Every host gets the balloons right and then panics about the bar. The Sip Station is the site's first drink planner: set your guest count and how many hours the party runs, and it sizes the whole bar with real math — how many bottles, batches, ice, and glasses — then pours a signature drink colored to match your decor and prints a bar card you can hand to the caterer. Isabella's rule: nobody should ever be the host who runs out of ice. 🥂
It loads a starter bar, a default run-time, and a signature-drink name you can rewrite.
Isabella's bar math starts here: drinks scale with guests and grow every hour the bar stays open.
Tap every station you want open. Isabella never opens a bar without a zero-proof and a water station — they're on by default.
Name one drink, choose a base and a color that matches your decor — this is the thing guests photograph and ask about.
What share of your guests won't be drinking? Isabella treats the mocktail as a first-class drink, not a sad afterthought.
100 guests · 4 stations open
Isabella's rule of thumb: two drinks per guest in the first hour, one for each hour after, plus a 20% buffer — because the last hour is always the thirstiest.
The measure of a good bar isn't the cocktails — it's that nobody has to explain why they're holding water.
Everything on one card: the shopping list, the ice and glass counts, the signature recipe, and the safety rules Isabella tapes behind the bar.
The honest answer is a formula, not a guess: two drinks per guest in the first hour, one for every hour after, then add a 20% buffer. So 100 guests over five hours is 100 × (2 + 4) = 600 drinks, and you stock 720 to be safe. The Sip Station runs that math per station the moment you move the sliders, so you walk into the store with numbers instead of vibes — which is the difference between over-buying three cases of wine and running out of the one everybody wanted.
Because ice is the only thing nobody adds a buffer to. The rule is 1 lb of ice per guest — and 1.5 lb if it's hot or the drinks are mostly on the rocks. For 100 guests that's 100–150 lb, which is two or three big bags and one cooler more than you think. Buy it the morning of, keep the drinks cooler and the ice cooler separate (ice for the drinks, drinks for the guests), and never, ever use the drink cooler as a place to stash the ice. Isabella has seen a host cry over ice exactly once, and once was enough.
A standard bottle pours 5 glasses of wine or 8 flutes of bubbles. So if wine is half your bar for 100 guests over five hours, that's roughly 360 wine servings ÷ 5 = 72 bottles — the Sip Station does that arithmetic for you and rounds up, because you can always return an unopened case but you can't summon one at 9 p.m. For a toast, count one flute per guest, so 100 guests is about 13 bottles at 8 flutes each (plus a couple spare).
A signature drink is one cocktail that belongs to this party — usually named after the hosts and colored to match the decor. It gives guests something to ask about, photographers something to shoot, and the bar a focal point that's cheaper than a full craft-cocktail menu. Name it something personal ("Something Blue Spritz", "The Fifty-Year Fizz"), tint it to the balloon palette, pick a garnish, and you've turned a folding table of bottles into a moment. It's the one drink people remember the name of.
Not "a mocktail" — a real drink with a real name, in a real glass, on the same table. The failure mode isn't that there's no option; it's that the option looks like an apology, served last, in a plastic cup nobody can identify. Give the zero-proof drink its own station, its own garnish, and its own name, and the sober guest, the pregnant guest, the designated driver and the kid all stop feeling like a footnote. Isabella puts the mocktail pitcher next to the cocktail pitcher, same glassware, same garnish bowl.
Self-serve is perfect up to about 50 guests and a two-hour window — batch the signature drink, set out wine and beer in tubs, keep the water and mocktail stations full, and you'll never touch a shaker. Past 75 guests, or any party with a cocktail program, a bartender isn't about the drinks: it's about pacing, portioning, restocking ice, and keeping an eye on the room. A single bartender handles about 50–75 guests well; two make a 150-guest bar feel effortless. The Sip Station sizes the shopping list; a pro sizes the pour.
Both. Run the numbers, print the bar card, and hand it to your caterer or your uncle — it's a complete shopping list with ice, glass and garnish counts. Or send the brief through the form and Isabella will style and stock the whole station: batched signature drink matching your balloon palette, a garnished mocktail, water and ice set behind a dressed, themed bar, so the photos look as good as the party feels. Most clients do the second one, and the caterer always says the same thing: "this is the best-organized host I've worked with."
Tell her what you're throwing and she'll reply within 24 hours with a bar plan — stations, signature drink, ice and garnish — and hold your date while you think.