5 Halloween Bar Styling Tips & Free Printable

One of my favorite things to style at a party is a bar area. My parents gave me the fun witch’s boot wine stopper and so it became the focal point for this year’s Halloween bar.

I know bar styling can be daunting, especially if you don’t have a bar. But I’m here to tell you that it’s not as hard as you think to create a stylish setting that welcomes guests to pour a glass. And when styling a bar for a holiday party, you are instantly provided the theme. So for this Halloween bar, I wanted all things black, white and spooky. I then used a touch of orange to add a little pop of color. So that’s how I came to the theme, but below gives 5 tips to think about when styling your next bar.

When styling your bar for your Halloween party, here are 5 tips to think about:

1: What are You Drinking?

When styling your bar, think of what you want to serve. To keep it simple, I usually do wine, beer and a signature cocktail. For holiday parties like Halloween, it’s nice to think of a seasonal signature cocktail to serve. Everyone loves pumpkin spice, so maybe a Pumpkin  Spiced Martini would be a creation to serve. To see the signature, seasonal cocktail we did for this party, see my previous post that also features a DIY Skull Drink Garnish.

2. Designate a Bar Area To Show Guests They Can Help Themselves

This is the key for setting any bar. Even if you don’t have a bar in your house, you can make any space a temporary bar by adding the right accessories. Start with a table runner or tray to contain your drinks and glasses. Then use a party sign that invites guests to help themselves.

For my Halloween party, I designed a Pick Your Poison sign that I framed and placed on the table by the wine bottles. The sign instantly invites guest to help themselves and hopefully it brings a smile to their faces too. In addition to the sign, I also created wine bottle labels to go with the theme. Since I have the bottles in wine bags, I wanted to make sure guests knew which was red and which was white.

To make your own Halloween bar sign and wine bottle labels, just download the free print-it-yourself  Pick Your Poison Sign and Wine Tags printable.

3: Drink Markers to Label Glasses

Drink markers are both practical and can add instant party decor. I don’t know about you, but I’m always leaving my glass astray at a party and then have the inevitable moment of asking “Is this your glass?” in hopes to find mine. Drink markers fix this problem. For your wine glass, attach wine charms. The charms don’t have to be actual charms either. For this party, I attached paper tags using bakers twine to the stems of the wine glasses. If using stemless glasses, attach tags to straws or you can always write on your glasses with a glass marker. If using plastic cups, have Sharpie markers available.

The wine charm tags and party straws tags I used are available as a print-it-yourself file on my Etsy Shop. You can use them for more than wine charms too, like cupcake toppers, favor tags or party straw embellishments. Head over to Etsy to see how I used the Halloween Toppers/Tags on party straws. You can purchase them for $5 and you’ll be sent a link for the instant download.

4: Wine Bags & Stoppers Create Instant Seasonal Decor

One of the easiest ways to style your bar is wine bags. Seasonal wine bags are readily available at many stores (from Target to Pottery Barn) or you can make your own like I do. For my Halloween wine bags, I decided a tattered, quilted look would give the eery feel of Halloween. Plus they are pretty chic too.

I made two wine bags and as you can see by the labels—one is for red wine and one is for white. Providing guests with two varieties literally allows your guests to pick their poison.

You can get the how-to tutorial for my Halloween wine bags on my post DIY Quilted Wine Bag.

Plus be sure to download the free print-it-yourself Pick Your Poison Sign & Wine Tags so that you can label your wine bottles.

Also, when keeping your decor simple, the smallest of details can make a difference. As I stated at the beginning, the inspiration for this bar setup was the Witch’s shoes bottle stopper my parents sent me. It’s so cute and adds a perfect finishing touch to my bar styling. I didn’t have a stopper for the white wine so I made one by hot glueing a mini white pumpkin to a cork. Easy!

Wine stoppers are readily available at Homegoods, Target, Pottery Barn, etc. I have a collection of them and use them any time I open a bottle of wine.

5: Provide a Garnish for Your Drinks

It’s easy to forget about the lemons and limes for your cocktails, but they always add such a nice finishing touch to any mix drink. Or if you want a more season touch, think outside the box and maybe try adding something that goes with your theme. Here I added plastic skulls that I found at Target. See my post DIY Skull Drink Garnish for the easy how-to instructions.

Handmade fabric garlands are another way to dress up any space. I’ve never actually documented making one before because there are so many tutorials online; however, I often dress up my boxwood wreaths with different fabric garlands. I used the leftover black and gray fabrics from the Halloween Quilted Wine Bag. Wanting to keep it mostly black and gray,  I only added a few strands of orange and white fabrics to provide just the right amount of color to have the garland pop. I love the overall feel it creates.

I hope you found these tips helpful. Bar styling should be fun and not stressful. Keep it focused on your theme and you’ll be serving up fun and your guests will leave happy.

Download the Free Print-It-Yourself File(s) Used In this post

Pick Your Poison Sign & Wine Tags

Also featured, my Halloween Toppers/Tags available on Etsy.