Homemade wine = money saved = happy bride
Posted on April 24th, 2008 – 12:43 PMBy Kara McGuire
Hello, Aimee Blanchette here filling in for Kara who is in L.A. with her family for a wedding. Peak wedding season is officially upon us.
I contributed to KaBlog several months ago when I was in the early stages of planning my own wedding. Now I have just two months to go before the BIG DAY. The invitations have been sent and a few nights ago we finished bottling our second batch of wedding wine … yes, wedding wine.
Among all the other things on our plate, we somehow managed to talk ourselves into making our own wine to serve at the wedding. Here me out, though: doing so saved us money, we had fun together, the wine tastes darn good AND it fits our overall “theme” for a homemade wedding.
The idea came about when my future father-in-law (an avid home-brewer) offered to brew the beer for the wedding (he just finished his seventh batch of wedding brew). For a long time, I’d wanted to try making wine, but the whole process was really daunting. Would I have to ship in grapes, stomp them with my feet and let them age in oak barrels?
I looked into the process, talked to some people at the local wine/brew stores and realized I could make a high-quality wine for about the same cost of a bunch of “Three-Buck-Chuck.”
The process is actually pretty fool-proof IF you follow the instructions provided with the wine ingredient kit. There are a few places in the Twin Cities where you can find everything you’ll need to make wine from beginning to end. Northern Brewer is in St. Paul and Brew & Grow is in Spring Lake Park.
A basic wine-making kit costs $100 and includes all of the supplies you’ll need, minus the bottles and corks. We didn’t have to buy this kit, because we already had a beer-making kit, which includes many of the necessary supplies. We only had to supplement the beer-making kit with a few items.
Here’s a breadkdown of the estimated cost-savings:
Supplies (tools, cleaners and sanitizers, and corks) = $65
Recycled bottles = free
Wine ingredient kits = $225 for three kits
Total = $290
Each wine ingredient kit (which includes a juice concentrate, not grapes) costs between $55 and $165. Each kit makes 6 gallons of wine, or 30 bottles.
We made 90 bottles of wine for $290, or $3.22 per bottle. It was a lot of work, but totally worth it and it saved us a ton of money. If you are planning to make wine for your own wedding, start early. The earlier the better. We started the process about six months ago.
So readers, what lengths have you gone to save money for your wedding (or any other big event) and was it worth it? Later today, I have a story to share about how trying to be thrifty, or shall I say … cheap, backfired BIG TIME. And it has to do with my wedding dress.
5 Responses to "Homemade wine = money saved = happy bride"
We found a reception site that allows you to bring in your own caterer and alcohol. My mom is a bar owner so we got everything wholesale and pre-tax. We were able to offer an open bar of wine, beer, and good quality liquor for 250 people for under $1000. We had to bring everything including cups, all mixers, etc and choose how much of everything to get. That was a little stressful but worth it. Everyone had a blast and it was cheap.
We went with a newer reception site because it was less expensive and just as nice. Long (long, long) story short - they provided us horrible service, for which we were rewarded with free alcohol (kegs and wine!). It was cheap indeed, but I still cringe when I think about it. But, hey, it’s only a wedding. The actual marriage part has been wonderful!
We rented a hall that let us bring our own alcohol too. We also ran the entertainment — slide show at the beginning of the reception and music — from our iBook. (Sounds basic now, but at the time, it wasn’t). Got a great deal from Tierney Bros for a weekend of equipment rental — speakers, proxima, screen, etc. They said that most of their customers are businesses, which need the equipment during the week, so they’re able to offer better prices over the weekend, allowing non-business clients to become more familiar with them.
Thanks for the wine-making info, Aimee!
My wedding dress was actually a bridemaid’s dress in white. It cost about $150.
Well, my husband and I eloped for our wedding/honeymoon to Puerto Vallarta. When we came back, we had the reception in a family memebers backyard. We purchased kegs and booze for 200 people for under $400 and had Bob’s produce cater (they deliver). We had ham, fried chicken, 2 sides, salad and bread for under $400. Instead of a wedding cake, we had cupcakes, which were MUCH less expensive.
I know this wouldn’t fit into everyone’s idea of the perfect wedding, but it was perfect for us. The whole wedding/honeymoon/reception was less than $5000!
We took the money we saved and bought a house.
