Poker Night... Part 3

Happy Sunday, everybody! You join me today as I reminisce on another poker night that I really should have told you about earlier, but life got in the way. So without further prevarication, I give you... poker night part 3.

Another Saturday, another poker event, another haze of drunken tomfoolery, and very good it was too – and not just because I won two of the rounds and finished second in the other. To be fair, I should have won that one too, but I got a bit carried away on the penultimate hand and betted when I should have gotten out.

Poker sure is fun, and we had a great old laugh, but one of the things I look forward to at least as much as the poker and the laughter… is the booze. I almost said there that it is an unwritten rule that you need to bring some special hard liquor with you, but frankly not everyone does. David brought a bottle of champagne to celebrate his new job appointment and a bottle of RuaVieja – which oddly enough has featured on these pages before (twice in fact) while Chris and Dave just took care of cider for themselves. I decided on a few bottles of whisky for everyone to try – Jim McEwan’s Symphony No 1, a blend which continues to go down very nicely, a Glenmorangie Original that I hadn’t opened yet, and… the one I’d been waiting to open for about a month… the Suntory Hakushu 12.

I’d also requested that Dave collect a few bottles of Double Maxim from his local Morrison’s, which he was kind enough to do.

So it was straight in with a beer, and the beginning of the poker.

The first game always seems to be a bit cagey, as the various players try to feel out the parameters – how cautious should you be? What effect are the specific blinds going to have? What are the playing styles of each player?

I won the first two or three hands, and it was looking good. We all betted cautiously, but I started to grow bolder as I saw that I seemed to be the only one getting decent hands. Chris was folding almost straight away every time, and Dave was bluffing when he had absolutely nothing. He won one or two like that though, and in the end it came down to me and him.

I’d almost finished my second beer by this point, had started a glass of the Symphony (no 1! 46% ABV), and was alternating sips of that with gulps of David’s champagne. So as we reached the closing stages of the first game, I realised I was on the way to being drunk – this was before dinner, of course. Three to four pints of water were in order.

That worked a treat, but not quick enough to prevent me betting big on the penultimate hand when I had nothing. A minute or two after that it was all over, and I knew it had all been my fault.

After popping out to the local curry house for tea, I went on to win games two and three [bit of poetry there for you]. I can’t recall any details about these, but I know there was a great deal of raucous laughter and smutty humour. I haven’t laughed so much and so heartily in a long time. David tells me that as we were clearing up afterwards, Chris mistook pictures of playing cards on the box of the poker set for real cards, and tried to pick them up. He then put on his glasses and went to sleep on the sofa. Dave and I joked that he had put on his glasses so that he could see his dreams better.

Game two was preceded by the opening of the Glenmorangie Original, which is 40% ABV, and 10 years old . I’d only tried this once before, and hadn’t been impressed, but there was a possibility the contents of that bottle had been compromised over time, since I was told the cork had atrophied. My bottle was an impulse buy when I saw it at £6 off on a trip to Tesco. I was never going to pay full price, and that discount gave me just enough incentive to give it a go. At first taste it seemed thin and uninteresting, but since the poker night in question was some time ago now, I can inform you that it became an example of another single malt that I came to enjoy more thoroughly by the glass.

It is fruity and sweet, and one that I’d encourage you to pick up if you see it on a £25 offer again. I probably will. It scores a remarkable 94 in Jim Murray’s 2013 Whisky Bible, though I wouldn’t quite rate it that highly.

The nose revealed pleasing orange notes while the palate brought sherbet and sweet, sweet barley. Far from being something to write off as an everyday drink, it came to be a treat that I actually preferred most times to the Talisker 10 (read more about that in the coming weeks), that I picked up the next time Tesco had some offers on. It doesn’t place all that highly on the all time single malt rankings, but for a malt at the very lower end of the price spectrum it punches way above its weight.

Back to the poker night, and finally it was the moment I’d been waiting for: the opening of the Suntory Hakushu 12 (43% ABV). I had toyed with the idea of not bringing this along at all, since my bottle of Maker’s Mark had lasted only two poker nights, proving so popular that people just inhaled it. Nevertheless, what’s the point in buying something a bit special if you keep it to yourself? (and anyway, the faster you drink it, the sooner you can buy something else…)

Suntory is the oldest Japanese distiller, and actually owns three distilleries – Yamazaki, Hibiki and Hakushu – each producing their own highly regarded single malts. I’ve tried the Hibiki once before, but this was my first purchase of an actual bottle of Japanese malt, a decision I took based on reviews and scoring from a number of experts and review sites.

