How Many Bottles Of Champagne Do You Need For 100 Guests?

When it comes to planning a big party, there are a lot of details to figure out. Something like a champagne toast sounds wonderful when you're in the brainstorming phase — how fun it is for everyone to lift a celebratory glass of bubbles together — but when it comes time to actually supply said sparkling wine, you're hit with a conundrum. How many bottles of champagne do you actually need for a party with 100 guests? Frankly, it depends.

Determining the right number of pitchers of prosecco or carafes of cava required for a proper party varies based on a lot of factors, such as the length of the event and whether or not there will be other drinks available. But a good place to start is with the assumption of just one glass per guest, such as for a champagne toast. And for that, you'll need to determine how many glasses of champagne there are in a bottle.

A standard bottle of sparkling wine holds 750 milliliters, or a little over 25 ounces, and a standard pour of champagne is 4 ounces, so each bottle holds about six glasses. For 100 guests to partake of a glass, you'd need 17 bottles (with a few glasses to spare). That said, it is unlikely that every person at your party will want champagne, and you can probably get by with about 15 bottles, or 90 glasses. (If you're terribly diligent with your pours, the extra 1.36 ounces from each bottle will actually get you an extra five 4-ounce pours.) But what if we're talking about more than just a toast? Well, then things get more complicated.

There is no precise science to determining how many drinks you need at a party — there are simply too many factors in play. What drinks you're serving, how anxious the guests are, the temperature in the venue — all of these are variables that can affect the number of drinks needed (these and plenty more). That said, the general rule of thumb is to plan for one drink per guest per hour.

So, if your party is four hours long, those 100 guests will need about 400 drinks. Now, chances are you aren't planning to have only sparkling wine at this soiree, but who are we to judge? Maybe you're embracing your inner Jay Gatsby and no other drink will suffice. (After all, there is a sparkling wine for every occasion.) In that case, those 400 glasses would necessitate 63 bottles of bubbles — assuming you don't waste a drop. But it's always wise to buy a couple of bonus bottles. Even if you can't return extras after the event, unopened champagne lasts at least four years, so you'll have plenty of time to find something else to celebrate.

There you go, now you know just how much champagne you need for your party. But we're going to suggest that you don't go with only champagne — especially not for a longer event. Don't worry, though. Now that you know how many drinks you need per guest, it's easy to plug and play with our guides on how many shots you get from a bottle of liquor and how many beers you can pour from a pony keg — with minimal math required.