A Sunday Kind of Love: Brewing Beers

Early in the fall, one of our groomsmen, Kevin, very generously offered to brew us our own beer for the wedding.  We didn't know if we were allowed to bring in outside alcohol into the venue, and since it's home brewed, we weren't sure if they would even serve it.  We decided to not even approach our venue about it, and had it at our rehearsal lunch instead.  Our rehearsal lunch venue is BYO, so we were just planning on driving up to the only Trader Joe's in NJ that sells alcohol and buying lots of wine & beer for our guests - now we only had to worry about the wine!

He asked each of us for our favorite beer and brewed us each our very own batch of "wedding beer."  I chose Raison D'Etre by Dogfish Head Brewery and Mr. Ly's favorite is Sam Adam's Cherry Wheat.

Over the next few months, we would get text messages with photos like this:

The Raison D'etre style beer near the end of it's brewing

Testing out the Cherry Wheat 

He came up with names for each of them, and when they were finished, they got their own labels as well:

Look familiar?  He used the same image we used for our Save the Dates, which is a free printable from The Wedding Chicks.  I think the labels match the beers so very well.  Mine is dark and serious (and so lovely!).  And if you look at the ABV, you know that's a serious kind of beer.  While's Mr. Ly's is light and funny, and refreshing.  Which both describes what Mr. Ly is like and how the beer tastes.  

Our guests at the rehearsal lunch LOVED them.  They were a big hit, and people really enjoyed both of our choices. 

We started out with 2 cases of each beer, and over the course of the afternoon our guests drank enough that we ended up taking home only a case of each.  I wish more of our guests could have enjoyed them, but I am so grateful that we were gifted this, and all of our bridal party and family got to enjoy them. Of course, I haven't tried any of them yet, they apparently are both VERY strong beers, but I can't wait to try them both out this summer!!

Was anyone else gifted something personal and useful for your wedding?

I pre-capped our recaps with a big announcement!
Recaps began with our Same Day Edit video.
I needed to get some perspective the week of the wedding.