Planning for wine at your wedding? Here's Help!

I hope you find this helpful as we find your wedding wines. Our wine specialists can help you with your wedding, finding the perfect wines and helping you stay in budget!

1) Venue: The first thing to check is whether or not the venue will even allow you to bring in your own wine. Some venues require that you select wines off their pre-existing list. Other venues will allow you to bring in your own wine but will most likely charge a corkage fee per bottle. Watch out for this corkage fee! It can get pretty high (~$20/bottle in bigger cities). You will have to factor this corkage fee into your budget.

Assuming your venue allows you to bring in wine (and the corkage fee is doable with your budget), you’ll want to pick a sparkling wine, a white and a red. Let’s start with the sparkling…

2) Champagne/Sparkling: Sparkling wine (Champagne, Cava, Prosecco, etc.) is mainly used for toasting the happy couple. I usually recommend 2 glasses of sparkling wine per guest. There are 6 full glasses of sparkling wine in a standard 750ml bottle. You get more glasses per bottle out of sparkling wine because of the bubbles and the shape of the champagne flute. So here is an example calculation:

100 guests x 2 glasses each = 200 glasses
200 glasses / 6 glasses per bottle = ~34 bottles
12 bottles = 1 case –> so if you are buying by the case for a discount, I’d recommend 3 cases of sparkling wine (36 bottles)

There are all sorts of tips for saving money on champagne costs, which I’ll tell you about in another post!

3) White and Red Wine: Will your wedding be outside in the summer? Will it be during the day? People tend to drink more white wine in these situations. Or will your wedding be inside at night? Will you be serving steak at dinner? If so, more red wine will be downed. For generalization, let’s assume that people will consume the same amount of white and red wine, which is often a safe bet. I’m also assuming you’ll be offering beer and liquor too. Consider your unique wedding situation to alter the counts below if necessary.

Assume 1 glass of wine per hour per guest. Each 750ml bottle has ~5 glasses
So for 100 guests and a 4 hour wedding reception, the calculation would be:

100 guests x 4 hours x 1 glass/hour = 400 glasses
400 glasses / 5 glasses per bottle = 80 bottles of wine
80/2 = 40 bottles of white and 40 bottles of red

CHEERS!!

This was borrowed from Vino Woman.