Your Favorite Girlfriend: Etiquette

Being that it's Wednesday and the blogging world loves a good #weddingwednesday post, I'm here with a few problems for which I could use your help. I'm certainly not Emily Post and my wedding isn't going to be a stuffy affair (no offense if yours was or will be!) but I still adhere to what I believe are the basic tenets of etiquette.

So, with a little help from my favorite housewife....

First, RSVPs.

We sent out save the dates waaaaay back in August since most guests would be traveling to the wedding. Invitations were then sent out last month and the RSVP cards stated to please send in your reply by January 18th. That gives us a few weeks for stragglers so we can finalize numbers with our vendors before the big day. I'm not even going to stress about the stragglers at this point - I'm sure there will be some and we'll cross that wedding bridge when we get to it.

My question for you all is, how do you handle it when you invited just the Mr. and Mrs. but the RSVP is for the whole fam damily?

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To give you a little more background info: we are having some kids at the wedding but very close kids - my nephew (the ring bearer), my little sisters, my cousins' kids who are traveling from out of state. That's it. This RSVP for couple plus 3 kiddos came from a relative but we are not close with them. Additionally, they don't live that far from the venue (no hotel required) and my impression is the kids' grandmother lives close enough to watch the kids. Call me a B if you want (bitch or bridezilla, take your pick) but we just don't want a lot of kids running around our wedding. And the kids we do want are the kids we ~~like~~ have a close relationship with!

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Secondly, alcohol.

If you've planned a wedding or are planning one or are a wedding planner or a bartender, I NEED YOUR HELP! B and I are having a really difficult time figuring out how much booze we need. We do not want to run out of drinks but I'm not really interested in grossly overbuying either.

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We're having a cocktail hour after the ceremony and then our reception will be about 4 hours long. Both will have an open bar - beer, wine, liquor, margaritas. Our bartenders recommended more bottled beer than keg beer for two reasons that I thought were pretty excellent: bottled beer is faster to serve (pop a top and go versus pouring from tap) and you get to take it with you after the wedding. Can't take a keg you didn't finish back to the hotel!

We're hoping to have between 150-160 guests and about 10 of those are kids. So thinking about 150 drinking guests. Maybe 50% of our people are beer drinkers, followed by 30% mixed drinks and 20% winos. We're just making one batch of margaritas, which will serve 75 guests, mostly for the sake of having them since it's a Texas wedding in a barn.

I'd love to hear your thoughts on this bar issue.

How many drinks would you have between a cocktail hour and a 4 hour reception (with dinner)? Would you switch between drinks or stick to one kind? If you've planned a wedding, please share with me what your bar order looked like and if you thought it was too much, too little or just right.