What a Wedding Bar Really Costs in Colorado

Most couples come to the bar question late, after the venue and the photographer, with whatever is left in the budget and no real sense of what it should cost.

The honest answer is that a wedding bar has three separate costs, and most of the confusion comes from people quoting you one of them while you are thinking about another.

Here is how the three break apart, so you can plan the bar without guessing.

One: the alcohol

This one is yours.

We are a dry hire bar, so you buy the alcohol and we bring everything else. You pay retail rather than event markup, you keep whatever is unopened, and the bottles are the ones you chose.

What it costs depends almost entirely on the menu, not on the guest count alone. Beer and wine for a hundred guests is a very different shopping trip from an open bar with three spirits. We help with that part: alcohol planning is included, and once the menu is set we build the shopping list with quantities and suggestions.

Two: the bar and the service

This is what you hire us for. The bar itself, the bartenders, the tools, the ice, the setup and the breakdown.

It scales with the size and length of your event rather than with how expensive your whiskey is. Bookings start with three hours of service, and every rental includes General and Liquor Liability Insurance — worth checking against any quote you compare, because insurance is often the line that is quietly missing.

Which bar you choose is part of this too. A restored seventeen-foot vintage horse trailer is a different proposition from a four-foot bar tucked into the corner of a tent, and both are right for some weddings.

Three: the extras that are easy to forget

Glassware is the one that catches people out. Plastic tumblers come with our packages, and glassware can be rented at an additional charge. It is not a large cost, but it is a real one, and it changes the look of every photograph taken at the bar.

The others worth planning for: whether you want a second bar station so there is never a queue, and whether your venue has its own requirements about what the bar can and cannot do.

What actually drives the number

Guest count matters less than people assume. What drives the cost is how long the bar is open, how many bartenders the pace of your guests needs, and how complicated the menu is.

A two-cocktail menu with beer and wine pours quickly and keeps the line short. A long list of made-to-order drinks needs more hands behind the bar, and that is where a budget moves.

If you want to spend less, shorten the menu before you shorten the hours. Guests notice a closed bar. They do not notice the cocktail that was never on the list.

Where to spend and where not to

Spend on fresh ingredients. Our cocktails and mocktails are built on fresh-pressed citrus juice and housemade syrups, and it is the clearest difference between a drink people finish and a drink people put down half full.

Spend on a bar that looks like your wedding. It is in the background of a surprising number of photographs.

Do not spend on breadth. Two signature cocktails that belong to you and your partner will be remembered. Eight options will not.

And do not treat the zero-proof drinks as the cheap corner. Some of your favourite people will be drinking them all night, and they should get the same glass, the same garnish and the same care.

Planning yours

If you are working out the bar for a Colorado wedding, start with three numbers: your guest count, how many hours you want the bar open, and roughly what you want people drinking. With those, the rest of the plan falls into place quickly.

Send us your date through the inquiry form on our site and we will start with the menu, then build the shopping list from there.