To all the haters

Courtesy of Junebug and Callie.

Come, crush a cup of wine

The wine and champagne at our wedding was extremely well-traveled, my droogs. Although you know me to be a liberal of the bleeding-heart variety, when my Nana mentioned that her friend from the Arizona Republicans owned a local vineyard with good wine, I was all about using the connection. After some research, I found that the Chandler, Ariz. vineyard, Kokopelli, offered good variety (such as I know it, but to me Trader Joe's has plenty of wine variety. I'm a beer person, myself) at a better price than the Shenandoah vineyards I had been researching. Sourcing from Kokopelli meant that we were still purchasing from a small, locally-owned (local to Arizona, that is) business, plus we were getting a little West-coast representation in the mix.

But the best part about the choice was that it wasn't something I had to worry about after I made the initial decision of how many bottles of which wine and champagne to get, because my mom made all the arrangements and then trucked the boxes of wine over on my parents' cross-country drive to the big event. Thanks mom and dad!

After consulting Alli the chef, we decided that we'd buy four bottles of wine, two red and two white, plus one bottle of champagne, for each table. I sent my mom and Nana on the chore of all chores - to go to a tasting to decide which whites and reds to choose. We ended up with the merlot, the pinot grigio and the raspberry champagne, Imperial Kir. The Kokopelli people threw in some extra bottles (any comm major knows that it's all about who you know), and a specially decorated bottle of champagne for Eric and I to crack open on our first wedding anniversary.

If you were in attendance, you may have noticed this little one, Alison, whom I babysat all through college in Arlington, coming around to your table to collect corkscrews.

Just last night, Ali and her mom Sheree gave us this awesome trivet, which Ali and Sheree made using the Kokopelli corkscrews from our wedding day. Isn't that the coolest thing? So don't toss those special-event wine tops. Reuse them for a trivet or corkscrew bulletin board.

Even the wine snobs, who shall remain nameless, complimented us on the wine. Although I was afraid we'd run out of drinks, we had probably 10 or 12 bottles of wine left over, and Eric can tell you about what happened with all the leftover beer.

But one word of advice, my droogies, if you're planning a big ol' stressful party: put someone in charge of cutlery, plates and corkscrews. That's what we had the most trouble with at our party. The devil's in the details, and I think we handled the snags like pros, but it would have been nice to have a functioning corkscrew or five. Elizabeth heroically bought a few at the campsite's store, but they broke after a while. I have no idea where my mom found another one.

I'll let Eric elaborate on the beer, since he's the expert. But I have to give a little ink to the non-alcoholic drinks, including the Keystone and Coors that mysteriously appeared on the drink tables. I'm not naming names (Ramie). Hey, at least it wasn't diet soda. I swore to Eric that no diet Coke would pass that threshold, and to my knowledge none did. If you know otherwise, don't tell me. I'd like to keep that fantasy alive. I really hate NutraSweet and aspartame. That's all my mom's fault. Plus, I was hypnotized not to drink soda. Seriously. By this guy.

Anyway, we did have some drinks for the kids and non-drinkers in the crowd. Obviously, we had water. But we didn't want to buy a bunch of bottled-water, because of the litter and expense. We thought about getting a Water N Ice-style cooler (they have water stores at every corner in Tempe, but the only one in practically the whole DC area is in Bethesda). But we came up with a really good idea, if I do say so myself. We bought a Brita faucet filter, and just affixed it to the kitchen sink at the reception hall. That worked marvelously, because we were able to fill the water coolers, and use purified water to make other drinks.

Mom and Mel were in charge of the other drinks, and they looked awesome. My mom brought this awesome Western-style (at least I always associate it with backyard family pool parties in Tempe) drink dispenser for the lemonade. The mamas bought lemon juice concentrate - with some sugar already in it - at Costco, added water and ice and some sliced lemons. It looked very awesome, and tasted good on a hot June day. The mamas also made iced tea - with plain black tea bags - and put some ice water out in these really cute drink dispensers. I got to keep the yellow one.

Mel and Rick donated some leftover drinks from the rehearsal dinner, and I think it's safe to say that everyone's thirst was well-quenched. Some more than others, if you know what I mean.

Yesterday

Happy four-year kissaversary.