Bride & Groom Signature Cocktails {Wedding Wednesday}

When we started planning the wedding, it was really important to us to have a fun cocktail hour with lots of yummy food and some signature cocktails for our guests. We knew that we’d be off getting our pictures with the wedding party and there needed to be something during that time to keep the guests happy and get the party started.

We were lucky that the weather was so great that day, because the guests naturally spread out onto the patio and lawn for cocktail hour.

The idea of signature cocktails came about months before while Garrett’s best man Brian was over for dinner. He used to be a bartender and is all about making up interesting concoctions, so we had him back for another night of cocktail testing. We lined up the dining room table with small glasses, pulled out his bartending books and started making samples of each drink for all three of us to try. In the end, we came up with two drinks that were perfect for the occasion.

rosey-raspberry-spritzer-wedding-signature-cocktail

For my drink I went with a Rosey Raspberry Spritzer, which is based on one of my favourite summertime drinks, rose wine and club soda. Beringer’s White Zinfandel is the perfect one for this with its bright peachy pink colour and strawberry rhubarb taste.

long-island-iced-tea-wedding-signature-cocktail

Garrett picked a smaller version of the Long Island Iced Tea. He tried it for the first time on his bachelor party in Montreal. It’s a potent drink, so we asked our bartender to serve it in rock glasses, rather than the larger glasses you typically see it poured in at restaurants.

(I’ll share the recipes at the end of the post)

I designed a simple sign for the bar to allow guests to see what the signature drinks were.

In the big beautiful wooden bar in the lounge area, we popped the sign into this silver metallic frame from Garrett’s mom and paired it with flickering mercury glass votive candles and a big flower arrangement (in a mercury glass vase!).

The signature cocktails were a huge hit! We ran out of mine before the cocktail hour was over, but the bartender was sweet enough to hold back a couple of them so that I could at least try it when we arrived for the dinner hour. Garrett’s cocktail lasted until about halfway through the dancing.

For the rest of the bar, we had more of the wine and red wine we served at the tables, as well as mixed drinks, a couple different types of beers and bottles of our favourite Thornbury Cider as a nod to my family’s hometown.

Our venue let us have the option of buying our own alcohol (with a special events liquor license) and then hiring the bartenders they recommended. This was the best option for us because it let us pick exactly what we wanted for drinks and allowed us to return any unopened bottles back to the store. In the end, it easily saved us thousands of dollars compared to typical arrangements with wedding venues where they charge you per guest per hour regardless of whether they are drinking.

Our bartenders were an awesome husband and wife team, Wayne and Leslie, that really stole the show. They were funny, kept the bar going during the busy cocktail hour and gave out taxi numbers to guests as the evening went on. Next time I run any kind of event that involves a bar, you better believe they’ll be the first people I call. (Wayne was actually the bartender at the hoedown I went to at WaterStone over four years ago. I even have a picture of him in a bandana, ha!)

When serving alcohol to guests, it’s so important that you feed them as well. We made sure that we had plenty of appetizers for guests during the cocktail hour. It helped pass the time while we were away getting our photos taken and it ensured that our guests weren’t drinking on empty stomachs.

We served a big dinner, but with all the dancing (and drinking too) we wanted guests to have something later in the evening. Around 10pm, our caterers put together this awesome poutine bar with fresh fries, pulled pork, Montreal smoked meat, cheese curds and gravy.