Advanced options
COUPES only: flutes cannot stack. Each tier is a square (4x4 on 3x3 on 2x2 on 1), every upper glass sitting in the diamond gap between four below. Dead-level table, glasses touching, build from the corners in. Pour slowly into the top glass only and let gravity cascade: champagne, prosecco or (the caterers' secret) something sparkling and cheap, since most of it goes flat anyway.
What The Champagne Tower Calculator Works Out
- Coupe glasses: the square-pyramidal number for your tiers, 1 + 4 + 9 + 16 and so on, because each tier is a square of coupes with every upper glass seated in the diamond between four below. Three tiers is 14, the four-tier classic 30, five is 55, six is 91 and the ten-tier Gatsby fantasy 385.
- Bottles to pour it: glasses x the fizz landing in each (about 100ml through the cascade) divided by a 750ml bottle, rounded up. Four bottles pour the classic; big towers graduate to magnums for the theatre and fewer interruptions.
- Build notes: the glass count plus 10% spares (a broken coupe is an anecdote, not an ending), 30-45 minutes to build on a dead-level, dead-solid table, and distance from the dance floor. Wobble at the base multiplies by tier.
- Fizz landing in each glass and bottle size (advanced): change the 100ml assumption (a coupe holds 180ml to 240ml brimful; 100ml is a sensible tower pour) and switch to magnums or jeroboams to see how many to open.
- Spare coupes (advanced): raise the 10% for a hire delivery or a long drive; the glasses card shows how many to source in total.
- Fizz poured and cost of the fizz (advanced): the litres actually in the glasses, what is left in the last bottle for topping up, and bottles x your price. Caterers put real champagne (GBP 30 to GBP 50 a bottle) in the top tiers for the photographs and let prosecco or cava (GBP 7 to GBP 12) do the volume, since most of the cascade goes flat anyway.
- Glasses to source and their cost (advanced): hire typically runs 50p to GBP 1.50 a coupe, buying GBP 2 to GBP 8; the hire market also solves where 385 coupes live afterwards.
- Total tower budget (advanced): fizz plus glasses, with the cost per glass in the tower and per guest. The tower is theatre first and bar second: budget it as a moment, not as the evening's drinks.
- Guests covered (advanced): whether the tower holds a glass for everyone, or how many more need pouring by hand (and the extra bottles that takes). Guests usually take a freshly poured glass from staff anyway, so the shortfall is rarely a crisis.