How Much Wine Do I Need for my Wedding? An Easy Way to Work it Out

One of the questions we always get asked is, "How much wine do I need for my wedding?" and here, we're delighted to share the answer. Of course, we can't tell you exactly how many bottles of wine you'll need for your seated meal (that depends on many factors, including how many guests you're having and how generous you'd like to be!), so, instead, we've come up with an easy formula to help you work out how much wine you'll need.

Image by ID Photography via One Fab Day

How Much Wine Do I Need for my Wedding? A Simple Formula

We like to keep things simple here at One Fab Day, so we've created a formula that's really easy to use, regardless of how confident you are in your maths skills!

You need two pieces of information for the formula:

• Number of Guests: This is the total number of people who will be dining at the meal, including you and your partner. There's no need to adjust for children, non-drinkers, spirit drinkers, beer drinkers, heavy drinkers, etc.
• Wine Allocation Per Guest: This number represents how many bottles of wine you'd like each guest to have. The most common answer here is 1/2 (or .5, depending on your calculator) bottle per person, but this really depends on how generous you'd like to be, and the drinking culture in your social circle. If your guests are enthusiastic wine drinkers, and you'd like to make sure everyone gets enough wine, with a bit extra to go around, we'd recommend 2/3 (or .66) bottle per person. If it's not really an alcohol-drinking crowd, and you know that there will be lots of non-drinkers in attendance, 1/3 (.33) might be more suitable.

The Formula:

(Number of Guests) x (Wine Allocation Per Guest) = (# of Bottles of Wine Required)

Example 1:

There will be 150 people seated for dinner at the wedding reception. There are lots of wine lovers in the crowd, and you'd like to be quite generous.

150 x 2/3 = 100 bottles

Example 2: 

There will be 275 people seated for dinner at the wedding reception. It's a mixed crowd, and you'd like to provide just enough wine for the meal.

275 x .5 = 137.5 bottles, rounded up to 138 bottles

One last word of advice: If you're unsure about your results, we recommend upping them by 10% (to do this, multiply the number by 110% or 1.1). In our experience, most couples will worry more about short-changing their guests than overspending on their wedding. The extra money will be worth it, if it saves you fretting about the wine supply on the big day, or the co-ordinator asking you if you want to open more bottles.

Top Tip: It's worth asking your venue and/or caterers or wine suppliers about their policy on unopened bottles. Some suppliers will refund you for the bottles that aren't needed, or adjust your invoice accordingly.

Image by Haley Ozier via One Fab Day

How Much Wine Do I Need for my Wedding? Red Wine Vs White Wine

Once you've calculated how many bottles of wine you need for your wedding feast, you'll need to figure out how many of those bottles should be white wine, and how many should be red wine. And, if it's a summer wedding, you might even be adding rosé into the mix. As a very broad, general rule, we recommend a 50/50 split, but be sure to take the following factors into consideration, too:

• The weather: diners tend to favour white wine in the summer, and red wine in the winter
• The food: your venue and/or caterers can help you decide whether red or white wine will best complement your menu
• Your guests' preferences: you may know that your guests, on the whole, favour one wine over the other

Click here for food and drink inspiration for the big day? And check out our list of incredible wine suppliers here!