The bottle certainly looks the part, but I was a little disappointed to find that it is sealed by a screwcap – a better class of screwcap, I’ll grant you, than the standard one you get with a blended scotch, but still… this is a single malt -  and I was hoping to hear that sound I love so much – you know the one; the squeak and the pop.

Luckily, the contents make up for that one moment of denial. I know Japanese whisky is renowned for its quality, and here I can see why. It reminds me a little of my favourite malt, Caol Ila – though I don’t think it’s quite as good as that. Even so, it reaches a pretty high standard. There’s a lot going on, with a good deal of complexity and drinkability, so was looking forward to getting to know it a little better over the next few months before I come to decide what I’m going to get next.

If you’re looking for some amateurish tasting notes, I’d say it’s soft and fruity on the palate, with a little bit of peat and a slightly bitter finish – which is where it fails against the Caol Ila.

In the end, Suntory Hakushu 12 did not develop into the favourite dram that my over excitable anticipatory gland hoped it might be. Sure, it was fresh, clean and sweet but that bitter finish continued to let it down. It was however my second favourite out of 5 when it made an appearance at the Manchester Whisky Club’s Japanese Whisky Night. It remains to be seen what that says about Japanese whisky in general. I remain keen to try more and, as ever, look forward to the next poker night.

More drinking in the shower

apres golf

Just a quick post this week. I figured it was about time we had an update on one of my favourite pastimes; shower drinking. Sometimes I have a shower even when I don’t need one – just so that I can take a drink in with me*. You can read the original post on this activity here. Now, assuming you’ve done that, let’s bring you right up to date with some pictures and a bit of commentary.

First up you’ve got a glass of St Remy XO brandy at the MacDonald Portal Hotel, near Tarporley, Cheshire. This was after the first round of golf on my second stag do, and you can see there that there was a handy little shelf in the corner that almost seemed like it was designed for this purpose. You can also tell it got pretty steamy in there, but it was entirely because of the hot water.

Much beer, whisky and cigars followed, and it all culminated in me having a bit of a whitey far earlier than I would have liked. It was probably a good thing though, because it meant I was [fairly] compus mentus (considering) for the next day’s round. And I got a birdie, so that was quite thrilling.

Santa Eulalia, Ibiza

Next is a shower-beer from my honeymoon in Ibiza. This is Xavi Alonso on a can of Cruzcampo in the bathroom of our hotel in Santa Eulalia. Nice. I’ve gone for the cubicle corner technique, there.

King of bottled beers

Back at home now, but this time with the king of bottled beers; Double Maxim. I know I’ve done a post on shower drinking at home before, but I was so excited at having some Double Maxim to take in with me, that I thought it deserved a picture. If you don’t know why I was so excited, see the wedding post from… some time ago.

The shape of the bottle meant it was unsuitable for balancing on the corner, as I had with the Holsten Pils cans, so I just moved the shampoo from the corner shelf, and stuck it in there. Success.

The next two pictures are from Honeymoon Part 2 in Vietnam, about which you should be able to read on these pages in coming weeks. There’s a can of Bia 333, a glass of Glenfarclas 10, and then a bottle of the green variety of Saigon beer.

Finally, and bringing you right up to date with a shower drinking episode from my latest adventure, that if you were following me on Twitter, you would have seen was known as Golfageddon. Again, a full account of that will be posted on here at some time in the future. The glass in question here is DYC 10 year old single malt.

golfageddon

That’s it for now, but you can rest assured shower drinking is not a hobby I’ll be giving up any time soon, so I’ll collect a few more and hit you with another post sometime in the future. Don’t forget, I’d be delighted to see your shower drinking triumphs, so tell me about it in the comments. I’ll be back next week with another post that, at the moment is looking like being an investigation into the phenomenon that is the hot toddy. Join me then, but until then, have a great weekend. I know I will – I might open a new bottle.

*not really.

