Bottom's Up!

Now that we've semi-decided on a caterer for our food, the subject of beverages has reared itself. Just to recap, our venue is a county park, and allows us to bring in whatever food/beverages/alcohol we like, with the exception of liquor (which we didn't plan on having anyway). The caterer we are (probably) using offers non-alcoholic beverage service at $.50 per person for each type of beverage we choose. That would include tea, lemonade, water (bottles), or fruit punch. They also offer cans of pop for $1.25 per person.

After talking with Mom S, Step-Mom S, and Mr. S this weekend, I've come up with some ideas for the whole beverage situation, so I'm going to get mathema-technical on you for a few and share my research. I've decided that providing water and a selection of pop for our guests would be sufficient since we're also having beer and wine (I'll leave that discussion for another post...)

If we do beverages ourselves...

We can provide pop in cans for much less than the caterer. A good deal on a 12-pack of pop in this area is about $3.70 including deposit of $.10 per can. If we were to provide a variety of pop, and figure about 2 cans per guest (at 150 guests), we would need 25 12-packs, totaling $92.50 with deposit. That equals out to $.62 per person.

I figured we could do without the tea, lemonade, punch, etc. But I do want to provide water for non-pop drinkers. If we went with bottled water, which I'm pretty against due to the negative impact it has on the environment, we would need 300 bottles, or 13 24-packs. I can find those on sale for about $2.50. Since there's no deposit on these, we would be paying $32.50 for water.

The other option I came up with for water would be to simply use tap water, and buy pitchers from the dollar store to put on the tables. But I will have 18 guest tables with 8 guests per table, and would probably want at least 2 pitchers per table. That would mean 36 pitchers, and $38.16 with tax for just the pitchers. I can make my own ice, and water is free, but it still looks like it would be cheaper to go with the darn bottles! Plus, someone would have to be watching the pitchers like a hawk in case they need to be refilled. Who wants to do that?!

So our grande totale for DIY beverages: $125

While some might think having pop cans and bottles of water might qualify as "tacky", I personally could care less if I were a guest at a wedding that had them. It's at a park, nothing fancy, and I really care more about people having fun and enjoying the day than worrying about what they will think of our beverage selection :)

If we have our caterer provide beverages... 

We could go with the same selections as in the above scenarios (pop and water). The water would be $.50 per person, totaling $75. The pop would be $1.25 per person, totaling $187.50.

Grande totale for catered bev's: $262.50

So what do you think, pay more for someone else to have the headache of providing all these drinks, or save the $137 and do it ourselves? Am I overestimating, underestimating, perf-estimating (perfect estimating)? Anyone out there have an experience to share? Am I just plain bat sh*t crazy? ;)

Happy planning!
Miss Spaghetti