Plan your own wedding bar

When planning an event, be it a wedding, private party or a general function the bar can sometimes be the tricky question. Do you get a Bar company in to run things for you or can you do it yourself?

We are here to tell you that its really very simple, so here are some helpful hints.

THE BAR! – pick your bar front

Bars can add a massive amount of character to your event, and can be a great focal point when designing your Wedding layouts. Round Bars, Rustic Bars or Modern Bars can all give a WOW factor.

Make sure you pick a bar that is big enough for all your guests and manageable for your site or venue! Often large bars are extremely heavy so you may have to factor in the extra cost for delivery and set-up if a team have to put this in for you.

If you are having a large bar we suggest thinking about structure options, we offer additional Bar tents with our marquees to make sure you don’t loose important floor space with all the service elements of your bar.

Some Pinterest ideas:

Decide if you are going to go for a free-bar, donation bar, or paid bar.

If you are planning to organise your own bar you need to be realistic about how much your guests will be drinking and prepare for it. Make sure you have a good budget if you are providing a free bar – there is nothing worse than running out half way through the night!

We find more people are having a donation bar and giving the proceeds to charity. This is great as not only are you helping good causes, but it also slows down your guests. A pound or two really helps your guests to think twice about getting another if they have only had a sip out of the drink there holding. – a real pet peeve of ours at free bars!

Glassware – what to have and how much

We get asked all the time, how much glassware will I need? Well we think it’s always good to separate your day in two, plan for the day and a separate order for the night.

Order your glassware to cover what you need for the seated meal portion of your day.
Decide if you will have both white wine and red wine glasses. Remember most guests will just decide on one for the meal, so it can sometime get crowded on the table with needless extra glasses.
This will be the section of the day where you usually want to make presentation key, so why not go for a Fine Dining look or something a bit fancy.

For the evening:

We suggest choosing standard more resilient glasses and triple your numbers!
If you are doing your own bar you will need to have lots of spare glasses for your guests different drink choices throughout the night.
Think about a Glasswasher, this will save the fear of running out or the need to over order.4. Make it like a real bar and get some speciality glasses.
For all your Gin lovers, the big gin bulbs are perfect for your tipple of choice
Old school glamour – go for the champagne coupe for Marilyn vibes.
Manhattans your poison of choice? – drink up in your martini glasses
Cool cocktails – try our special glasses or our cocktail shakers
Pimm’s – the old favourite, perfect for sunny day
Shots! Shot! Shots! – because every party needs them.

Remember to keep your cool.

If you have a nice cold drink on a hot day then life is good!

If your planning for an outdoor event, you will need to think about refrigeration to keep drinks cold. We always suggest to our customers running their own bars take fridge trailers or chiller cabinets to keep everything nice and chilled!

We hope these help – happy planning!