Serve your bubbly in an extravagant way and make it an experience for your guests at the reception! A champagne tower at your wedding is the perfect activity to keep guests engaged, and it's a great photo opportunity!
If a champagne tower is on your wedding Pinterest board, but you wonder about the logistics of putting everything together, this is for you! Here are some of my top tips as a wedding photographer:
YOU CAN RENT CHAMPAGNE COUPES
Yes, you can rent them! You don't have to go buy a huge set of these glasses for your tower. Local tabletop or event rental companies often have glasses you can rent. The ones pictured above are from On The Move Productions!
HOW MANY GLASSES WILL WE NEED?
You'll want to keep the height of your table in mind when deciding how many tiers to build your tower. If you table sits higher, you'll want to decrease the number of tiers to be sure you both can reach the top.
You don't need a 6-8 tier tower for it to look amazing! Even a 3-4 tiered tower will look great for photos, and it'll be simpler to build.
To calculate the number of glasses, this blog post gives a great step by step on how to calculate how many cups are needed per tier. Be sure to order extra, and enough for all of your guests. Glasses may break and you'll want to account for that! If you tower only calls for 50 glasses but your guest count is 80, you'll still want to order enough glasses to be passed to everyone.
BE SURE TO ORDER IDENTICAL GLASSES!
When you purchase or rent your champagne glasses, be sure they are all the same exact size!
Glasses of varying heights will not build the tower correctly and it will not be stable.
I find that these wider and more open coupe style glasses look the best and they are easier to build. The wider rim provides more surface area to build each tier.
REMEMBER THAT BUILDING THIS TOWER TAKES TIME
You'll need to block out a time frame for your planner or coordinator to build the tower for you, meaning they are not needed to coordinate other parts of the wedding at that time (like speeches, cake cutting, intros, etc.)
BE STRATEGIC WITH WHERE TO PLACE THE TABLE
Your reception will be bustling with movement, excitement and dancing! Your tower should be built away from the activity, but still in sight of the reception to ensure an easy guest flow to this part of the evening. You just don't want to have guests bumping into the table while the tower is being built!
THE LOGISTICS OF POURING THEN PASSING THE CHAMPAGNE
After you pour the champagne, you want your guests to enjoy! This is why it's important to have a conversation with catering in advance to be sure they can help with this part of the day.
After your guests get to watch you fill the glasses from the top, and you get some fun photos, catering can come to dismantle the tower carefully. They can wipe down each glass to ensure they're not sticky, and top off the glasses that need some extra champagne. Then, servers can pass them to guests or they can be placed on a table for guests to take.
Champagne is typically passed before toasts, so this portion of the day could fit in well around the time of speeches.
SAVE A BOTTLE OF CHAMPAGNE TO SPRAY
This is a fun way to wrap up the champagne tower activity while catering takes care of passing it to guests! Save a bottle or two of champagne to pop for photos at the end of the night to get some fun photos like these!
I hope this post helps you bring your plans to life for your wedding day! Be sure to check out some of my other wedding tips and resources on this blog for more inspiration!
*These images are from Katie & Tyler's New Year's Eve wedding at the venue Mision Lago Estate in Tampa, Florida. The champagne glasses were provided by On The Move Productions, and it was built by their planner Rena from Event Lab.
This blog was written by Grace Torres Photography, a traveling wedding photographer based in Florida and New York City, but traveling world wide.