Excuses for Drinking... Poker Night! part 1

Oh, hello there. I was just doing a bit of work. What’s that? Yes, you’re absolutely right; it is time for this week’s booze blog post. This week, it’s part one of a two part poker night double-header.

The poker night is synonymous with drinking, so for me, this was an excuse to finally crack open that bottle of Maker’s Mark that my brother-in-law had brought me over from Canada. Maker’s Mark is Kentucky bourbon (45% ABV), so it seemed appropriate to an extent to be drinking some American whisky while playing a game that is widely associated with America – Mississippi steamboats, cowboys and the like.

I also thought this would be a good opportunity to offload a few bottles that were almost finished, but that I frankly didn’t need anymore, and would relish the opportunity to replace. I’d had a small bottle of Brugal gold rum sitting on the top of the cupboard probably for around two years, and I just hadn’t found much use for it. Too good to use in cocktails, but not quite suitable for drinking on its own, it just sat there stagnating. That one had to go.

great bottle, disappointing brandy

Then there was the Courvoisier VSOP, that I’d bought with high hopes, only to be cruelly disappointed every time I tried it, and finally there was the remains of my Jose Cuervo Gold, that had frankly served me quite well. Well, now it’s gone, and I’m looking forward to an opportunity to try a different brand – preferably something 100% agave, but I’m sure there will be more about that in some future post.

We met at The Bull’s Head (David, Christian, Chris and me) for a quick pint (bottle of Newcastle Brown, in my case) before heading across the road to book a taxi to Dave’s. He’d already bought a deluxe poker set and picked me up some bottles of Double Maxim (4 for £6 – bargain) from his local Morrisons. I unloaded my booze, and prepared to make a start.

First on the agenda, a round of absinthe, prepared in the Bohemian style. That’s the one where you soak a teaspoon of sugar in the spirit before setting it alight and dropping it into a glass that already contains absinthe. Finally, douse the flames with a shot of water.

On this occasion I was far more successful than on any previous occasion I’d tried this. There were one or two minor outbreaks of fire, but I made sure to stir each glass thoroughly, thus ensuring that the sugar was fully dissolved into the drink. I necked mine, and it was actually quite nice.

That bottle of absinthe is almost entirely spent now. There may be enough for one more go though. I think I did quite well to get seven servings out of one 20cl bottle.

I wasn’t the only one to bring some interesting booze to the party. Midway through the first game David unveiled a mystery Chinese spirit that no one knew anything about. All the writing on the label was in Chinese, with the exception of the volume and ABV numbers – it was 52%, which was an exciting prospect. He said it had been a gift from one of his students. David is an academic in electrical engineering, so most of his students tend to be foreign. He often tells them to bring him a bottle of something the locals go for, and this was the result of one such transaction.

It was a completely clear liquid, and one that is clearly more suited to the far eastern palate than any of our western ones. I’ve tasted things like it before, but only things I’d picked up at random from the Chinese supermarket – specifically a can of bird’s nest soft drink, that I think was made with the spit of birds. I might have made that up at the time, having seen on a TV documentary once that a certain type of bird binds its nest together with spit. It has since become fact in my mind, so I’ll have to check it out next time I go.

Chinese spirit

The only picture that exists of this mystery spirit is provided by Dave. I’m afraid I didn’t think to take my camera, and the one on my phone doesn’t work. I’ve had a cursory search for “Chinese spirit” on Wikipedia, and it came up with this. There’s no real way of telling if this is the spirit in question, but it’s possible.

We did actually take the bottle with us to the Chinese takeaway that evening, to see if the people there could identify it. They couldn’t tell us what it was, but the lady suggested it may be worth around £200. I don’t think we can really trust that appraisal, given that she couldn’t identify it, but it was interesting nonetheless.

If the bottle was Baijiu, Wikipedia also reports that some brands go for as little as the price of a can of beer… so it could go either way.

We were already pretty smashed by the time we got to the Chinese, which made me having to play ‘guess which hand’ with the little girl there seem a bit weird, but you know, it was all fun.

After dinner (I literally just had salt and pepper chicken wings and salt and pepper spare ribs) it was back to the serious business of poker. We managed two games in all. I nearly won the first, but didn’t get anywhere near winning the second. I haven’t played many times in my life, and that’s how it always seems to go – nearly winning. We only played for a couple of pounds, so it was no great loss. In fact, I’m not even sure I paid my share because I didn’t have the right change.

