Choosing & Paying for Wedding Wines

Usually in Singapore, when you have your wedding banquet in a hotel, they do have house red and white wine for your reception. It's priced at about $30++ to $70++ per bottle... which isn't mad expensive... except that with those prices, you can expect to actually be serving your guests the cheapest of cheap wine (meaning worth waaay less than what you're paying)... probably like those $15 bottle wines at the supermarket.

I strongly suggest purchasing your own wine in bulk from dealers/reserves and getting the hotel to waive the corkage fee (which covers opening and serving the wine , usually about $20- $30 per bottle).

Selecting our Wedding Wines- At first I wanted to go with one rosé and just standardise that one drink for everyone. But after much tasting and discussion, we decided to pair our starter and main courses with white wines since we have a fish starter and a chicken main course.

As a rule of thumb, a safe amount to buy would be 1 bottle for every 2 guests. That means I need 40 bottles for 80 guests.

Two wines that go very well with many different types of foods and that can be served year-round are Sauvignon Blanc for a white and, among reds, Pinot Noir. 

We purchased 1 crate of Chardonnay and 2 crates of Sauvignon Blanc, it's sitting in our store room now. We have also ordered a crate of red as well (just in case some of them don't drink white).  That will be delivered next week as there was not enough stock of the Pinot Noir we chose.

The chardonnay was much cheaper than the pinot noir and sauvignon blanc.. but at an average of about $30 a bottle, 4 crates (48 bottles) costs $1440. Kind of makes me want to faint, so much money just for the wedding reception wine alone. But what's a wedding celebration without wine!

Thank goodness we won't have to pay $1440 at one shot at the end of this month. I've paid for this purchase using the OCBC Cashflo Card, so my payments have been automatically split into 3 months of interest free installments. That's only $480 a month. 

So in just 3 months, all my wedding wines will be paid up in full, and I won't feel the pinch of having to pay for it upfront all at once. :) *relief*

I'm very pleased I chose this card. You can check out more details on OCBC Cashflo Card here.

Also, I'm running a contest where 5 winners will get $100 Robinson Gift Vouchers. Tell me How you would use the OCBC Cashflo Card to finance a wedding. Contest ends Oct 18th. Submit your answers - Click Here.