If your summer wedding is approaching it’s likely you’ve selected your dress, décor, venue and menu.  You’ve probably deliberated for hours about the flowers and pondered over the travel and transport plans. But have you thought about which drinks you’ll serve to guests as they celebrate your ‘I dos’? Summer wedding cocktails could provide the anwser.

“With so many other decisions to make, drinks are not often a high priority,” says Sarah Miller, wedding coordinator at The Barton Grange Hotel near Preston. “Many couples simply opt for champagne or Prosecco, with wine and beer for the tables. It’s a classic drinks menu that’ll appeal to many, but for those looking for a little something extra, cocktails can take your refreshments to another level.

Your wedding day is one of the most important days of your life and the Wine Lady, Rowena Hawtin, and the Discover The Vine team offers you a bespoke wine tasting experience to ensure you choose the perfect wines and champagnes. 

Discover The Vine works with couples to give them the advice and support they need to ensure that the wine they select for their wedding day pairs perfectly with their menu and delights their guests. 

Consultancy service

With so many grape varieties and different wines – the choices can be overwhelming.

Discover The Vine guides couples through the choices, leaving them stress free to concentrate on all those other important details. 

Start as you mean to go on and toast at your wedding with a quintessentially English wine from Bolney Wine Estate. With more brides opting for classic country barns and historical castles to hold their special day in, pairing the day with an award-winning wine from England suits better than any other.

There’s a wine to fit every bride too – opt for a Bolney sparkling rosé to add a hue of blush to a wedding theme. Alternative brides can surprise guests and choose a bottle of sparkling red wine, a delicious and rich fizzy flavour.

Dingle Original Gin and Dingle Distillery Vodka, the Irish artisan craft spirits, produced in The Dingle Distillery, County Kerry, Ireland both launched earlier this year in the UK, and they've proven to be the key ingredient in some delectable cocktails! 

They include some gin and vodka sharing cocktails, some twists on the classics and some slightly more unique options! ​Equally all could work for a hen party, and the slimline version is ideal for the bride to be who's watching her figure! 

The Dingle Mo-gin-to

Freixenet are keeping wedding toasts cool this summer with their new ICE Rosé. The most recent addition to the Freixnet family, ICE Rosé has been uniquely designed to be poured over chunks of ice, with a purposely richer flavor to balance the chill.

Coming in a glossy white and pink bottle, the fizz would be a striking centre piece for any wedding. The perfect accompaniment to salads, duck dishes and fruity puddings, ICE Rosé can be the choice of refreshment for mains and deserts. 

Alcohol has long been a feature of weddings, with planning what tipple to give after the ceremony to whether there will be a free bar or not, yet surprisingly at times, alcoholic gifts such as beer can be overlooked.

Whether you’re looking to win over your wedding guests with fabulous favours or to build a truly British bar, then look no further than the selection from Dunnet Bay Distillers. The UK’s most northerly mainland distillery offers two lovingly hand-crafted spirits, Rock Rose Gin and Holy Grass Vodka, both unique in flavour and also available in a favour-friendly miniature format.

Set up by husband and wife team, Martin and Claire Murray, in 2014, Dunnet Bay Distillery is located in the wilderness of the far north of Scotland. The couple are passionate about handcrafting spirits that celebrate the heritage and provenance of Caithness and pride themselves on using local hand-foraged botanicals.

Made in Valdobbiadene, in the heart of the Prosecco region in Northern Italy, Mionetto is Italy’s favourite sparkling wine. This well-structured sparkling Prosecco stands out for its luminous straw yellow hue and for its emphatic yet stylish mousse. The bouquet is redolent of Golden Delicious apple, whilst the palate is appealingly marked by aromatic notes of honey, black liquorice, and acacia blossom.

BY CESAR & NADIA RODEN

Poptails is a new, glamorous collection of fun alcoholic ice-lollies from Cesar and Nadia Roden. Combining the magic and romance of cocktails with a refreshingly creative spin, these delicious poptails are elegant, luxurious, sophisticated and playful. There’s something a little mischievous about turning childhood treats into a strictly adult culinary experience, and this is what Poptails does best.

1. Rubis Chocolate Wine

This IWSC award winning wine is a blend of Spanish fortified red wine infused with luxurious chocolate flavours. By using the best Tempranillo grapes from the centre of Spain combined with premium dark chocolate, Rubis have created a rich fruity wine with a velvety chocolate finish (in other words Chocolate + Wine = Win-Win). Notes of rich cherry and red fruit enveloped in velvety premium dark chocolate makes Rubis the perfect tipple to be enjoyed at a multitude of special occasions. 

The premium and contemporary Scottish gin, Caorunn (pronounced ‘ka-roon’) has enlisted the expertise of Masterchef finalist Stacie Stewart to create four tonics that balance perfectly with the refreshing taste of Caorunn gin.

The refreshingly tonics have been inspired by Caorunn’s locally-foraged Celtic botanicals.Harnessing Scotland’s unique natural resources, Gin master Simon Buley forages the botanicals from the hills surrounding the breath-taking setting of Balmenach Distillery in the Cairngorms National Park. Each of the four tonics have been designed exclusively by Stacie who has a passion for using raw, natural ingredients. The home-made ingredients are bursting with health benefits without compromising on taste.

Black Tower, the UK’s number one wine brand from Germany, is celebrating a significant milestone this year - 50 years in business. 

Poptails by LAPP (www.poptailsbylapp.co.uk) are currently launching a trio of distinctly grown up, delectably alcoholic ice pops. Borne from the idea of two French friends living and working in East London, LAPP are creators of gourmet Poptail lollies made from a delicious blend of fresh fruit and premium alcohol (4.5% ABV).

Many people cannot or choose not to drink alcohol for a number of reasons, from religion to health. But what do you do when it comes to a wedding where bottles of celebratory champagne are often in full flow or given as a gift to the happy couple? What if the bride herself does not or cannot drink alcohol? That’s where Botonique comes in!

Wedding preparations can be stressful for any bride, but for pregnant brides stress is one thing that is most certainly not welcome as well as not being good for the baby. With this in mind, here are our top wedding day tips for the pregnant bride to ensure that the day is memorable, unique and stress-free!

Choose a flattering dress style