How Much Liquor for a Wedding of 100 Guests? A Realistic Bar Plan
2026-08-29 · 5 min read
Short answer: for 100 guests, a five-hour wedding, and an average-drinking crowd, plan on about 6 bottles of 750ml liquor. That assumes no signature cocktails. Add two signature drinks and the number jumps a lot, so it pays to think through the math before you order.
The Short Answer: 6 Bottles
Six bottles sounds low to some people and high to others. It works out to about 86 mixed drinks, which is what a 100-guest, five-hour reception produces for liquor at an average pace. One 750ml bottle pours roughly 17 standard shots, so 86 drinks divided by 17 gets you to about 5.1 bottles. You round up to 6 and move on.
If your crowd drinks heavy, expect closer to 8 bottles. If the reception runs six hours instead of five, add one more. If you are planning signature cocktails, stop reading and go straight to the cocktail section below, because that changes everything.
Where That Number Comes From
Our wedding alcohol calculator starts with the same formula most planners use: guests x hours x drinks per person per hour x 1.15. For 100 guests and 5 hours that is 100 x 5 x 1 x 1.15, or about 575 drinks. The calculator gives beer 48%, wine 27%, and liquor 15% of that total, with champagne handled separately for the toast.
Liquor gets about 86 of those 575 drinks. Since a 750ml bottle holds roughly 17 shots, 86 drinks means 6 bottles. Mixers follow the liquor count at about a quarter liter per drink, so you are looking at around 22 liters of juice, soda, and tonic.
When the Number Goes Up
Heavy drinkers change the pace from 1 drink per hour to 1.5. That pushes the total to about 863 drinks and the liquor count to roughly 8 bottles for 100 guests. A longer reception, a younger crowd, or a dance-heavy evening can nudge it higher still.
Signature cocktails are the big one. Our calculator adds 1.5 drinks per cocktail type per guest on top of the base liquor count. Two signature cocktails for 100 guests means 300 extra drinks, which works out to around 23 bottles of liquor and 97 liters of mixers. That is a lot of bottles. Most weddings under 150 guests do fine with one signature cocktail, and picking two drinks that share a base spirit keeps the shopping list sane.
Champagne and Mixers Are Separate
Champagne does not come out of the liquor total. If you include a toast, the calculator adds champagne at 10% of the drink count and rebalances the other categories proportionally, so your liquor number stays around 6 bottles. For 100 guests, expect about 10 bottles of champagne.
Mixers are tied to liquor drinks: about 0.25 liters per drink. With no signature cocktails that is 22 liters. With cocktails it is 97 liters. Water and soft drinks are separate too, and worth including for the guests who are not drinking.
Run It Through the Calculator
The numbers above assume Average, 5 hours, and no signature cocktails. Change any one of those and the liquor count moves. Use our wedding drink calculator, switch the style, turn the cocktail toggle on and off, and you will see exactly why a bar plan is a plan and not a guess.
Order from the numbers, keep receipts, and buy from a store with a good return policy. Weddings overestimate more often than they run dry, but with six bottles of liquor as your baseline, you are starting from a place that actually fits 100 guests.