Most of the wedding's wine is in standard 750ml bottles. The head table benefits, however, from one large-format bottle. A magnum, equivalent to two standard bottles, sits at the center of the head table with the same custom label scaled up. The magnum is what the wedding party opens for the toast. The image of a single large bottle being opened by the groomsmen is the photograph the couple will look at for forty years.
Label scale
The label on a magnum is roughly forty percent larger by area than the standard label. The same artwork scales beautifully if the typography hierarchy is right. Customers who attempt to redesign for the magnum often add ornament that the standard label restrains; the cleaner choice is to use the standard label rendered at magnum scale.
The corkage
The magnum's cork is roughly twice the length of a standard cork and benefits from a sommelier-grade opener. The venue's bar staff should be alerted in advance; we have seen magnum corks break under standard opener pressure and create a small avoidable mess at the head table. The right opener is a small detail that the couple should not have to think about, and the venue should.
After the wedding
The magnum bottle, emptied, often gets refilled with sand or sealing wax and kept on the couple's mantel as a wedding object. We offer a small re-cork service for clients who want to seal the empty magnum with a heavy wax over the cork as a keepsake. The bottle is the keepsake. The wedding is the moment. The magnum is the bridge between them.