Party serves
Guests × party hours × 1.2, rounded up. A separate one-hour fizz reception adds another 1.2 planned serves for each guest.
Cocktailhire · Event bar service & planning
Event Drinks & Ice Calculator
Estimate cocktail ingredients, ice and drinks supplies for your party, wedding or work event. Use the people drinking those drinks and your selected menu as the starting point. This planning tool does not make a booking or take payment.
Use the right guest count
Distinguish cocktail drinkers from the full event attendance. Include alcohol-free choices and drinks provided elsewhere when deciding quantities. The numbers are planning estimates; review them against the selected menu and the shopping list for your booking.
Choose the service after checking supplies
If you want to arrange ingredients yourself, book a cocktail maker at a suitable counter or add a staffed mobile bar. A stocked package brings the agreed ingredients, ice and glasses with the bar and team. Use the online quote for the actual service price.
Selected-cocktail ingredient calculator
Enter the number of cocktail drinkers, the total cocktails per person you want to plan for over the whole service, and up to five drinks. The calculation divides those servings evenly between your choices. Adjust the quantities to your guests and other drinks; this is an estimate to review with your booking shopping list.
Plan your drinks supplies
Cocktailhire Wedding & Party Drinks Planner
Free wedding & party drinks calculator + shopping list
Plan the ice, glassware, spirits, mixers, wine and fizz for a wedding, private party or client event, then download one practical PDF. Add a postcode for nearby suppliers.
For the quick calculators below, start with the adults drinking these drinks, not the whole guest list. The quick drinks estimate allocates 100% of its serves to spirits with mixers, wine and fizz. It does not calculate beer, cider, water, alcohol-free drinks or supplies for children and non-drinkers. Plan those separately. Use full attendance in the Bartenders tab and in any booking; a smaller drinks-planning group must not reduce the actual staffing or booking guest count. Read the limits and examples.
Planning the whole day? Open the whole-event planner
Plan separate stages, beer, cider, soft drinks and water; assign supplied stock, compare costs and download client, supplier or event-day briefs. Saved plans stay on your device, never on our servers.
The whole-event planner needs JavaScript. The quick calculators remain below.
I need all of this information
One form for the selected drinks, ice and working glassware.
Nearby suppliers
A shortlist from maintained mainland UK records, not a live search of every supplier. Distances are approximate straight-line estimates. How coverage and matching work.
How much ice will you need?
Find ice suppliers
Supplier database compiled from mainland UK data only.
How many glasses will you need?
Find glassware suppliers
Supplier database compiled from mainland UK data only.
How much will you need to buy?
How many cocktail bartenders?
Buying for a wedding or party? Your quick-calculator result also converts ice into bags and mixers into whole bottles, shows optional six-bottle case quantities, and lets you add your own drinks, glass-hire, corkage and delivery costs. Download those figures with a practical supplier handover in the same PDF. Blank prices stay visibly unpriced. For staged service, supplied stock and a fuller drinks-service cost comparison, open the whole-event planner above.
Planning your own wedding?
Replace the late-night spreadsheet spiral with a usable first plan
Enter the latest guest count and service time, choose the drinks you intend to serve and see the practical buying quantities together. Download the PDF to discuss with your partner, venue, family or suppliers instead of trying to explain figures scattered across several notes.
Professional wedding planner?
Turn an early client brief into consistent working quantities
Use the planner during discovery or supplier research to create a repeatable first-pass brief. The postcode search can surface relevant mainland UK ice and glassware options, while the PDF gives your client and supplier team the same starting quantities without a lead form in the way.
Useful from the first venue conversation
Use the result to question corkage, storage, chilling space, glass washing, dirty returns, delivery windows and bar staffing. The whole-event planner includes beer, soft drinks and a responsibility checklist. Actual table service, venue requirements and date-specific supplier availability still need confirming with the people involved.
How much ice do I need for a wedding or party?
Estimate cubed ice for serving drinks and add separate chilling ice for wine, beer or fizz buckets.
How many glasses should I hire for a wedding?
See the total working glassware and its split across highballs, wine glasses and flutes.
How much alcohol should I buy for a wedding?
Turn your preferred spirits, wine and fizz split into bottle and mixer quantities you can shop from.
How many wine or fizz bottles for a wedding?
Plan medium wine pours, fizz serves and an optional one-hour drinks reception before normal service.
How many bartenders for my wedding guests?
Use Cocktailhire's working benchmark to estimate the service team for your guest count.
Where can I hire glassware or order ice?
Add a UK postcode to search the maintained mainland supplier list near your event.
Your details stay yours
No email address or account is required. Whole-event plans stay on your device, including any optional event or business labels. A full postcode is not retained by the quick supplier search; its outward area is used only when you request nearby supplier results.
Clear assumptions, not a hidden guess
The public calculation rules, limits and review date are published separately so you can decide whether the estimate suits your event.
See how the calculations work Read the 2026 planning benchmarksHow much alcohol for a wedding or party?
See the formula, worked 50, 100 and 150-guest examples, and the wedding phases that should be calculated separately.
How many glasses should I hire?
