10 Mistakes to Avoid When Picking Wedding Wines, According to Ray Isle

Selecting wines for your wedding may seem easy. Pick a crowd-pleasing white wine, some decent bubbles, notify the caterer, and off you go. But, in most cases, this isn’t going to be an intimate dinner party. You’re likely picking bottles for potentially hundreds of people, and pairing them with a range of activities — celebratory toasts, long dinners, and late-night dance parties. 

We asked Food & Wine executive wine editor Ray Isle, who has weighed in on wine selections at his fair share of weddings, to advise on the best practices and biggest mistakes to make when picking your big-day bottles. 

Avoid what the caterers choose

“There are exceptions, but most caterers almost always offer fairly uninteresting wines that are marked up quite a bit,” says Isle. “And they tend to default to larger brands.” 

He recommends sourcing your wedding wine through a retailer or local wine shop. “It’s both more economical and more interesting,” he says. And, it gives you access to a broader range of wines.

Host a mini-tasting

Before the big day, bring in a bottle of every wine you’re considering, including whites, reds, and sparkling wines. “Sit down with your spouse and your friends and have a wine tasting,” says Isle. 

Chill them, pour them, sip them, and see what you like best. “It’s a much more enjoyable way to narrow down the possibilities and find something you actually want to drink at your wedding,” he says. “And, it takes some of the stress of wedding planning off, and it turns into a fun event.”

Stick to crowd-pleasers

Really into orange wines? Having a pet-nat phase? Fascinated by the wines of the Caucasus? While you may be excited by esoteric or off-the-beaten path wines, “you’re going to have a range of people at your weddings, from your friends to your great aunts,” says Isle. “So probably avoiding the super funky weird wines and the biggest and stupidest of Chardonnays is wise. You don’t want to go to either extreme.” 

Instead, Isle suggests sticking to the easy options. “You want to pick something you both like and is palatable to a pretty broad range of people,” he says.

Don’t stress about food pairings

You may have sweet dreams of perfect pairings — oysters and Champagne, rib-eye and a big red wine, pasta and something highly Italian. But this is a wedding. Chances are your dinner options will come down to chicken or fish. 

“You don’t usually end up serving esoteric dishes at a wedding, so you’re not looking for food that’s tough to pair with,” says Isle. “So, I wouldn’t worry about pairing at all. It’s not the most interesting advice, but it’s true. Just go with a wine that’s infinitely pairable, like a dry Riesling.”

Mix it up

If you do want to put a little more effort, pair wines with different moments. “Pour a lighter, daytime wine at the cocktail reception. It gives a little variety.” Move into a culinary-leaning wine for dinner time.

Always over-purchase

“This is standard entertaining advice: buy more than what you need,” says Isle. “It’s better to have more than run out. Wine doesn’t go bad.” 

Ask your venue if you can take extra wine home with you, and drink the excess on anniversaries to come.

Don’t splurge on a moment

A wedding is a time for special things, but don’t blow your budget on baller wines for moments, especially if it means sacrificing quality at other moments. 

“I don’t think you need to splurge on a single wine for any specific moment, like a Champagne toast,” says Isle. “I would rather have good-quality wines across the board than one super wine and several low-quality ones.”

Save the special wines for your own time

You may be swayed to select a few bottles of fancy things — a grand cru Chablis here, some vintage Champagne there — for you and your wedding party. But that can be an awkward look for the rest of your guests.

“I think it’s an etiquette question more than anything,” says Isle. “Maybe I’m egalitarian, but I’m very disinclined to have one table with fancier wines than everybody else. It’s a bit exclusionary and kind of weird.” 

When Richard Nixon was president of the United States, he’d notoriously served himself first-growth Bordeaux while his guests sipped table wine. “He’d serve the bottles with napkins draped over them so it wasn’t obvious. It feels like a jerk move,” says Isle. “Save the special bottles for private moments between the bride and the groom. I’m a wine editor and when I got married, I didn’t have any special wines. I would have been mortified.”

Wedding guest? Gift wine

Stuck on what to get wine-loving friends? Look at wedding-year vintages from their favorite winery. “For [drinks writer] Oset Babur-Winter’s wedding, I purchased her Hirsch Pinot Noir from the year of her wedding,” says Isle. “You have to wait a year or two for the wines to be released, but it’s a gift they’ll enjoy for years.”

Don’t stress about wine at all

“You want people to enjoy the wines, but it’s a wedding, not a wine tasting,” says Isle. “People are more interested in who's getting married than they are in wine choices. It’s not the time to pull out the super fancy wines people are ‘oohing and awing’ over. You want them to ‘ooh and awe’ over you.”