Wedding · at home, in the garden
Wine for a wedding at home: no venue, no corkage fee, no cold room
Sixty guests in the garden means a wedding with no venue to hire and no corkage fee: you serve the wine you want, at the price you pay for it. In exchange, nobody lends you a cold room. 78 bottles, 60 of them to be served chilled, and a kitchen fridge that cools twelve in three hours: chilling is the real subject of this page.
The calculation for 60 guests
Two-hour drinks reception, seated dinner, three-hour party, 80% drinkers, so 48 people drinking wine. No venue closing at a fixed time: the party lasts as long as the neighbours put up with it. Cut it to two hours and the total drops to 72.
Chilling, without a cold room
For the 60 bottles of white, rosé and sparkling in this setting, starting at garage temperature. Figures from the calculator on the page chilling 50 bottles quickly.
| Method | Time | Ice | Verdict |
|---|---|---|---|
| The kitchen fridge | 15 h | — | Five batches of twelve, three hours each. It won't do 60 bottles in a day: it cools air, not wine. |
| Two fridges, yours and the neighbours' | 9 h | — | Three rounds of three hours. Useful the evening before for the sparkling for the toast, not on the day itself. |
| One 100-litre tub | 1 h | 36 kg | Three batches of 24, twenty minutes each. Eighteen 2 kg bags, and 3 kg of coarse salt, one kilo per batch. |
| Two tubs side by side | 40 min | 36 kg | The same ice, less waiting. This is the setup to aim for with sixty guests. |
The plan, from the day before to the bar
A venue has a cold room, a back kitchen and someone in charge of them. At home, it's you, or a designated friend. The targets: sparkling at 6 to 8 °C, whites and rosés at 8 to 10 °C; outdoors in June, aim for the bottom of the range, the wine warms up fast in the glass. The page serving temperature explains why.
- The week before: reserve the ice. Eighteen 2 kg bags is more than a shop keeps on the shelf on a Saturday in June. Borrow or hire two 100-litre tubs.
- The day before: the kitchen fridge takes the first twelve bottles of sparkling, the ones for the toast. The cases sleep in the cellar or the garage, in the shade, never behind a glass door.
- One hour before the drinks reception: two tubs, half ice, half water, a handful of coarse salt, bottles submerged up to the neck. Twenty minutes per batch of 24.
- During dinner and the party: one tub kept going at the bar, with more ice bought halfway through. The 18 reds wait somewhere cool and spend ten minutes in the tub before opening if it's hot.
How many bottles for a wedding of 60 guests at home?
78 with this page's settings, so 13 cases: 18 reds, 18 whites, 18 rosés and 24 sparkling, 1.3 bottles per guest. Average consumption is 64 bottles, 70 with the 10% margin; the rest comes from rounding up to the case of six, colour by colour. With a two-hour party instead of three, 72 bottles.
What wine budget for a wedding at home?
For the 78 bottles in this setting: €1,026 at the decent level, €1,524 at the good level, €2,700 at grand cru level, so €17, €25 and €45 per guest, with no corkage fee to add. In a venue charging €10 per opened bottle, the same 78 bottles would cost up to €780 more: the corkage calculator does the comparison. That saving pays for what the venue would have provided: the ice, the tubs, the glasses.
How many glasses, and who serves?
One flute and one glass per guest, plus 5% for breakage, and one person at the bar who is neither the bride nor her mother. For sixty seated, two waiters at dinner. The page how many glasses to plan works out hire and staff for your numbers.
How does delivery to a home work?
As parcels, to the address of the party, in the week of the wedding: thirteen cases stay under the 120-bottle threshold, so no pallet and no tail lift. Charges depend on the band and the destination and are confirmed on the quote; see the delivery page. Have it delivered on a day when someone is in, and put everything in the shade the same day.
With twenty guests in the garden, do you need a wine merchant?
No. A two-hour drinks reception and a dinner for twenty come to 19 bottles, bought singly, and the calculator concludes that you don't need us: a local wine shop will sell them to you, and the kitchen fridge is almost enough. For the ceremony itself in the garden, the humanist ceremony page shows what a longer drinks reception adds.
What do you do with the leftover bottles?
They're already at your place, that's the advantage. Unopened cases are not taken back, by us or by most wine merchants; with these settings, the margin and the rounding leave fourteen bottles more than average consumption, enough for lunch the next day. The page what to do with leftover wine says how long an opened bottle keeps.
Wedding at a venue or an estate: wine for a wedding. Thirteen cases delivered to your home? Quote request, reply within 48 working hours.