let you or a designated family member know once you've hit certain increments, like 25% and 50% of that spend. If you hit these increments really early on in the night, you can make the call to either increase the budget or close the bar a little early!

Tip #3: Host the bar away from the main event to reduce crowd.

A lot of people will tend to crowd around the bar area, so try hosting it in either the pre-function space, or somewhere a little bit away from where all of your guests will be sitting and where your performances will be taking place. This will help eliminate the crowd, and people who want to step away from the music can step outside and hang around near the bar!

@arushihariani Reply to @quantamhamster how to manage your bar at your wedding! #desitiktok #shaadi #weddingplanning #browngirl #todayilearned ♬ Stylish Jazz HipHop - Future Oriented Triad