Do It Yourself Planning
If you are planning a major event yourself e.g., a wedding, you will need to focus first on food/wine matching and then on wine selection:
If it is a sit down meal, once you have decided on your menu, you can use a matching tool on the Food & Wine page to select the applicable wine(s). Your local LCBO product consultant should also be able to help once you’ve let them know your budget. Likewise, if you are just providing appetisers. As regards wine selection, the key issues are quantity and colour.
As regards alcohol quantity, the LCBO’s Party Calculator suggests that 50% of your guests will drink beer and 50% wine and that you should allow 0.8 of a bottle for a 3 hour event. I suggest rounding this up to 1 bottle. So for 100 people for 3 hours, you should buy at least 50 bottles and if you think that the event will last as long as 6 hours, which is quite typical for a wedding, you should buy at least 100 bottles. Note that unused bottles can be returned to the LCBO as long as you have the receipt so it is better to overestimate consumption than underestimate.
As regards colour, the traditional rule of thumb is to have just one red and one white. However, I prefer to have two red and two white to maximize the chances of your guests liking at least one wine. I recommend a 50/50 red/white split in summer, particularly if your function is outside, and a 70/30 red/white split for the rest of the year. However the type of food selected may alter the equation.
Event Resourcing
if you prefer to outsource, there are a number of event staffing companies in Toronto that can help you with either the provision and/or serving of appetisers and the provision and/or serving of drinks. See EventSource for details. The Butler Did It and Gourmet Galaxy are two companies that have been recommended to me.
If you are interested in something broader such as a themed wine tasting, private tour or specialty dinner, try The Wine Sisters or one of the Wine Consultants listed on this website