After that it’s all a blur. I remember that we ended up walking part of the way back to town because we thought 45 minutes was too long to wait for a taxi. I don’t remember how we actually got to town, but I do know that Chris and I shared a taxi from town.

I also think I woke up in the night, feeling incredibly nauseous, but even of that I’m not certain. I woke up the next morning feeling like I weighed a ton. It’s not the worst hangover I’ve ever had, and in fact I was fairly compus mentus considering how much I’d had to drink. I was able to perform the day’s cleaning duties fairly well, but didn’t attempt much else.

Since that night, David has told me he’s come into possession of another bottle of the Chinese mystery spirit. He made the mistake of thanking his student, and saying it was nice. Sometimes it doesn’t pay to be polite.

Right! Well, I'm taking Mrs Cake out on a date tonight. Just dinner and drinks. We'll see where that leads (wink,wink) - probably to an argument and awkward silence! No. It'll be fun. We're looking forward to it. Good luck with whatever you have planned for the weekend, and see you next week!

The Wedding: Awesome

Against all odds I actually finished part 2 of my Wedding Trilogy this week, so here it is for your perusal. It also looks like part 3 is finished, but whether I post that one next week depends on what happens in between. In the meantime, enjoy…

There are some occasions that demand booze and the king of them all is the wedding.

Weddings are awesome. The booze, for the most part is free, and you’re encouraged to drink it all day. I love drinking all day, and I try to do it as often as possible. The British media call that a binge, but not when it’s a wedding. Weddings are the acceptable side of binge drinking. I suspect it might be because weddings usually involve drinking a lot of champagne and wine – and also that weddings are in keeping with Conservative family values. Nevertheless, it doesn’t seem like so much of a binge when you’re drinking wine. You’d have to be a special kind of person to go on a wine binge.

What’s not to love about a wedding? It is expected that you are going to get smashed. In fact, if you do get smashed, Great Aunt Sybil isn’t going to think, “what a drunken lout”, she’s going to think, “how nice that that young man has come to celebrate this wedding, and is having such a great time”.

Just don’t punch Great Aunt Sybil in the nose, or vomit in her hat. Also, maybe don’t swear prolifically.

Well, I’ve alluded to it in previous posts, but Brenda and I got married recently, which was brilliant – you know, for all the usual reasons, but also because it meant we got to throw a massive party, and place particular focus on the quality of the food and quality and quantity of the drink.

At our wedding, one of our friends was dragged onto the dancefloor, still in his chair and treated to a lap dance, right in front of my parents. Afterwards my mother said it was lovely to see all the young people having a good time. There were also two gay men having a full-on snog in the middle of the dancefloor, and no one batted an eyelid. Brilliant.

Don’t worry, this isn’t a blog about weddings, so I’ll keep non-booze related details to a minimum. If you want that stuff, I’m sure there are tons of blogs to satisfy your needs. This post is just about the ideas we had, and what happened about the booze. There will have to be some details about the wedding though, otherwise it just won’t make sense.

In theory, you should only be planning a wedding once, so you don’t really know how to do it. Those idiots on Don’t Tell the Bride can do it mind, so how hard can it be? Well, we’ve found it can be quite hard, so it’s good if you’ve got about a year to do it. The main problem is that you come up with all these original and exciting ideas, then someone tells you, “yeah, you can’t do that.” 

Of paramount importance to us was the quality of the food and booze, so we needed to make sure that we found somewhere that could provide what we wanted within our budget. To be fair, we didn’t even have a budget for a long while there, and I don’t mean ‘money was no object’ – I mean, there was no money - but we sorted some out eventually.

With regard to food, a lot of the venues have their own caterers, and each caterer produces a number of set wedding menus. It’s all stuff like a salmon starter and thin slices of beef for the main (how many times have you had that at a wedding?), and it costs £47 per head.

Not only did we want to avoid anything that resembled what we call ‘wedding food’, but we didn’t want to pay £47 a head for it. They all assured us that they could work to our specifications, but at a price. So like… £60 a head.

