Planning a wedding is no easy feat. There is a lot that goes into the process. From picking out a venue and choosing the perfect attire to developing a menu and ordering drinks, organizing nuptials can be a bit of a grind. All the hustle and bustle of wedding planning leaves the bride and groom bone-tired so much so that they forget to enjoy the moments before their big day. To ensure that doesn’t happen with you and your partner, we decided to help you with at least one aspect of your ceremony; the drink menu.
The Drink Menu at a Wedding
Serving the right beverage at a wedding is essential for more than one reason. First of all, it keeps the guests content. On top of that, it gives the celebration classiness, of course depending on the wedding style. Obviously, if someone wants to have an outdoor summer wedding, they will more likely like to keep things light and breezy, so they don’t need to look for luxe drinks. Perhaps a beer keg will fit perfectly well in such a setting. But if you want to have an elegant ceremony that exudes a fairylike charm, you must choose the drinks you serve wisely.
Typically, this choice comes down to two options; champagne and wine. While both are excellent choices, picking one is necessary; otherwise, your bank will suffer. To help you do that, here is a rundown of all the details regarding wine and champagne to help you select the right beverage for your big day.
Picking a Drink for Your Wedding
Before we dive into the details of wine and champagne, let’s get one thing out of the way; you don’t need to do this or that for your wedding beverage. That is, you can have a variety of options for your ceremony. That way, you can please the guests and have particular drinks for special moments. For example, champagne for toast and Pinot Noir for refreshment. And that’s just to give you an idea.
The winery world is incredibly vast, which means you have an even more extensive array of wines and alcoholic beverages to make your wedding’s drink menu.
Knowing the Wines
Primarily there are four types of wine categories, from which you can pick several to create your beverage list.
White Wines
- Riesling
- Pinot Grigio
- Chardonnay
Red Wines
- Shiraz
- Pinot Noir
- Cabernet Sauvignon
- Merlot
Sparkling Wines
- Champagne
- Cava
- Prosecco
Rosé Wines
- White Zinfandel
- Sangiovese
- Grenache
From the names mentioned above, you can pick any two or more from at least two categories. If you wish to go a little over the top with your wedding beverages, you can go for all four glasses of wine and pick one from each section. For example, you can go with Chardonnay from white wines, Cabernet Sauvignon from red wines, champagne from sparkling wines, and Grenache from Rose wines.
Things To Consider When Choosing A Wine
There are many things to consider when choosing a wine for your wedding, or any other occasion for that matter.
Budget
It goes without saying that having a preset budget is crucial when it comes to picking a beverage for your big day. Without a fixed amount to spend on drinks, you cannot make the right choice.
As a general wedding planning thumb rule, set 15% of your total budget for drinks. It may seem like a lot, but you’ll need it. More importantly, you need to remember that drinks are critical in keeping guests entertained at a wedding, so you need to play your cards right.
Serving
Another important consideration when selecting a drink for a wedding ceremony is the serving size. You need to make sure that the order you place is enough for the number of guests at your wedding. Let’s say you plan to have an intimate ceremony with 50 people.
For 50 people, you will need at least 50 glasses of drinks.
Here is a breakdown of volumes in wine bottles
- A 750 ml wine bottle serves five glasses. This means you will need ten bottles of regular wine bottles.
- The same is the case with a champagne bottle. It serves five glasses per bottle. This means you will need ten bottles for 50 people.
The breakdown mentioned above clearly indicates that serving wise wine and champagne are neck-to-neck. In other words, you need similar quantities of both alcohol varieties, no matter which one you choose to go with.
Guests
Your guests should be a key consideration in your wine selection because you want to make them happy as they’ll be the ones mainly drinking. Of course, that doesn’t mean you should account for your preference, but you must think about what the popular vote would be in the choice of drinks.
If you have people from the elite class, those who know their wines, you might want to go with one towards the higher end. Wines like Cabernet Sauvignon or Chardonnay should work fine in such a scenario.
If the attendees of your ceremony come from diverse social backgrounds, you should have a range of options, including Riesling, champagne, and merlot.
Taste
Last but not the least, the taste of a wine or champagne is a critical factor to keep in mind when picking a drink for your wedding.
Wines and champagnes can have similar tastes if you don’t choose the right varieties. Champagnes tend to be more sweet and fruity than most of the wines. But you cannot discount the possibility of selecting a sweet wine because those exist as well. To have a diverse range of flavors at your wedding, go with drinks that have different taste notes.
As already mentioned, champagne is generally sweet, so if you serve that for toasting, you might want to go with a more acidic wine for refreshments, such as a white wine. Or, if you go for drier champagne (although you shouldn’t because when people sip champagne, they expect sweetness), you can choose a sweeter wine.
Final Verdict
To be fair, wines and champagnes shouldn’t be compared when choosing a drink for your wedding because both represent different things. That is, wine is more associated with having a divine culinary experience, while champagne is more about celebration. Therefore, it’s better to have both varieties at your ceremony.