DIY Bar at Your Wedding? Here’s Everything You Need to Know to Stock It.

If you are DIYing your wedding bar (or engagement party, rehearsal dinner, post-wedding brunch bars), this post is for you. Building a bar menu and figuring out quantities is no small task. The upside is complete customization and savings compared to when you work with a bar, restaurant, or caterer. 

The Basics

Your first consideration should be what type of bar you want to provide your guests. For this exercise, let’s assume you are hiring bartenders (I recommend 1 per every 40 people). Bartenders will be able to do much more than just mix and serve drinks. You can have them be responsible for: restocking, bussing, cleaning up, recycling, and breaking down the bar at the end of the event.

Starting with your bar, the simplest options are.

• Beer & wine only

• Wine: sparkling (if desired for a toast/for the bar), 1 white wine, 1 rosé or orange wine, 1 red wine option

• Beer: 1 lager or pilsner, 1 IPA, 1 sour or seasonal, with the option to add a hard seltzer, hard lemonade, or hard cider that is gluten free.

• Beer, wine, select signature cocktails

• The above plus two signature cocktails that can be batched. To determine batch-ability, I recommend searching for existing batched cocktail recipes, or using ChatGPT to create batched versions of your favorites.

• Partial bar including signature cocktails

• Everything above, plus:

• Spirits: vodka, gin, tequila or mezcal, whisky, vermouth

• Mixers: seltzer, coke, diet coke, ginger ale, cranberry juice, orange juice, olive juice

• Garnishes: lemon wedges, lime wedges, olives

• Full bar including signature cocktails

• Partial bar, plus: bourbon, scotch whisky, dark rum, light rum

• Partial bar, plus: pineapple juice

• Don’t forget non-alch! 

• In addition to the above, I recommend including in single serve or large format: high end water option (sparkling and still), something juice based (such as a fancy glass-bottled lemonade), and a non-alch beer. You can also have an NA cocktail.

If you know one of your aunts or relatives or best friends has a specific love for their cocktails, add what you think you’d need. For signature cocktails, I’d recommend 2 options that are the couple’s favorites, and that can be batched.

Quantities

To determine what you should stock, use the basic formula of 1 drink per hour per guest. Check out the fundamentals listed below.

Basic Volumes

Wine:  1 glass = 5oz pour 

1 bottle = 5 glasses

Beer: 1 serving = 1 bottle or can

          1 case = 24 bottles or can

          Sixtel keg = 50 servings

Spirits: 1 serving = 2oz

          1 750 ml bottle = 12 servings

Beer & Wine

Assume a 50/50 split of beer drinkers and wine drinkers. For example, using one drink per person per hour, we know that for 100 guests at a 4 hour wedding, they’ll need 400 drinks. 50% wine would be 200 glasses or 40 bottles, and 50% beer would be 200 cans or 4 sixtel kegs.

Partial Cocktails

You’ll need to make some assumptions on your guests. A good place to start is to assume 50% cocktails, 25% wine, and 25% beer.

Using our example of 100 guests for 4 hour wedding, we know that's 400 drinks. 50% cocktails equals 200 glasses , or roughly 16 bottles of spirits. 25% wine means 100 glasses, or 20 bottles. 25% beer is 100 cans or 2 sixtel kegs. 

Need some more guidance? Check out the calculators below.

Hubtap

The Knot 

Evite

Crowd Pleasing Sample Menus

Ordering

When ordering, ask your local store if they will allow returns of unopened bottles. My worst case when planning my DIY purchased bar was that I would run out of drinks and guests would have to switch to vodka sodas at some point (I went to a remote wedding where they ran out of wine, beer, and whisky and everyone was … well, compromising on their beverage choices). If you can return unopened bottles and unopened cases, you’ll save yourself money and the potential stress of a dry bar.

In New York state, wine and spirits can only be purchased from liquor stores. I recommend asking your local store if they offer quantity discounts for large party purchases. Most liquor stores offer 10% off a case (12 bottles) of wine. 

Beer can be purchased at beer speciality stores, beverage depots, and most grocery/food stores. You can also use a delivery site like Fresh Direct or, preferably, purchase from a local brewery. Because most beer should be consumed fresh, it’s not likely that they will accept returns. TALEA offers a 10% discount when you buy full cases at our taproom.

Ensure that you have enough storage space for beer, sparkling, white, and rosé wine. Those should be chilled hours in advance (refrigeration or ice buckets). If you’re delivering to the venue day-of, ideally you’re chilling those bottles and cans in advance. Your hard liquor and red wine usually don’t need to be chilled–unless you know your guests want a chilled red. 

Batching

I recommend batching your signature cocktails for easy bartending or self-service. Consider a glass lemonade dispenser and putting non-dilutive reusable ice cubes or frozen steel inside. Then guests or bartenders can pour the pre-mixed drink over ice.

A simple batched formula would be:
Premix spirit and syrup + pour over ice + add sparkling wine or water

Glassware and Garnishes

One of the most fun aspects of a party is the look of the event! For any outdoor or casual event, I recommend stemless plastic glasses like those from GoVino. For real glass, Ikea has affordable, bulk glasses available.

To customize your bar, consider unique ice cubes like crushed for a fruity drink or buying bulk square cubes. Finally, garnishes are a great way to surprise your guests or tie in something with your spouse to be. Try searching for drink stirrers, cocktail skewers, or clips with your theme (eg: flamingo straw). Vendors on Etsy can do custom drink picks. Adding dried fruit or prepared slices that can be done in advance are a great way to bring seasonality to your wedding.

My top lessons and learnings:

1. Don’t run out of drinks. Get 20% extra of your most crowd-pleasing, easy drinks: light beer, white wine, seltzer. At the end of the night, this is what people are going to want if you run out of everything else.

2. It’s better to do 1 thing well than 100 things halfway. I highly recommend a simple signature drink that you KNOW tastes delicious. Even if you only have one drink, if it’s delicious, your crowd will love it. Some crowd-pleasing favorites include spritzes, margaritas, or spiked classics, like a spiked Arnold Palmer.

3. Don’t forget the cups and openers. You’ll want an extra 30% of cups (more than drinks) in case people spill or split. You’ll also want to stock several openers, coolers, and accessories just in case!