My daughter just got married in September and we were on a very, very, very tight budget. Told the venue place to allow wine and beer to a certain dollar amount and once that was met then everything after that the person getting alcohol would be responsible for their own. Opened the bar once the wedding party arrived into the reception room. Worked out very well with no complaints.
My wife has some Baptists in her family so she said if they were to be invited, the party needed to be dry. She didn’t even want to have a champagne toast because she though the Baptists would be offended, which of course in the end they weren’t.
I got around that and we (the boys) purchased a few cases and some wine and the champs and did it ourselves. My dad (who was deathly ill but kept it from us until a few months later) was the unofficial barkeep, acting like he was at a speakeasy.
To date we see the groomsmen a few times a year and we have never seen or heard from her relatives that were so important that we had to plan our wedding reception around.
Have the wedding you want to have. Open bar or pay per drink, your guests will understand.