Used: Double-sided coasters, mini-tags, square label with necker
Our dear friends, Donna and Joe's wedding took place in a farmhouse on the Central Coast of California. It was a mix of fun and elegant with plenty of handmade touches. Joe silk screened the invitations, save the date cards and programs on kraft paper. This helped set the theme for the coasters, mini
Our wedding gift was helping to
They bought silk-screened pint glasses from a glass company but were worried that everyone would mix up/lose their glasses (not good since that was each guest's glass and favor.) They were also looking for a clever way to do their escort tags. The
For the 22 oz beer
Finally, they uploaded a double-sided coaster to carry the theme and add pops of color. It made a fun and useful
Very shortly after I proposed to my longtime girlfriend I knew that I wanted to incorporate my homebrew hobby into my wedding. Let me introduce myself, my name is Kevin Torok. (Editor's note: Kevin worked at GrogTag in 2014 before leaving to mold young minds as a teacher. Bet chemistry class is fun with Mr. Torok.) I wanted to share my experience brewing beer for my wedding and using GrogTag to help me showcase the beer to my guests so I decided to write about the entire process in the hopes that people can learn from my mistakes and successes.
I decided on giving out 22oz “bomber” bottles as wedding favors instead of something more traditional. Hand brewed, hand bottled using recycled bottles, made using recipes that myself and my future wife would create, I knew that it would set our wedding apart from other weddings and give the guests something to remember. It also would be a lot of fun for me and give me an excuse to scale up my system for the brews.
It took a long time for me to decide on recipes so I only had time for one test batch before brewing the three different beers I would use for my wedding favors. I took the whole thing so seriously; it really felt like I was starting my own nano-brewery. Considering that many of my wedding guests were not what you would categorize as craft beer drinkers I had to make sure that there was something for everyone. Once the recipes were finalized I spent many hours brewing with my fiancée. Three separate
So I went label shopping. I researched several options, printing at home, going to a local print shop, or go to one of the several websites that offer the service. I had yet to start my GrogTag job so I wanted to make sure I spent my money wisely, with my budget already being stretched thin from all the wedding expenses. I settled on GrogTag for several reasons: First, the pricing was very competitive compared the other custom beer label sites. Second, the quality of the website just blew the competition out of the water.
So I went with GrogTag, now I needed to decide on three different designs. I played with the website for hours, trying out different labels, uploading different images until I narrowed it down to a few options that I could pitch to my fiancée. She liked them a lot but wasn’t quite sold on what I had come up with. She said, “They look great but they don’t look like us”. We were in luck though; a friend came over and brought his significant other – who happened to be a graphic designer. In an hour we had whipped up a custom label design that took the theme straight from our wedding invitations. One out of three labels were complete! We only had four more days to complete the last two designs but my highly efficient and motivated graphic design friend finished both of them right in the nick of time. I placed my order, choosing the cheapest shipping option, but being so close to where GrogTag’s are shipped, my order arrived the next day!
The labels looked incredible; they turned out even better than I imagined they would when seeing them on my computer screen. The final step of preparation for my homebrewed wedding favors was to bottle and label thirty gallons of beer. I knew this was going to be a daunting task, but the only prior experience I have had bottling was five bottles that I did when I first got my Blichmann bottling gun over a year ago. I knew I was going to need help bottling and labeling over 160 22oz bottles and I only had a short window of
The day of my wedding was a blur, I had to chug a lot of alcohol to calm my nerves, and spoke to many, many people for a brief amount of time. Right before the guests were to leave my beer was
The amount of planning, brewing, bottling, designing, and labeling man-hours that went into my homebrew wedding favors must have been nearing 100 but I don’t regret a thing. The weeks following my wedding I was tagged in many Facebook pictures of people enjoying my homebrew with their family and friends and they all seemed to love it. Any other wedding favor would have been forgotten after the guests left the venue. I am glad I decided to brew beer for my wedding favors and I am happy that GrogTag was able to provide me with professional quality labels to do so.
Thank you GrogTag!