Part 1: Building a bar and dance floor for my daughter's wedding

My daughter is getting married in August, and I'm building the bar and dance floor.

This is the first of what's going to be a build log — I'll post updates here as each piece comes together. Today's installment covers planning, the dance floor prep, and the bar progress so far.

Designing the bar with AI

I started with ChatGPT. I described what I wanted — a 10-foot semicircular bar, 42 inches tall, shelves on the bartender's side, clean curved face on the guest side — and asked it to sketch out a design. After a few iterations the proportions felt right.

Then I asked it to render the bar with a wood top and mauve painted sides and shelves. This might not be the actual color she will choose to paint it, but it was just for visualization at this point.

Then I took a photo of the actual area where the bar would sit, and asked ChatGPT to drop the rendered bar onto that photo, in the exact spot, with the right perspective. The result let me see what it would look like in the space, including the post that it needed to slightly wrap around.

Starting to build the bar

Now that I had an idea of size and shape, I started cutting the wood for the bar. I wanted it in three curved sections so I could transport it there and then connect them together, since it would have been way too long to transport as one piece. I've cut all three and here's what they look like:

Next up: cutting sides and routing slots for the shelves on the bartender's side. The three sections will then get joined onsite. I'll cover that part later when I start building those pieces.

The dance floor

The dance floor is made of 1 1/4 inch tongue-and-groove flooring — heavy, solid, and not the kind of thing you toss in the back of a truck because each 4x8 piece weighed over 100 lbs. I ended up cutting each of them in half so I could lift them a little easier, and built a rolling storage cart so I could move them around the garage without hurting myself. Photos of that and the actual laydown are coming in Part 2.

The setup will sit in a clearing in the trees with vertical posts and string lights overhead.

What's next

Part 2 will cover the rolling storage cart, the dance floor layout, and the bar construction. After that, it'll be install day. I'll track the whole thing here as it comes together.