How Many Drinks for 100 Wedding Guests?
2026-08-05 · 4 min read
Planning the bar is one of the easiest parts of a wedding to get wrong. Order too little and guests wait in line; order too much and you are returning cases at midnight. For 100 guests, the math is straightforward: start with one drink per guest per hour, add a 15% buffer, and split the total across beer, wine, champagne, and liquor.
The 100-Guest Baseline
For a 100-person reception lasting five hours, the baseline is 100 x 5 x 1 = 500 drinks. With a 15% buffer, that becomes about 575 drinks. Using the standard wedding split, plan for roughly 276 beers, 155 glasses of wine, 86 liquor drinks, and 58 champagne flutes.
In bottles and cases, that looks like 12 cases of beer, 31 bottles of wine, 6 bottles of liquor, and 10 bottles of champagne. These numbers assume an Average drinking style; Light or Heavy crowds move the total down or up by about 25-50%.
Adjust for Duration and Style
A four-hour reception lowers every category, while a six-hour evening pushes the total higher. If most guests drink wine with dinner and beer while dancing, keep the split close to 48% beer, 27% wine, and 15% liquor.
If you plan signature cocktails, add roughly 1.5 drinks per cocktail type per guest on top of the liquor count.
Don't Forget Non-Alcoholic Drinks
Even at a wedding, some guests will not drink. Plan about 1.5 soft drinks per non-drinker per hour and 0.5 liters of water per guest per hour.
Our wedding drink calculator handles all of these categories at once, so you can test different guest counts, durations, and drinking styles before you order.