How many drinks to buy for a party
Estimating drink quantities for a specific headcount like 75 guests leaves hosts guessing whether their total alcohol supply will run out. Without knowing how many individual drink orders to plan for each option, organizers risk buying too much or running dry mid-event.
What the numbers show
Counted from the threads quoted below. How we count
- People have been saying this in most months since September 2026.
What people tried
Every workaround mentioned in the threads below. We haven’t tested any of them — and nobody here is claiming they worked.
Found another way around this?
Share your steps and trade-offs so fellow engineers don't have to reinvent the wheel. No account required.
- 1Polling guests ahead of timeDid this help you?
- 2Offering all options as mocktails to cover non-drinkersDid this help you?
- 3Providing a variety of liquor types to appeal to different preferencesDid this help you?
- 4Following general rules of thumb like one drink per person per hourDid this help you?
- 5Buying extra cases of canned drinks or batching margaritasDid this help you?
- 6Checking ratios of wine to beer based on crowd preferencesDid this help you?
- 7relying on general industry rules of thumb for drinks per hourDid this help you?
- 8guessing based on guest demographics and regional preferencesDid this help you?
- 9Using online drink calculators such as the Evite drink calculatorDid this help you?
- 10Buying a standard 50/50 split of white and red wineDid this help you?
- 11Shopping at Costco for bulk purchasesDid this help you?
- 12Using online calculators to estimate total cases of wine and beerDid this help you?
- 13Overbuying alcohol and returning the unopened bottles to the store after the wedding.Did this help you?
- 14Using online alcohol calculators and polling guests to guess consumption.Did this help you?
- 15Asking for price comparisons from other couples on forums to verify if a vendor quote is realistic.Did this help you?
In their words
Unedited, grouped by where they were said, most upvoted first within each place, each linked to the thread it came from.
“For 75 guests, about 69 of which will be drinking, is this enough alcohol?”source ↗
“I'd hate to hire him and then find that we have to spend way more on the alcohol.”source ↗
“We need your help so we can figure out how many orders of each drink we should plan for!!”source ↗
“how can you tell what people would gravitate towards instead if they normally would have gone for spirits?”source ↗
“We're trying to decide how to break things down between our drink options and feeling lost, would welcome your advice!”source ↗
“need help figuring out what percentage should be wine vs beer vs cider vs punch.”source ↗
“I’m not sure how much white vs red wine to get (I have it set to buy 14 bottles of each..?). Or if these selections are good for price etc.”source ↗
“Any websites you recommend for estimating how much to buy? I feel like I’m getting conflicting answers.”source ↗
“I'm feeling a little stuck! I've used online calculators to help establish how many cases of wine/beer to buy for 160 heavy drinkers over 5 hours; however, I'm not sure how to break this down into more specific ratios?”source ↗
“Correct, we'd supply the alcohol and that's what he said I should budget. I think it's insanely low but wanted some reassurance”source ↗
“I bought $2k in alcohol for the same number of people. We ended up returning half, but we had a morning wedding so people drank less in general.”source ↗
Where this came up
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