The engagement party announces the marriage to the extended family. The bottle on the table that night is, in a small way, the first bottle of the new household's life. We have shipped engagement bottles to couples six months and seven months before the wedding, often as their first joint design project. The act of choosing the brand line together is its own quiet ceremony.
Brand line: the chosen household name
The brand line on the engagement bottle is whichever name the couple has decided will be the household's. If one partner is taking the other's name, that is the engagement label's name. If the couple is hyphenating in their personal lives but using one name for the household formally, that is the engagement label's name. The brand line is twelve characters or fewer, single name, with RESERVE appended in foil.
The crest, on its inaugural appearance
The engagement bottle is the first appearance of the household's crest. Most couples generate the crest in the studio during the same session in which they design the engagement label. The crest carries forward to the wedding bottle, the anniversary bottle, and every future label the household commissions. The engagement is the moment the crest enters the family's iconography.
The quote line
Italic foil, soft ink, the date of the engagement in small letters. Or a single line from the proposal. Or the street where the proposal happened. The quote line carries the moment forward; ten years on the couple still reads it on the engagement bottle and remembers the night.