It’s Christmas time, and the holiday season is the perfect time to test some of your wedding details. Experiment with place settings and table decorations and come up with some great ideas for catering and drink options. A mini bar, for example, is a very popular choice for your wedding reception, so in this DIY tutorial we’ll show you how to make your own signature drink station.
What You’ll Need:
- Decorative Apothecary Style Clear Glass Drink Dispenser.
- Alcohols of your choice. For this tutorial, we used cherry flavoured vodka and white chocolate liqueur.
- A mixer. In this tutorial we used cranberry juice.
- A glass of your choice. We used our cute Mini Martini Glasses.
- A display cling/sticker for the name of your drink. We used our Expressions Small PVC Sticker.
- Paper straws. We used our Candy Striped “Sippers” Paper Straws.
- Candy sugar of your choice for around the rim of your glass. We used cherry flavoured candy sugar.
Instructions
When deciding on the drink you want, choose something that’s meaningful to you and your partner, such as a favourite flavour. Aim to have its style and colour fit in with your theme/ colour scheme too. We chose to make a festive red drink, Sweet Cherry Bliss, using cherry vodka and cranberry juice. You should consider testing your drink idea(s), especially if you want to try and make your own recipe. With that in mind, we’ll take you through a taste test of our own Sweet Cherry Bliss drink. To serve more people with this recipe, you need to simply increase the ingredient quantities and then serve your drink in the drink dispenser.
Step 1: Trace some of your flavoured sugar around the rim of your martini glass.
Step 2: Measure out 2 ounces of cherry vodka and 2.5 ounces of cranberry juice.
Step 3: Add a few dashes of white chocolate liqueur.
Step 4: Mix it all together and pour it into your sugar-rimmed martini glass.
Step 5: Add a Candy Striped paper straw to complete the look.
Step 6: Enjoy!
Things to Consider:
- Most venues will accommodate a specialty drink, but it’s always best to check and confirm this with your venue. It’s also a good idea to have a bartender to service your drink station (or drink stations—you might want to make more than one drink!), especially if your drink is alcoholic. If your drink is a non-alcoholic beverage, however, you could simply leave the dispenser as a self-serving option.
- Add some extra personalisation to your signature drink by giving it a name that you can then have printed to a label/sign when you display it. We called ours “Sweet Cherry Bliss” and added it to an Expressions Cling that fit perfectly to the drink dispenser.
- When presenting your drink at your reception, display it in your drink dispenser. A good idea is to make the drink in your dispenser non-alcoholic. Then, your bartender can mix in the alcohol for the guests who want it and, this way, everyone can try your signature drink.
- You should set your drink dispenser up before the start of your reception, ensuring it is chilled. You might also want to prepare a few pre-poured drinks too, served with ice and completed with all of the decorations—the sugar-rimmed glasses and the straws, for example.
More Ideas:
You can give your signature drink any look you want, especially if you add accessories like clip-on or stick-on tags or cards, or even something simple like our heart-shaped Bride and Groom Stir Sticks. And straws come in many shapes, colours and patterns, so you have a huge variety to choose from—particularly in our Retro theme! See our DIY article on Stylish Sippers for some fantastic ideas on decorating your straws.
Above, clockwise from the top-left: Speech Bubble Chalkboard Clips | Laser Expressions Kite Die-Cut Card | Paper Straws selection, including Candy Striped and Large and Small Polka Dots | Laser Expressions Cherry Blossom Fan Laser Cut Glass Card | Sweet Silhouettes Small Ticket An earlier version of this DIY appeared on our sister blog, Weddingstar.