Understand no-washing quantities, dirty returns, glass collection and why the wrong glass type can run out.
How many bartenders do I need?
Use the guest-count benchmark, then test the first rush, drinks menu, bar layout and support workload.
What must I organise at a dry-hire wedding?
Give alcohol, chilling, staff, glassware, licensing, access, waste and every supplier handover one named owner.
What do the quantities look like for 50 to 250 guests?
Use the 2026 benchmark tables, compare four, five and six-hour service, and download the full dataset.
Want cocktails and a staffed bar at your event?
Book Cocktailhire for professionally served cocktails, staffed mobile bars, or an all-in-one or wedding cocktail package. The free calculator and downloadable briefs are self-service planning tools. Our enquiry form is for paid cocktail and bar service bookings, not general drinks-planning advice.
Who the quantities cover
Use the drinking group for drinks, and full attendance for staffing
The quick drinks calculation assumes every person entered is an adult drinking the selected spirits with mixers, wine or fizz. It does not subtract children or non-drinkers, and the three-way split allocates all planned serves to those categories. Beer, cider, water and alcohol-free drinks are not calculated in that quick mode. The whole-event planner below includes those categories separately. Mixer litres accompany spirit serves; they are not the event's soft-drinks allowance.
For example, 120 attendees including 20 children or non-drinkers is not the same as 120 adults drinking this selection. A 100-adult drinks estimate covers only that group. You still need supplies for the other 20, and the Bartenders tab should use all 120 attendees: three bartenders under our usual starting ratio, not the two shown for a 100-person drinks group.
If the same adults will switch between beer and the selected drinks, do not treat the quick tool's full-duration result as a complete order and then add beer on top without reviewing it. Use the whole-event planner to split the alcohol serves across beer, cider, spirits, wine and fizz. The free planner is not a booking quote and must never be used to lower the actual guest count on a booking.
Nearby suppliers
How postcode supplier matching works
A postcode is optional. When supplied, the full postcode is reduced to its outward area before location lookup and is not retained in the plan. Supplier results are filtered by the category and fulfilment choice before distance is used for ordering. The maintained database currently covers mainland UK suppliers only.
Supplier pages, coverage and terms can change. The PDF therefore asks the host to confirm current stock, delivery charges, collection arrangements, dirty-return terms and final pricing directly with the supplier before placing an order.
There is no universal search radius in the current form. Delivery matches use each record's published distance, postcode-area, county, region or country coverage. Collection can return the nearest recorded depot even when it is a long way away; there is no user-set collection mileage cap. Check the journey before choosing collection.
The displayed miles are straight-line estimates between the outward-postcode area and a recorded supplier base, not a route calculation from the exact venue. Results are filtered for product and fulfilment requirements, then ranked using record freshness, ordering fit and coverage before distance breaks ties. Up to three options per category are shown; they are not necessarily the three closest companies.
This is a maintained shortlist, not a live scan of every UK supplier. Expired or insufficient records are excluded, and a sparse or empty result does not establish that no local supplier exists. A criteria match is not confirmation of stock, availability, price or a reserved delivery slot. The PDF keeps supplier links and the recorded checking date so a planner can verify the terms directly.
Two worked examples
From a table of figures to an actual event plan
These examples use the same model as the tool and its PDF, with the report's 34% spirits, 33% wine and 33% fizz split. All attendees in these examples are adults drinking that selection. No washing, beer, water, alcohol-free drinks, separate table service or toast is included.
A five-hour private party for 50 adults
Enter 50 adults, five party hours, the 34/33/33 split, no separate reception and no chilling buckets. The model produces 300 party serves: 102 spirit serves, 99 wine serves and 99 fizz serves.
- 6 x 70cl spirit bottles, with 10.2 litres of mixer.
- 25 x 75cl wine bottles and 17 x 75cl fizz bottles.
- 75kg service ice; zero additional bucket-chilling ice in this scenario.
- 300 working glasses: 102 highballs, 99 wine glasses and 99 flutes.
- 1 bartender under the usual starting ratio, because total attendance here is also 50.
Zero chilling ice does not mean warm bottles are ready to serve. This example assumes bottle chilling is handled separately. Add bucket numbers in the tool if ice will be used for that job.
100 adults, a fizz reception and five party hours
Enter 100 adults and five party hours. Add the separate one-hour fizz reception and two chilling buckets. The model adds 120 reception serves to 600 party serves. Do not enter six party hours as well, which would count the reception twice.
- 11 x 70cl spirit bottles, with 20.4 litres of mixer.
- 50 x 75cl wine bottles and 53 x 75cl fizz bottles, including the reception.
- 150kg service ice plus 24kg bucket-chilling ice: 174kg in total.
- 720 working glasses: 204 highballs, 198 wine glasses and 318 flutes.
- 2 bartenders under the usual starting ratio, because total attendance here is also 100.
The 24kg chilling allowance is two buckets x six active hours x 2kg. Dinner drinks, a separate toast, different reception attendance and any later arrivals need their own review; they are not silently included.
Download both worked examples as a printable, source-linked PDF. The same figures remain readable here without a download. See how to handle non-drinkers and full attendance.