At one particularly memorable wedding we went to, we were served fillet steak. I’d never been served that at a wedding before, and it was superb – hot, tender, perfectly cooked. I said to the guy sitting next to me, who was himself getting married shortly, “you never get fillet steak at a wedding; it’s normally thin slices of beef! What are you having at your wedding?”

“Thin slices of beef”.

I thought he was joking. He wasn’t, and his fiancée wasn’t looking very happy. I wonder whether their wedding menu changed after that…

Wedding caterers tend to advise against serving fillet steak because it’s really difficult to cook it correctly and get it out to everyone in sufficient time, so how the caterers managed it at that wedding remains a mystery, and one that we weren’t keen to solve when it was our turn.

Don’t worry, it’s all booze from here on in. I only mention the food because there was a story about it, and it was a large contributing factor in the selection of our venue – as I’m about to tell you shortly.

In terms of booze, some of the bars at the venues we checked out were no better stocked than your local working men’s club. It was all Fosters and Carling, Bells and Bacardi. And the lagers were £3.80 for a 330ml bottle. This would never do! I wanted premium lagers that I actually liked to be available and fancy spirits with ages on the bottle, not stuff you get at 2 bottles for £20 in Morrisons.

Of course there were lots of other considerations, but the place we chose, The Living Room on Manchester’s Deansgate fitted the bill completely when it came to food and booze. I never thought I’d have my wedding reception on a Friday night on Deansgate, but The Living Room has three private upstairs rooms that we could use, it’s an actual restaurant (of some repute) - so it could provide the modern gourmet cuisine we were after, and it’s also an actual bar – a well stocked one.

We’d eaten there before, and been impressed. We were more impressed when we saw the function rooms, and the deal was sealed when they told us they could do our choice of menu for £32 a head. For my money, it’s better quality than 95% of wedding food, and it’s different. They could allow us to provide three choices for each course for our guests, and could even do lamb for us – for that price. Furthermore, it’s what you call a ‘minimum spend’ deal. So there’s no charge for hiring the room, there’s just a minimum amount of money you have to spend, and all the food and booze counts towards it.

Wine

When I say the booze was important, I’m not talking about wine, mind. If you’ve read much of my blog before, you’ll be aware that I don’t think much of wine, and although we knew we’d have to provide some, we weren’t keen on spending too much on it – what’s that? Your house white and your house red are £17 a bottle? That’ll do. You just have to forget that Aldi sells bottles of wine at £2.99 a bottle. We looked at providing our own wine too, and corkage tends to cost the same as (or more than) the house wine. I think providing Aldi wine would have been a bit too cheap, mind.

We did taste the house stuff, and it was all right. That’s all you want so sorry to any guests who were hoping for some great wine. I don’t think many people would know great wine if it bit them on the bottom… and given that I’ve never tasted a great wine, I remain unconvinced that such a thing actually exists – and if it does, it’s going to be too expensive to provide for all our guests anyway. On that subject, a friend told me his boss had bought some £180 bottles on a night out recently, and when I asked him if he could tell the difference, he said no.

We did try to think about our friends who liked wine a little though, in that we both remembered at least one of them professing a liking for Sauvignon Blanc, and saying that everything else was bland in comparison. So we made sure one of the wines was that, and we made sure there would be enough for one whole bottle per person. No one complained about the quality of the wine, so I’m going to assume it was fine.

Beer, and more specifically, Double Maxim

Now, one of the ideas I had was to have beer available during the meal (which is called a wedding breakfast, for some reason – beer for breakfast! Speaking of breakfast, I did have a little Caol Ila to calm the nerves before leaving the house in the morning). I’ve been to countless weddings where I’m being served a generous flow of wine throughout the meal, but all I want is a beer, so we asked our liaison if we could have big buckets of beer on ice at every table so that people who wanted beer could damn well have it. Not a problem. They could do good beer too, and I got to choose. I went for Peroni because everyone likes that. We also chose a cider (Bulmers) because several of my friends can’t drink beer anymore, due to wheat intolerance.

What God would drink...

