DIY Lemonade Bar for Parties
Set up a DIY lemonade bar for your next party with fun flavored syrups and fresh garnishes. Don't miss the custom drink menu sign you can personalize with my free Canva template.
When I planned our open house graduation party for 50 people for my daughter, I wanted to serve something fun and festive for the high school-aged kids that were coming.
I set up a custom DIY Lemonade Bar in our kitchen with big jugs of lemonade, flavored syrups, and plenty of garnishes for a "Make Your Own Mocktail" station for the kids.
This easy beverage station was the biggest hit at the party. It immediately caught attention from our guests thanks to the adorable custom Lemonade Menu sign I made and displayed by the drinks.
Here's everything you need to replicate it, right down to the template I used for the sign, for your next fun event. It works just great for graduations, birthday parties, or wedding and baby showers just by a tweak of the sign!
P.S. Not into lemonade? You could easily make this a Dirty Soda Bar just by tweaking the sign and adding a few liters of your favorite pop to the station!
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Ingredients
- Lemonade: I bought several gallons of Milo's lemonade from the grocery section at Walmart. You could make homemade lemonade but for serving a large crowd this was the easiest option. I set out one gallon at a time and kept the rest cold in the fridge.
- Flavored Syrups: I bought this 4-pack flavor sampler of Torani soda flavors in blue raspberry, lime, strawberry, and orange. Don't forget the 4-piece syrup pump dispensers. I separately bought a bottle of peach syrup to fill out our drink recipes. By FAR, blue raspberry was a favorite of the kids.
- Maraschino Cherries
- Sliced Lime Wedges: The lime and lemon wedges are one of the things you can add to your graduation party prep list.
- Sliced Lemon Wedges
- Salt or Sugar for Rimming the Glasses: I used a raspberry salt I had in my pantry but a margarita lime salt would be great, too. This strawberries and cream sugar or this sweet lemon finishing sugar would be fun, too.
Serving Pieces You Need
To make the lemonade bar easy to use for your guests, you'll need to have these serving pieces ready:
- Cups: I used shorter plastic party cups sized for a cocktail to keep portions reasonable.
- Mini Tongs or Forks: For neatly getting the cherries and citrus wedges from their serving dishes. I ordered this 18-pack of mini tongs and they were so helpful for the graduation party.
- Garnish Picks: Guests might just drop the cherries into the cup but it is also nice to offer them a garnish pick. These work well for stirring the drink, too. I ordered this set of gold garnish picks and we used them for several things at the party.
- Ice Bucket and Scoop: The lemonade won't stay very cold as it sits out, be sure to offer ice.
- Garnish Cups/Bowls: I transferred the garnishes to pretty dishes to make the bar look nicer. Small ice cream dishes or parfait type cups or small bowls would be perfect.
- Drink Napkins: I placed graduation themed cocktail napkins out. Pro Tip: I bought New Year's Eve napkins on clearance the January before her graduation so I'd have the year of her graduation date. You could also just buy general graduation napkins.
How to Make a Custom Lemonade Sign
I made a custom sign to display near the lemonade and this was one of the cutest items at the entire graduation party.
I've made it simple for you to do the same:
- Design: Use my Canva template to create a sign.
- Download: Download it as a PDF to your computer.
- Print: Print it as an 11x14 poster mounted on poster board at Walgreen's or another same-day photo service. This makes it a free-standing sign to display.
Tips for Using the Template
Based on the flavored syrups we wanted to offer, my daughter and I invented a few custom drink mixes and named them cute things based on her high school colors (red, white, and blue), where she planned to go to college (University of Tennessee), and her school activities (marching band and orchestra).
Change a Beverage Illustration:
You can swap out any of the illustrations of any of the drinks in the collage by searching "drink illustrations" under the Elements tab in Canva.
Change the Color of a Drink:
Some of the drinks can be customized in color if you want to switch them up to match your own drink recipes.
You'll have to click on the illustration and choose to "Ungroup" it from the Drink Title text below it.
Once you isolate the illustration, click on it and you'll see color swatches appear. Click on those and you can adjust the colors as needed.
Here's a screenshot to illustrate what I mean:
How to Share with Friends
Those big bottles of syrup go a very long way. My best friend loved our lemonade station so much and she just happened to be hosting her son's grad party a couple weeks later.
I happily boxed up the syrups to share with her. She stocked up on lemonade and I customized our template for her son's schools and activities.
In retrospect, I should have planned for this all along! It would be very easy to customize a few signs, print them all at once, and plan to share the beverage bar with a few strategic friends. You could all split the costs and save a little money for this cute party beverage.
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