Craft beer has been such a huge part of our relationship that when we were planning our wedding (featured here!), we wanted to include it somehow. I suggested a unity beer ceremony, but we couldn't find any wording online that we liked. We ended up creating our own from scratch, complete with our own unique brand of humor.
Our beers were Lindemanns Framboise (mine) and Goose Island Bourbon County Stout (my husband John's). We were pretty sure those beers would go well together, but we did taste test them beforehand just to make sure.
None of our parents were involved in any other part of the ceremony, so we had them bring up the bottles together and give us hugs to include them.
We had a scripted moment where we “forgot” the bottle opener and the best man pulled it out of his tux pocket. However, we actually did forget that my beer had a cork in it! So the best man actually had to go run to the bartender and borrow a corkscrew instead. That was the moment I prayed I remembered how to use a corkscrew properly in front of 75 people — ha!
After the unity ceremony, John brought back the resulting mixture and did a “hold my beer” moment with the officiant right before we did our first kiss as a married couple.
Here was our unity beer ceremony wording:
Officiant: In lieu of candles, John and Rachael will celebrate their new marriage with a unity beer. Their parents will now bring up their chosen beers.
Rachael, fittingly, has a raspberry beer which is sweet, fun, and generally liked by everyone.
John has a barrel-aged stout, an acquired and unusual taste. Also it's dark, like John's soul — I mean, sense of humor.
These beers are great on their own, but mixed together, they create something new and delicious. Just as these two beers have been combined together and are now impossible to separate, so may your marriage be. You will now be united for a lifetime.
(I should note that John was the one who added the joke about his dark soul.)
