A Miami bride planning a backyard wedding just went viral for sharing a money-saving trick that slashed her bar tab by nearly half. The secret? Buy all your alcohol at Costco, then return what your guests don’t drink.
The video, posted to TikTok by a user going by Liv (@olivia.s54), has racked up over 69,000 views. According to BroBible, Liv explained the hack while filming from the front seat of her car, captioning the clip “Truly anything to save a dime in this wedding economy.”
“Costco is your cheapest open bar-saving hack,” she says in the video. Liv and her fiancé were hosting 120 guests and opted to supply all the alcohol themselves for their backyard ceremony.
How she pulled it off
The plan was simple: massively overbuy at Costco, then return whatever was left unopened after the wedding. Liv shared her full haul in the comments, which included 120 bottles of Prosecco, 60 red and 60 white wine, multiple bottles of tequila, vodka, rum, bourbon, gin, Aperol, 150 beers, 150 seltzers, and 20 liters of club soda, plus mixers.
“We bought 120 bottles of Prosecco and returned 60 of them,” she explained. “We really only paid for the amount of alcohol we drank.”
When another user asked about the numbers, Liv confirmed that she and her now-husband spent $5,000 upfront and got roughly $2,500 back after the returns. That works out to about half the original bill. She also reminded viewers to hold onto their receipts and to bring help for the heavy lifting. “You’re gonna need help loading it all up in your car and returning it,” she said. “But it’s so worth it, I promise.”
The catch you need to know about
Before you head to your nearest Costco with a flatbed cart, there’s a major caveat. Costco’s official return policy only accepts alcohol returns “where prohibited by law,” which means the hack works in some states but not others. This is the part that trips people up.
Tasting Table reported in January 2026 that states like California, Georgia, Michigan, and Ohio generally do not allow alcohol returns due to licensing rules. When you return alcohol for a refund, it is technically treated as “selling” it back to the retailer, which only a licensed seller can do legally. States like Texas and Washington D.C. tend to be more flexible, letting members return unopened bottles with a receipt without much hassle.
The confusion runs deep enough that even Costco employees are sometimes unsure of the rules. One couple in Nevada called ahead to confirm their local store would accept returns, only to learn that a different Costco warehouse a few miles away in Sparks had turned shoppers away, with a clerk citing “some law or something,” according to Tasting Table. Costco itself officially recommends calling your local warehouse before buying alcohol in bulk for this reason.
The comment section under Liv’s video backed this up, with several users sharing that their own returns were denied. Anecdotally, shoppers in Colorado and Michigan also reported being turned away. Meanwhile, debates over who picks up the tab aren’t limited to wedding planning. One recent viral moment involved a man who refused a 24% tip just for a bartender cracking open a beer, and the response that followed.
Other ways to save on your wedding bar
Liv did not stop at the Costco hack. In follow-up content, she detailed several other ways she kept costs down. She got married at home, hired professionals to cover her pool so it doubled as event space, bought glassware from Temu and resold it afterward, and handled her own floral decorations using fake flowers.
One commenter named Rachel Anne offered her own twist for couples in the South: a “stock the bar” party held the weekend before the wedding, where guests bring alcohol as a gift. It is, as she put it, “a thing down south.”
Brides magazine has also pointed to other cost-cutting strategies for couples, including choosing an off-season wedding date, keeping bouquets minimal, and leaning on vintage or borrowed decor. When the guest list and decor budget are tight, there is often room to bring back a wish-list item that would have otherwise been cut.
Separately, a Tennessee woman found something unexpected in her food purchase from Walmart, showing that grocery store surprises are not always pleasant ones.
