Your wedding drinks menu

A drinks menu is not a list of everything you like. It is a short set of choices that suits the shape of the day, serves quickly when a hundred people want a drink in the same ten minutes, and does not leave you with eleven unopened bottles of gin on the Sunday.

Here is how we build one.

Start with the shape of the day, not the drink list

A wedding is three different drinking occasions wearing one outfit, and each wants something different from the bar.

Arrival. Guests have driven, parked, found a seat and watched you get married. They are warm, they are thirsty, and they all arrive at once. This is the one moment in the day where speed beats choice: something cold, already poured, handed over without a question. A single arrival drink moves a queue four times faster than a menu does.

Dinner. People sit, the pace drops, and the drink follows the food. Wine does most of the work here, and the bar gets a breather.

Dancing. The pace goes back up, spirits and cocktails take over, and the bar is busy again until close.

If your menu does not change across those three, it is wrong for at least two of them.

Fewer options, served faster

The instinct is to offer more. It is the wrong instinct. Every extra option on the board is another decision made at the front of the queue, by someone who has not read it until they got there — and the person behind them pays for it.

Two beers, two wines, a sparkling and two cocktails covers almost every guest at almost every wedding. Add a third cocktail and you have not improved the night; you have lengthened the queue and bought a bottle you will not finish.

The split that holds up

Across the weddings we work, consumption lands close enough to the same proportions to plan on. For a full bar, roughly 45% wine, 30% beer and 25% spirits and cocktails. Take spirits off the menu and it does not redistribute evenly — it goes to about 60% wine and 40% beer, because the people who would have had a cocktail mostly move to wine, not beer.

Within the wine, plan on about 40% white, 40% red and 20% sparkling. Sparkling skews heavily to the arrival and the toast and then stops, so it is a smaller share than most people expect.

These are the same proportions behind our wedding drinks calculator, so if you would rather see the numbers for your own guest count and run time, put them in there.

Signature cocktails: one or two, batched

A signature cocktail is one of the few places on a wedding menu where the choice is genuinely yours rather than logistical. Two things decide whether it works.

Can it be batched? Anything built from spirits, liqueurs and juice can be mixed ahead in volume and poured to order, which means it serves at the speed of a glass of wine. Anything needing to be shaken individually with fresh citrus, egg white or muddled fruit is made one at a time — lovely, and a bottleneck at a hundred guests.

Does it hold? A drink built on a shaken foam or a precise dilution is a different drink by the time it reaches the back of the lawn. Something stirred and strong, or long and spritz-like, is still itself ten minutes later.

Pick one of each if you want two: something strong and stirred, something long and refreshing. Our cocktail menu is a reasonable place to start, and it is all built to run at volume.

How much to buy

The rule we plan to is two drinks in the first hour and one an hour after that, adjusted for the crowd — a wedding where most guests are driving home down the coast is not the same as one where everyone is staying on site.

Converting drinks into a shopping list is where people come unstuck, so the three numbers worth knowing: a bottle of wine is about five glasses, a 700ml bottle of spirits is about 22 nips, and a carton is 24 beers. Divide and round up, always up — the difference between enough and not enough is a bottle or two, and the second one is much cheaper than running dry at nine o'clock.

Again, the calculator does this arithmetic for you, including the toast.

Someone at your wedding is not drinking

Usually several people, and at least one of them will not say why. A lemonade and a jug of water is not a drinks menu for them; it is an apology.

Put one proper non-alcoholic option on the board, in the same glass, with the same garnish, listed the same way as everything else. It costs nothing and it is noticed by exactly the people you most want to look after. Ask us and we will build one to match whatever your signature cocktail is.

What turns up with the bar

Worth knowing what you do not need to organise. Every bar package includes the mobile bar itself, professional glassware, ice, garnish and the equipment to run it, and every bartender holds a current RSA and serves responsibly. The business is fully insured, which is the thing venues and planners ask about before they ask about anything else.

What that leaves you deciding is the menu — which, if you have read this far, you now have a shape for.

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