Weddingbee Blog

Thanks to the help of your votes, hive, we were able to narrow down our list of choices to our top five choices that we would serve for our signature cocktail tasting/birthday party. We took the top three choices from the votes, and then I picked my favorite and Mr. Ly picked his favorite. The top three choices were: Poinsettia, Kir Royale, & French 75. I chose a Pimm’s Royale—because I love Pimm’s Cups, and I thought I would really like a Pimm’s Royale. Mr. Ly actually went from the comments section and chose Hive member mholden’s suggestion, the Honey Badger (I think he just liked the name!).

After a delicious and fun dinner with many of my closest friends, family and their significant others, we headed back to the Lyre residence where we had our champagne chilled, liquor bought and glasses all set up—we were ready to go.

Our drink supplies for the night (minus the champagne)

Vintage style champagne glasses

However, most of the guys would rather play Cards Against Humanity.

Inappropriate game play over champagne cocktails? C’mon guys!

Not being swayed, I got to work mixing champagne cocktails. First up was the Kir Royale, which is a half oz of Creme de Cassis and champagne. It was a lovely red color, and tasted very sweet.

I was able to pull some guys away for a quick tasting, but it was short lived.

The general consensus was that this drink was very tasty, but very sweet. No one didn’t like it, so the Kir Royale was off to a good start.

Next up was the French 75. This is made up of 1.5 oz of dry gin, lemon juice, and a half tsp of powdered sugar, topped off with champagne.

Not a favorite, but not terrible. The last picture is our “not impressed” face—a la McKayla Maroney

As you can see, it wasn’t a group favorite, and as our signature drink, it didn’t have the wide appeal that we would want for all of our guests. I know you can’t please everyone, but this didn’t please enough at our party of 15, it probably wouldn’t be a favorite at our party of 175. I thought it was ok, but Mr. Ly (as you can see by his reaction) was not a fan.

Our third drink was the Poinsettia. Aptly named for the winter, and an easy drink of a half oz of cranberry juice, a quarter oz of triple sec, topped with champagne.

Everyone tried this drink, but for some reason, we only have pictures of us drinking. By this point, things were getting fuzzy…

This was an immediate hit with the group, it was fruity and easy to drink, not too sweet. At the time this was the group’s favorite choice, and it should be noted that this was also the Hive’s #1 pick.

Then we moved on to our personal choices. I chose to the make the Pimm’s Royale first.

The color was off putting, and the taste was not well received.

This was the least favorite of the group. I think we made only two glasses of this, and we probably had almost all of those glasses left before we dumped them. No one besides me would drink a full glass of this, so there’s no way we could have it at the wedding. Oh well. At least I have lots of Pimm’s left over to make myself a Pimm’s cup whenever I want!

Last we had the Honey Badger. Everyone was looking forward to this drink, mostly due to the name, but also because this drink sounded delicious!

Again, everyone tried it, but we didn’t get a shot of anyone else drinking it!

This drink is delicious, the honey syrup was so easy to make, and St. Germain is soooooo good. The general consensus is that this drink is good, really really good. But more than one of these might be too much sweetness for our drink. I think it can be adjusted—less honey, more tasty goodness.

After that, we had chocolate Nutella cupcakes with salted caramel frosting and celebrated my latest spin around the sun.

When we meet with our caterer to discuss our menu and drink selections, we’ll see what options we have. We are torn between the Poinsettia and a (slightly less sweet) Honey Badger, but we’d really be happy with either of these options.

The rest of my birthday weekend was just amazing. Mr. Ly surprised me a with a trip to Brooklyn in a fabulous AirBnB apartment, complete with dinner at my favorite restaurant with my favorite Brooklyn (and NJ) friends. Mr. Ly managed to surprise me, finally(!!) and I had the best birthday weekend!

Beautiful views of Brooklyn in our beautiful AirBnB apartment + great friends + mimosas on a porch on a beautiful sunny morning = happiest birthday girl, ever.

So that was how I spent my last birthday as an unmarried lady! Anyone else do anything exciting for their last birthday as a single lady?