One of my other ideas (that also came to fruition), was that I wanted one of the beers that was to be available to be Double Maxim. My friends and I used to drink this in Gosforth’s Earl Grey pub (now a wine bar, apparently) while we were at University in Newcastle in the late 90s (£2.05 a pint, in those days, 4.7% ABV). It was a beautiful, deep red ale that was the ideal complement to Brannigan’s Beef and Mustard crisps, and that didn’t have that bitter taste many ales of this kind do. I would call it an underappreciated gem. In fact, when our events manager mentioned my request to the chef, he said we should get Newcastle Brown. I told her to tell him, “Newcastle Brown good, Double Max better.” Whether she did or not, I don’t know.

...if he was real

The recipe of the Brannigan’s crisps has changed now in order to make them healthier at the expense of flavour - in spite of the complaint I wrote to the manufacturer through one of those online complaint submission forms that didn’t provide nearly enough capacity to adequately describe my gripe.

Meanwhile Double Maxim is very much harder to find. I haven’t seen Double Maxim anywhere since I left Newcastle in 1999, though after the wedding my friend Dave located some bottles in his local Morrison’s.

Double Max used to be brewed by Vaux in Sunderland, and I seem to recall that the brewery closed that year. A couple of years later I entered the Red Lion pub in Sheffield (a frequent haunt for a while) and saw that they had Double Maxim beer mats on all the tables. My excitement was extinguished when I asked at the bar and found they didn’t actually have the beer, but I did collect a beer mat to take home with me.

I also used to have a Double Maxim ash tray, but I think that was lost in a flat move.

Double Maxim is now brewed by Maxim Brewery, and is supposedly available in bottles, cans and cask. The website says it is available in supermarkets such as Asda, Tesco and Sainsbury’s, but believe me; I have looked, and I haven’t seen it so far. It does say you can order it direct, though.

The Living Room said they would try to source it, but they are subject to limitations on the suppliers they are allowed to use. If they couldn’t, they’d allow us to provide our own, subject to a corkage fee. I’m happy to say it didn’t come to that. They found they could supply it at £3.50 per bottle, and that was 500ml bottles, so for bar prices, that’s pretty reasonable. The ones Dave found in Morrisons were £1.80 per bottle.

Providing Double Maxim led to one of my highlights of the day. As I was sitting at the head table, waiting for my first course, two friends (Joe and Dave) approached with looks of absolute delight on their faces. It was a special moment. If you’re a fan of ale like Old Speckled Hen, there’s a good chance you’ll like it – nay, prefer it. If you do happen to see it anywhere, make sure you let me know; we could start a Maxim Watch. I can’t believe I just say ‘nay’.

Now, I know you’re not necessarily supposed to keep ale in the fridge, but I like my beer cold, and that’s where I kept the crate of Double Maxim that was left over after the wedding. I may be mistaken, but I swear this beer stays cold once you take it out of the fridge a lot longer than it should do. So that’s a bonus.

Unfortunately it is now gone. I finished the last bottle on Sunday afternoon, and I hope it won’t be so long before we next meet. Until then it will be sorely missed, and though the photos can’t simulate the flavour, at least I can keep one in my wallet and think of the good times. I’m not really going to keep one in my wallet.

Pre-mixed drinks

I may have gotten a bit ahead of myself here, because I’ve jumped straight to the reception, but there are one or two other elements I want to cover. Firstly, it was essential that we got people lubricated fairly early (for the relentless alcohol bumming that was coming their way later). The wedding was to take place at 2pm at Manchester Town Hall, and I didn’t want it to be one of those weddings where you’re standing about asking, “when are we going to get a drink?”

We wanted, in some small way, to simulate a pub crawl, and had hired a bus to take everyone to the nearby Rain Bar for free drinks while the wife and I went for some more outdoor photos, but we were aware that people might be in need of refreshment before that. We were also aware that people might be getting hungry. The meal wasn’t scheduled until after 6, so anyone who hadn’t thought about lunch might be struggling.

 Brenda hit upon the idea of taking snacks and drinks on the bus. The snacks would be nuts and pretzels, and the drinks would be those pre-mixed alcoholic drinks you can get in 250ml cans. We stored them with bags of ice for the duration of the ceremony (in one of those giant Ikea shopping bags), and handed them out as our guests clambered on to the bus.

tower of booze

I hadn’t tried any of these before, but I thought it was a great idea, and a lot more weddingy than handing out cans of beer – not to mention, something different to write about for the blog. We had Smirnoff and Cranberry (6.4% ABV), Captain Morgan Spiced Rum and Cola (6.4% ABV), Gordon’s Gin and Tonic (6.4% ABV) , Southern Comfort with lemonade and lime (5% ABV), and a Pimms one (5.4% ABV, I still don’t know what Pimms is…).

