Founder's Notes

From the Bench.

First-person essays on craft, customers, and the journey of hand-banding cigars in Wallington NJ.

Choosing Cigars for Your Best Friend's Wedding: A Real Walkthrough

Choosing Cigars for Your Best Friend's Wedding: A Real Walkthrough

Your best friend is getting married in six months and he has asked you to handle the cigars. You have smoked maybe four cigars in your life, three of which were at other people's weddings. You do not know what a Connecticut wrapper is. You do not know the difference between a robusto and a torpedo. You do not know whether $12 a cigar is reasonable or insulting or extravagant. You are pretty sure you are supposed to ask about ring gauges, but you do not know what they are or what number is good. This post is for you. We are going to walk you through the actual decisions you need to make, in the order you need to make them, with the kind of advice we would give a best friend if he called.

12 min read· Apr 2026
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Why Custom Cigar Bands Matter More Than Couples Realize

Why Custom Cigar Bands Matter More Than Couples Realize

A bride called us yesterday about a cigar from 2018. She was the third bride from a wedding we banded that summer. The first two had emailed us in 2020 and 2022 with photos of the band still in their parents humidors. This third bride called because her husband's father had just passed away and the cigar from her wedding was in his cigar case when they cleaned out his office. She was not calling for any particular reason. She just wanted us to know. That is what we want to talk about: the reason custom bands matter is not the band itself, it is the year ten conversation that you cannot plan for and cannot price into a quote.

9 min read· Feb 2026
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What Two Decades of Hand-Banding Cigars Taught Us About Craft

What Two Decades of Hand-Banding Cigars Taught Us About Craft

Our cigar journey started in 2003 with a simple thesis. People wanted custom cigars for their weddings and corporate events, and the existing market was either too rigid or too generic. We figured if we could make beautiful bands and apply them well, the rest would follow. We were half right. The bands matter enormously, but in year one we made the mistake every craftsperson makes early. We assumed the thing we were best at was the thing customers cared about most. So we obsessed over kerning and paper stock weight while clients were trying to tell us about their late fathers and the moments they were trying to mark.

12 min read· Jan 2026
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