Cater Your Own Wedding ReceptionWhen you cater your own wedding reception, there is a good selection of non-alcoholic wedding drinks to choose from. The simplest and most obvious choices (not to mention the most inexpensive) are water, coffee, and iced tea. You may want to include soda, lemonade, or sparkling non-alcoholic juice if you have room in the budget for it.
If you cater your own wedding picnic-style or have a backyard barbecue reception, chilled cans and bottles of water, soda, and tea will work out great for drinks. If your reception is more formal, of course, drinks will need to be served in pretty glassware. For toasts, use non-alcoholic sparkling juice. It comes in a variety of flavors such as apple, white grape, and red grape. Good news--it is kid-friendly so the kids at your wedding can feel special and drink the same thing as mom and dad!
You can also use club soda or Perrier sparkling water. Perrier now comes in plain, lemon, or lime flavors.
When you pour sparkling juice into champagne glasses, it looks just like champagne. You can only get about five glasses out of one bottle so it is not cost effective if you are serving a lot of guests and you have a small budget. It is around $3 a bottle at Wal-Mart or Sam's. So use it for the toasting portion of your reception and then serve less expensive soft drinks, iced tea, and coffee for the rest of the time. Wedding punch is the old standby for wedding drinks when you cater your own wedding. You can purchase Hawaiian punch concentrate at the grocery store. Mix it with water in a punch bowl and add ice for the easiest punch.
Sparkling Wedding PunchFor a sparkling punch that is super-easy, mix a bottle of Sprite with an equal amount of cranberry juice or a cranberry mix flavor such as cran-cherry, cran-raspberry, cran-peach, and a lot of others. Combine them in a punch bowl with ice and voila! Yum. I always serve this at Thanksgiving and Christmas.Wedding drinks can also be made from Sprite combined with citrus juices as well such as an orange combination or 5 Alive. Cater your own wedding reception by serving delicious drinks that can be made even better by adding sherbet to one of the punch varieties above. A good idea for a pretty ice ring placed in the punch bowl is to freeze some juice of the same or a different color than your punch in a jello mold or in a tupperware bowl. Chunks of pineapple, orange, or strawberries would look pretty frozen in the ice ring as well. Pop the ring out of the mold or bowl and float it in the punch. It will keep your wedding drinks cold and flavor them at the same time instead of watering them down as the ice melts. You can cater your own wedding reception and still serve delicious drinks other than soda or lemonade. Try some of the fancier punches below.
Cater Your Own Wedding Reception With Fancier DrinksSparkling Juice Punch2 quarts cranberry juice, plain or mixed with another fruit flavor1 frozen can pink lemonade 1 32 oz bottle of sparkling water Chill drinks prior to making punch. Mix juice, frozen concentrate, and sparkling water in a punch bowl. This will serve 25 if punch is served in small cups, 1/2 cup at a time.
Fruit Slush PunchCombine together:2 cups sugar 2 cups water 2 (46 oz) cans pineapple juice 2 6 oz cans frozen orange juice concentrate 1 6 ounce can frozen lemonade concentrate 1 quart apple juice Stir to dissolve sugar. Freeze in quart-sized pitchers. Pull out of freezer two to three hours prior to serving. Put in punch bowl and pour in two quarts of ginger ale or Sprite. Break up the frozen juice to form slush. Serves 50. Make sure that someone is assigned to keep the drinks fresh and full from punches to coffee and tea. Plain lemonade or Koolaid should also be on hand for children.
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