Making a drink display last

Our little drink display

When I was engaged I found so many awesome examples of drink stations on pinterest. Mine didn't turn out exactly how I pictured it but that is OK! I learned from my mistakes so I can now give good advice on what to do and what not to do! I didn't want to have to worry about having separate ice for people to scoop into cups in order to have a cold drink. I had a great idea that, if done properly will work better then what happened for us.

Frozen sweet tea cubes with lemon slices.

First of all, make sure your drink station will be in the shade. The way the sun happened to be tracking on my wedding day meant it was directly on the drink station table (whoops!).

Secondly, I didn't want to put regular ice in the sweet tea and lemonade because I knew some ice would melt and dilute the drinks. I made ice cubes out of sweet tea and lemonade by freezing it in cupcake pans with lemon and lime slices in them for decoration. I also froze water in cupcake pans with orange slices and raspberries for the water dispenser.

water ice cubes with oranges and raspberries.

Third, when filling a drink dispenser like the ones I used, I would recommend that you fill it half way full of whatever type of ice you plan to use. Make sure whatever liquid you pour into the dispenser is as cold as you can get it. Put bottles of juice or tea in the freezer for an hour before hand, they won't freeze and will be nice and chilly!


The thing is, due to the high sugar content of the sweet tea and lemonade it melts extremely quickly. If I were to have a "redo" I would use non sweet tea for the "tea cubes" and water with lemon juice in it for the "lemonade cubes". I wasn't at my venue when they put the cubes into the drink dispensers, but my husband to be was...and he said they melted within 5 minutes (sad face). You can also put regular ice in the water to keep the pretty ice cubes from melting so fast.

This picture makes me a little sad.

Although my drink display didn't turn out exactly how I wanted it to, I still had fun making the ice cubes the week before my wedding. I froze them and then filled gallon sized ziploc bags full of them so they were easy to transport to the venue. Overall I spent $60.00 on my drink display (this includes two drink dispensers from Target and one borrowed from my mother in law, the fruit, and several gallons of sweet tea and lemonade) for the formal reception at The Tucker House.


Thank you for reading, more to come!

Love, Anna