A real ale girl's guide to weddings

So due to popular demand, having been married for a month and one day, here is the ultimate 'nuptiale' guide.

 How to realaleify your wedding:

1. Choose a pub for your reception which will let you select the ale. And taste it. And pay you lot of compliments on your choices. Ours was the stunning Knight's Templar in Chancery Lane, which got almost as much praise as my dress.

2. Create your own tasting badges to go with said beers- e.g. dark and fruity, a bit like us.

3. Ask your favourite, friendly local brewery (in our case, Brodies Beers) to brew up a special beer for the day. Proudly display your personalised pump clip (in our case, featuring a London bus in-keeping with our other theme) and plug it mightily throughout the day.

4. Make serving the first pint of your special ale be as important as cutting the cake. (Which incidently had hidden pint glass shapes and a sneaky CAMRA logo.)

5. Get commemorative pint and half pint glasses created to serve all the beer in and allow your guests to take them home as a souvenir. (Tip: keep about 100 for yourself- if you are anywhere near as clumsy as me, you'll smash, on average, one every 3.2 days.)

                                    

6. Find a beer related 'favour'. (In our case, personalised beer mats/ pump clips as coasters, matched to the person's name/ job/ personality etc. A hell of a lot of work, but well worth it. (By the way, thank you to The Southampton Arms, Kentish Town, The Admiral Hardy, Greenwich, Wetherspoons Lewisham & Greenwich, Bexley Beer Festival Tombola Men, The Alleyn's Head, Dulwich, many folks on Ebay and course, The Knight's Templar for supplying them. You'd have thought they were gold plated by the ripples of joy spreading round the tables as people discovered them.

Why you should realaleify your wedding:

• A longer lasting bar tab (ale is bargainous in comparison to wine)
• Very happy musicians (if they are a 70 year old 60's band as ours were)
• A more gradual rate of drunkeness (weaker than spirits) meaning you abd your guests can enjoy more of your special day and be more likely to remember it all.
• Tons of wine and vodka drinkers discovering the joys of ale because they wanted to try the 'special wedding beer'.
• Merry people who don't get aggressive (who does on real ale?)
• A microbrewery being discovered by a massive pub chain.
• Fabulous quirky photos (who normally gets to pull a pint of their own beer together as newlyweds?)

The Real Ale Girl and the Real Ale Husband are available for wedding/Christening/BarMitzvah realaleifying. Oh, and if anyone is after hundreds of beers mats/ pumpclips, I'm your girl. There were quite a few that were too boring for our guests.