A Westervin Wedding: Pick Your Poison

What’s a wedding without refreshments? Well, I guess it’s still a wedding, but the point is everybody loves a good wedding bar. It took us a while to figure out exactly how we wanted to handle drinks at the wedding, and we’re pretty happy with how it all turned out.

To begin with the details, we had paper straws and little manilla price tags for drink labels. Guests were instructed to write their name on a tag using carpenter pencils (made in Illinois), and place their tag around their drink with the colorful rubber bands.

For the bar itself, we decided to let our guests choose their own adventure! They had the option of filling their mason jar with some local craft beer from the keg, mixing their favorite drink, or creating one of our suggested cocktails. We had five suggested cocktails–one for each major spirit–and we tried to keep them all pretty simple, with drinks that just required a few common ingredients and a little mixing.

We typed the recipes on little cards, which we placed in front of all the necessary ingredients, including homemade syrups, liquors in vintage decanters, various flavored bitters, and mason jars of fresh fruit, mint, and other garnishes.

You can try one of our cocktails yourself! The Perfect Lu was our suggested whiskey cocktail, which we named after my grandmother Lu, who sadly couldn’t make it to the wedding.

The Perfect Lu

start with 1/2 glass of ice and add:

• 2 dashes angostura bitters
• 2 dashes celery bitters
• 1/2 oz. honey syrup
• 1 oz. dry vermouth
• 1 oz. sweet vermouth
• 1 oz. bourbon

stir & enjoy with a slice of lemon

Adjusted from the Perfect Louis

And if bourbon’s not your thing, you can try our rum cocktail:

Añejo Highball

Start with a half glass of ice
add:

• 2 dashes of Angostura bitters
• 1/4 oz lime juice
• 1/2 oz orange liqueur (Cointreau)
• 1.5 oz aged rum (El Dorado 5yr)
• fill with ginger ale

stir and enjoy with a slice or two of lime!

We also had a couple of pickle platters. These were apparently a big hit, seeing as how I didn’t even get to try a single pickle before they were all gone! We also created little fabric cocktail napkins from an assortment of different fabric pieces and pinking shears.

Above is the station for our suggested gin cocktail:

Gin Daisy

start with a glass of ice and add:

• 1/4oz simple syrup
• 1/2oz homemade grenadine
• 1/2 lemon juice
• 1/2oz lime juice
• 2oz gin
• splash of seltzer

stir everything together and enjoy with fresh berries and mint.

And if that doesn’t do it for you, here’s our easy drinking vodka cocktail, named after Grandpa Ken:

The Ken Kooler

start with 1/2 glass of ice and add:

• 1.5oz vodka
• splash of homemade grenadine
• fill with lemonade

enjoy with a garnish of fresh mint

Jess muddles strawberries for the mezcal cocktail (recipe coming soon).

We also had a tequila cocktail…tasty:

La Paloma

Start with a half glass of ice
add:

• pinch of salt
• 1/2oz lime juice
• 2oz tequila
• fill with grapefruit soda (about two-thirds full)

stir and enjoy

We can’t get all the credit, though. We have to say a big, happy THANK YOU to Ben and Jed for all their help and hard work in preparing and arranging the bar, and for helping our guests get started on their bar adventures! We couldn’t have done it without you two.