As I’ve mentioned before, Dan and I are trying to be budget savvy while still having flair at our wedding. We don’t want to sacrifice the “wow-factor” just because we’re making economical decisions.

One thing that was really important to Dan was to be able to toast his new bride (i.e. me) during his speech. I thought that was terribly sweet. However, after quickly calculating the cost of sparkling wine for all of our guests  — around $350– I was ready to throw the entire concept out the window.

Instead, we decided to brainstorm other ideas and decided we’d have a limoncello toast!

For those of you who aren’t familiar with this delicious beverage, it’s a traditional Italian after-dinner digestif made primarily of alcohol and lemons. While neither I nor Dan has any Italian in our family, it doesn’t mean we can’t appreciate limoncello’s delicious-ness!

We decided to take this route because:

1. It’s delicious
2. It’s comparatively inexpensive (compared to sparkling wine/champagne)
3. It makes for another fun DIY project.

We turned to our old friend Alton Brown from Good Eats on the Food Network. He has a delicious limoncello recipe that can be found here.

Dan and one of our fantastic friends spent a Saturday rasping 12 pounds of organic lemons. We mixed the zest with three 60 oz bottles of vodka.

We calculated that sparkling wine was going to cost us around $350 if we bought it ourselves (not from the caterer). We spent $30 on the organic lemons and $148 on the vodka at the SAQ Depot in Quebec. For $178, we are going to have a delicious after dinner toast for each of our 140 guests. That works out to $1.27 per guest! Not too shabby when you consider sparkling wine would have cost us $2.50 per guest!

It is currently in our closet, happily infusing. I will let you all know how it turns out when we add the simple syrup!