When Beth & I first talked about tying the ol’ knot, there were certain aspects of our personalities and tastes we knew we wanted to include in our event (e.g., we knew it should certainly be “an Event”). One of the first tastes we giddily discussed was beer.

As some of my family and friends know, I was a virtual mess before Beth picked me up and brushed me off, so to speak. She used her powers of Keen Fashion Sense to zap some decent clothes onto my person and recommend a stylist. She also refined my liquid pallet, delivering me from the watery, flavorless wasteland of Miller Lite and into richer brews, gradually from Blue Moon to Hoegaarden and then Walt Wit and DreamWeaver. Now I wouldn’t say that I have the chops to claim the title “Beer Snob,” but I’m certainly on my way.

During my transformation, two of my best friends were tinkering in their basement labs and concocting beer recipes. When they heard about my proposal, they had one hell of an idea: they would prepare a nuptial ale for our festivities.

Beth and I discussed some beer theme ideas and decided to name the proto-brew GingerBury Ale, a combination derived from my red hair and her homophonic last name.

Our two brewmasters, Jay “Hype Man” Slowik and Dan “The Man” Friel, joined forces under the Friel-conceived FancyPants Brews and decided that, true to its name, their nuptial ale would incorporate ginger and cranberries. Their trial brewing run was a huge success, yielding a rich, weizenbock-styled beer. When we all sampled it, Beth and I immediately knew that our wedding would reign supreme.

As I’m sure you’ve gathered from our previous wedding posts, we push all of our ideas to the extreme (Doritos-style son!), so simply having this beer available at the wedding wouldn’t be enough – we had to dress it up.

For logo inspiration, I turned to Ian Brignell’s ultra-classy redesign of Miller High Life (even as an aspiring beer snob, I know full-well that it’s The Champagne of Beers) as well as Dan Becker and Lance Wilson’s excellent photo collection Beer: A Genuine Collection of Cans (check out their Flickr here).

Incorporating my favorite label elements of circular series, slanted type, etched shadow strokes and some color inspiration from Philadelphia Brewing Company’s Kenzinger, I 23-skidooed the look of GingerBury Ale.

Everyone agreed that the look fit the brew. The logo also looked dang sleek in black & white, so we figured “let’s get our wedding guests some GingerBury pint glasses to enjoy their beer in!” Thanks to the quick and top-notch facilitation by local company Penn Graphic, we had our glasses in no time!

After FancyPants spent some Beatles-fueled sessions bottling, I spent a few days inhaling photo mount spray fumes to dress up our toasting beer.

This beery wedding idea couldn’t have come to a better fruition, and we owe a lot of thanks to Dan and Jay at FancyPants Brews.

Oh, did we forget to mention they rock out as well? More on that when our wedding series gets to the BlineGowan Sound! But next up will be Beth & Andy’s Wedding Record! Stay tuned.

So, our Save-The-Dates were sent and our Wedding Website set up. And even though our Tarantino-heavy film theme would play into the wedding further, Beth & I needed to establish a separate look for our nuptials. What better way to set the theme than with the wedding invitation?

As per both of our design tendencies, we agreed that we wanted to create something tasteful with a creative use of fonts, but still add a splash of bright, fun colors. And then it hit me: We’re design dorks who want fun colors, so we need to go CMYK!

While looking at different print materials on the web, I came across Mucca Design’s incredible brand identity work for restaurant and bakery Balthazar and we looked at their bakery wholesale division emblem as a rough framework for how the crux of the wedding announcement could look. Beth put some rough sketches together, but couldn’t find the right combination of elements to make her happy, so in the true spirit of almost-married teamwork, she passed the torch to me for a fresh perspective.

My favorite aspect of Beth’s Illustrator sketches was a string of cyan, magenta, yellow, and black-pattern circles as well as her ornate rules. The circles brought such a burst of color to the white surface that I knew the type need only be black. I used Birch Std as the main typeface, then chose Honey Script Light, ITC Kabel and the wonderful new Lost Type Co-Op’s Duke to round out the text. I carved out shadow strokes on our names, set the magenta ampersand back as the center of a logo, placed the CMYK circles and…

When it all came together, we loved the slight carnival poster feel it conveyed. To complete the invitation, we framed it with a black slit card from Paper Presentation that has a scalloped edge that matched our circle theme. We were thrilled, and it would go on to set the look of our entire wedding, from our huge CMYK balloons to our dessert table! (stay tuned for more on those).

Our programs and wedding signage followed suit, printed on Epson’s beautiful Hot Press Bright 100% cotton fiber paper.

Next up, our Groomsmen-brewed nuptial beer, GingerBury Ale. Stay tuned!