A July Wedding at a Cotswolds Manor

One hundred and forty guests, a seventeenth-century manor on the edge of the Cotswolds, and a forecast that changed four times in the week before. This is how the bar ran on a July Saturday, start to finish, because the questions couples ask us are nearly always the same ones, and a real day answers them better than a price list.

The couple came to us in February with a clear brief. They wanted a proper cocktail bar rather than a few jugs of Pimm's, they did not want queues, and the groom's family were mostly non-drinkers so the alcohol-free list had to be as good as the main one. We met them at the venue in April, walked the lawn, the orangery and the barn, and built the day around where people would actually be standing.

140 guests, rising to 170 for the evening

Three bars: lawn, orangery, barn

Four bartenders and one runner for ice and glass

600 pieces of glassware: coupes, highballs, rocks and flutes

110 kilos of ice, delivered at midday and kept in insulated bins in the shade

Nine drinks on the menu, three of them alcohol-free

First pour 2.15pm, last orders 11.45pm

Welcome drinks on the lawn straight after the ceremony: a rhubarb and gin spritz, an alcohol-free elderflower highball, and bottled lager for anyone who wanted neither. Two bartenders on a six-metre bar, a batched spritz base so every glass took under ten seconds, and 140 people served in eleven minutes. The gap between the ceremony and the photographs is where a bar either disappears into the day or holds it up.

The reception moved to the orangery at four. Here we switched to the signature pair the couple had chosen with us at the tasting in May: a Chilli Margarita for her and an Old Fashioned for him, plus a passion fruit martini because the bride's sister asked and you do not say no to the bride's sister. Two bartenders, pre-chilled glassware, the runner stocking both bars from behind the barn.

Toasts at 6.30pm. A flute of English sparkling at every place, poured on the floor manager's count so nothing sat warm. The alcohol-free tables had a sparkling tea in the same glass, so nobody could tell who was drinking what from across the room, which was the whole point.

The evening bar opened in the barn at 8pm with all four of us behind it. The menu dropped to five drinks so the queue stayed short, the Old Fashioneds were batched in the afternoon and finished to order, and the last proper round went out at quarter to midnight.

Two things. The ice delivery was forty minutes late, which on a 29-degree day is not a small problem. We had packed a reserve of thirty kilos in the van the night before, and it covered the welcome drinks until the main delivery arrived. Nobody at the wedding knew.

And at about nine the barn's power tripped when the band and our under-counter fridges came on together. Our runner had the fridges on a separate circuit within four minutes, and in the meantime we served from the ice bins. The band restarted. The bar never stopped.

That is the honest version of a good day: planned to the quarter hour, with enough slack built in that the plan can bend. If you are getting married next summer and want it run like this, the weddings page explains how we price it and the enquiry form takes about three minutes.