

We weren’t planning to do a signature drink until we were at a Malaysian restaurant recently and noticed all the yummy sounding lychee drinks. We’ll give a little nod to the birth place of Miss GB 2.0 through a tasty alcoholic beverage, which will be named after a play on our last names.

You know how amusement parks and fairs always have vendors selling glowing stuff of all sorts after dark, from neon glow sticks to blinking yo-yos? Yeah, I was one of those kids who got to envy everyone else’s glow instead of enjoying it firsthand. Practicality was taught at a young age in my family, and the ROI of glowing items just don’t quite make the cut with such short lived glory. While the lesson was well learned, it must have left me with a bit of a void, which I am apparently trying to fill by ordering enough glowing thingamabobs to make up for my entire childhood.
Let me present to you, the glowing ice cube (in tea, of course):


From the beginning, I’ve thought about making signature cocktails for our wedding. This is a pretty trendy thing right now, but for good reason: it’s fun and it saves money, because you can serve hard alcohol, but you don’t have to have an entire open bar.
I was first inspired by bar menus I found various knot bios. They all seemed to be variants of the same thing: “Something Old” (gin and tonic), “Something New” (crantini), “Something Borrowed” (something from the couple’s past), “Something Blue” (Electric Lemonade). I knew I wanted to do something different, so Mr. Cream Puff and I had a brainstorming session. We toyed around with giving them a San Francisco theme (”San Francisco Bay Breeze”), but in the end decided to name all of the drinks after our pets, who aren’t included in the wedding in any other way. Here is my completed bar menu, which is being printed as we speak through Vista Print as oversized postcards:

I never realized there were so many darn signs that need to be made for a wedding, good grief. Our table numbers I decided to do as simple table tents, but I wanted something cute and raised for the candy buffet, a la Mrs. Bell Pepper’s.
V. small post today - the sign I made to put atop the bar, to promote our “specialty” drinks. Ironically, though, it took me ages to make. I could NOT get the spacing right to save my life.
What’s funner than fun? Creating a signature drink. What’s funner than that? Going through an entire bottle of Ketel One in order to perfect it.Last night, we headed to a friend’s house, where we tapped the skills of an ex-bartender to put together our “Something Old, Something New…” drink menu (the idea for which I blatantly ripped off of Mrs. Raspberry). First, however, I had to gather up some totally unnecessary recent purchases…
Mr. Peacock and I are throwing the party of our lives. Every vendor has been considered according to how much they can add to the party - band, caterer, bar options, decor. We want everyone to stay until the last dance and then keep breaking it down all the way to the after party.
When we were considering Medinah for our venue, one of my primary concerns was transportation. I could swing the costs for the bridal party, but renting buses for the entire wedding would be a stretch. Medinah isn’t terribly close to any hotels and none of our friends or family live in the immediate area. I knew that many guests would miss our ceremony or be worrying about getting home if we didn’t rent transportation on a grand scale.
You know how you decide on silly little details long before you ever think about big important ones? Or is that just me?
Well one of my must-have details was the signature drink. I was introduced to the idea at one of my friend’s (and bridesmaid’s) wedding last September. I helped her come up with her signature drinks and the names- a delightful little pink bellini which we dubbed the Blushing Bride, and a cappuccino martini named the Grinning Groom. Cute, no?
With the color scheme decided, it was an easy decision for me to pick the “Wild Maine Blueberry Martini”! Mr. Tiramisu loved the idea too, but asked why did I get to have all of the fun? He wanted his home state represented too, and so our second signature drink was born, a favorite of his after his Wednesday night sailing races in Annapolis - the Dark and Stormy. The Dark and Stormy actually comes from Bermuda, but who’s going to complain about free alcohol? It’s easily made with dark rum and ginger beer (a lot like root beer), and is quite delicious.
Our venue has a corkage fee on champagne, so of course, we’re coming fully armed with magnums to save a little dough . A magnum is 1.5 liters, or 2 full bottles of regular champagne. This weekend we set out to find out how many glasses we could pour from a magnum… I suppose a quick Google search would have given us the answer, but where’s the fun in that?
A great way to add a personal touch to your reception is to have a signature drink. When we started planning I did a bit of looking for inspiration and found this lavender champagne on MarthaStewart.com.