Weddingbee Blog

Or: “Cake Tasting, Round 3″

And by cake, I mean wine. Sorry, I get alcohol and baked goods confused sometimes.

Remember that time we overdosed on cake? The day didn’t end there, in the halls of Wallingford Center, with flocks of children pointing their sticky little fingers at our abundance of cupcakes and our food-baby bellies. Oh no, we weren’t finished. After the second tasting, we rolled our way to the car and drove over to Bellevue. At this point, I was in such a sugar coma that the road looked like this:

Seriously, I have no idea what was going on here, or why I took this picture. We’ll blame the sugar.

Because my lovely, beautiful aunt is amazing and fun, she decided to throw a little wine-tasting get-together so that Mr. Candy Apple and I could taste our venue’s wines before the big day. Isn’t that awesome?! What a cool idea; I would never have thought of that! Just goes to show you that aunts really do know everything. Mr. Candy Apple and I brought her flowers to thank her, but my mom brought even prettier flowers. Dang her.

So, we rolled into the house (seriously, the dog was treating us like some sort of large balloon and corralled us through the door), and we were greeted by an amazing spread of food, wine, and…

Yes. More cupcakes. You guys, I literally could not look at them. I was already having a hard time keeping all the sugar down (What is wrong with me?! Seriously?!), and if I so much as looked at that frosting-laden, chocolatey goodness, I might have exploded. Or fainted. Or something. Aren’t they beautiful, though? I felt so bad not eating them because they were so gorgeous. Aunt S made them (of course, because she is a domestic goddess), and BM Golden Delicious frosted and topped them. Yes. She inherited her mom’s domestic-goddessness. I am jealous of their skills.

My mom bought all the wine (thanks, Mom!), and Aunt S picked it all up. Do I have the best family or what? S then bagged all the wines and put cute numbers on them so we couldn’t see what we were tasting. She printed out little “worksheets” that listed the different types (chardonnay, pinot gris, etc.), the number (corresponding to the number on the bag), and space for us to rank the wines (on a scale of 1–10) and write a little bit about what we liked or didn’t like about each wine. It was really fun! Some day I hope I can throw a gathering half as cool as this one.

Oh yeah. And there was food. Did I mention that? Yeah, I had about five chicken satays, and I may have eaten my weight in celery. Clearly, I am a cow and have two stomachs. One for sugar, one for everything else.

We drank a lot of wine. Because I was so full of cake, I only had teensy sips of each. I don’t think I even tasted a few of the wines. But it was so much fun! Although clearly my oenophilist skills need to be honed—my comments were along the lines of “tastes like metal” and “NO” and “grassy aftertaste,” as opposed to some of the other more seasoned, normal responses (”hint of oak”).

MOH/Sister Granny Smith likes her wine. She had just gotten off of a plane, and yet she still looks fab.

Some love from MOH Granny Smith and BM Golden Delicious! Gorgeous ladies. I love that I still have all my e-session makeup and hair in this picture—look at those luscious lashes. Wait, what am I saying? I look this fab every day.

And, the lovely ladies: Aunt S, me, BM Golden Delicious, MOH Granny Smith, and my mommy

Can you see a family resemblance? It’s the Scandinavian blood. Although, I am the pastiest one. Yikes. Stupid East Coast. The above picture was before our drunken group hug. It was amazing. Seriously, MOH Granny Smith teared up a bit. I might have, too, but I will blame that on the sugar. And the exhaustion. Not sure what the boys were doing while this picture was taken; probably talking about the wine. Like we should have been doing. Oops.

But seriously, this was a really fun thing to do! If you aren’t going to be able to taste the wines/beers/drinks with your catering company beforehand, I highly recommend throwing a party, or making someone else throw you a party, to taste the wine/beer/drinks! It’s really fun, and it got me all excited to think about what people would be drinking at our wedding. (We have lots of wine-lovers in the family, so I felt some pressure to pick good ones!) Definitely a fun part of planning and not stressful. In fact, it was probably the best way we could have ended our never-ending crazy day—with lots of booze.

Did you have any sort of tasting event with your family before the wedding? If you are planning a long-distance wedding, did you get a bit overloaded/overwhelmed with events and meetings like I did?