Sadly I didn’t get to try them all, though they went down very well with the guests. I had a Captain Morgan and cola on the bus, and I have to say, finally I ‘get’ rum and coke. The balance of flavours was just right.

The missus and I then left our guests in the pub while we took a car to various nearby locations for more photos. I was able to grab a can of the Smirnoff to take with us, and since then have also been able to try the Southern Comfort. Like the Captain Morgan, they are all nicely balanced, so it’s just a matter of personal taste.

We bought 80 cans for our 52 guests I think, and they were on offer at 4 cans for £6, which isn’t bad. There are a number of other varieties you can get; I wanted the Three Barrels brandy and coke, but I wasn’t present at the purchasing, so that one was overlooked.

I wouldn’t normally see the point in pre-mixed alcoholic drinks like this, but under these circumstances they made perfect sense – a little bit classier than cans of lager, but alcoholic nevertheless.

The Pub

As I said, we took everyone to a pub (Rain Bar) for drinks in advance of the main reception. We thought it would be cool to have the wedding simulate a pub crawl, since it wasn’t all going to take place in one venue anyway. I don’t know what people drank in there, but we put £450 behind the bar, and let them order what they wanted. They were scheduled to be there for about an hour and a half before the bus would pick them up again, and take them to The Living Room for…

Cocktails

I’m afraid I didn’t think to take any pictures of the cocktails, but they were pretty special. The new wife and I shared a general apathy towards champagne receptions, and we’d thought it might be more fun to offer our guests a selection of cocktails on arrival.

The original idea was that I would invent a couple of cocktails, but when we mentioned cocktails to our events manager, she said that they would have a new cocktail menu for the summer, and that they would allow us a free tasting session in advance of the event, so we just decided to go with that.

One Friday evening after work we went over there, where a table had been reserved next to the bar for us. We were introduced to the bar manager and encouraged to peruse the cocktail menu and try whichever ones we fancied. It was a lot of fun to talk about what we liked and what we wanted, and in the end we must have drunk about ten between us, finally settling on three.

Foam seemed to be the theme of the summer, with two of our selections featuring it. One was served in a cocktail glass, but was made with whisky and was very strong. I figured that while it looked like a feminine drink, it tasted quite masculine, so we would need a masculine looking drink and a feminine looking drink that tasted feminine. It made sense at the time, but as I say, we were drinking free cocktails. I figured the ladies would be drawn to the one in the cocktail glass, and might be shocked at the strong whisky flavour.

We fulfilled our criteria, with one drink called ‘Return of the Mac’ and another one being a fruity concoction. On the day I only had time to have one cocktail, and after that I was feeling pretty smashed, so I had to drink two jugs of water with my meal to regain equilibrium.

A number of our guests were already well on their way, too. I understand there was impromptu singing on the bus from the pub and one person was caught having a snooze during the meal.

Fallout

The result of the smorgasbord of booze we laid on was that everyone got wasted, which made for a very fun day and evening – even the staff were getting down at one point (I’ll put that down to the killer playlist I’d put together for the dance).

I estimate that we spent around £3000 on alcohol, and I don’t consider a penny of it to have been wasted (that was for 52 people, though we had more join us in the evening). There were numerous reports of severe hangovers on Facebook the next day, and general consensus was positive, so we were very happy with the way things turned out, and ready to start married life.

It’s a shame it’s all over really, because it was a lot of fun, but I suppose we don’t have to stress about it anymore – all the organising and vow writing and speech writing… If there’s one bit of advice I could give you should you be considering getting married at some point in the future – other than making sure you find the right person (though you can never guarantee that, even when you’re sure!) – it would be to plan as much as possible with your guests in mind. If you make them feel special, and they have a good time, then you’ll feel special and have a good time, too. You may be getting married, but it isn’t about you. You might look the best on the day, and have everything how you want it, but It’s about all the people in your life, so just try to remember that.