Save Hundreds Or Thousands on Your Wedding Bill – Make Your Own Wine
Several days ago, I came across an article in a local newspaper discussing ways to save money on weddings. With the tight economic times today, everyone seems to be tightening their belts and looking for ways to save money on just about everything. The article I found was interesting and discussed a number of different things the bride and groom can do to significantly cut costs on their wedding day while still creating wonderful memories for themselves and guests alike on their special day.
Many weddings today include complimentary wine for their guests, usually a bottle of white and a bottle of red wine at each table. Considering the retail markup of wine and spirits at convention halls and hotels where many weddings take place, this alone can be a major expense for the bride and groom.
How would you like to save possibly thousands of dollars on your alcohol expense at your wedding? You can do it! But first, let’s do some numbers here:
The generally accepted way to calculate how much wine you will need at your wedding is to figure on half a bottle of wine per guest. Therefore if you have 200 guests, you will need to pay for at least 100 bottles of wine. At a cost of at least $20.00 per bottle, your wine bill alone will be over $2,000.00!
What can you do to greatly reduce this figure? Make your own wine! For as little as $3.00 a bottle, you can serve your guests at your wedding very good quality wine if you make it yourself. With the selection of home winemaking kits today, you can serve those attending the wedding excellent wine for a fraction of the cost. Most wine kits will make 30 bottles of wine and can be had for as little as $45.00. With this in mind, if you have 200 guests, you’ll want to have two white wine kits and two red wine kits for a total of $180.00. Another $60.00 will cover the bottles, corks and labels for your wine. The maximum you will have to spend on serving your guests wine will be about $240.00. Compare that to the more than two thousand dollars you will end up paying by purchasing wine at the marked up price you will be charged by the facility that hosts your reception!
If you don’t have the space at home, many wine supply stores can also provide you the use of their premises to ferment your wine at a very small additional price. They will do most of the work for you as well. Some even offer Wedding Packages and can provide advice on wine selection, local laws and regulations that might need to be aware of, and provide you with information on the facilities that will be cooperative with you when you want to serve your guests your own wine.
As well as saving money, making your own wine provides you the opportunity to add another personal touch to your wedding day. With some of the money you’ve saved, you could think about having your wine bottled in special designer bottles with your own custom labels – a wonderful souvenir of your day that your guests can take home with them.
Related Articles