Wednesday, May 7, 2008

The award of the century

My last journalism class was held today at the Auld Dubliner where my awesome professor bought us all beer and "the design team" gave everyone made-up awards. Well, I got an awesome award which I would like to share with all:


God bless the University of Arizona journalism department.

Saturday, April 26, 2008

Save a little paper: use the internet

My time at the University of Arizona is almost over: just eight more days of classes, a few term papers and two very threatening exams still loom.

But as of today, my assignment to blog about green weddings is over. That doesn’t mean I’m through writing though!

With a bit of sadness, I’ve chosen not to pursue a career in the field journalism so after May 7, when classes end, there will be a significant and noticeable lack of journalistic practices in my life. Married to Green will be a great way to keep me writing, although you can definitely expect shorter entries!

Plus, it looks like there are a few people, including my boyfriend’s mom, who have been reading this blog for fun and might want me to keep writing. I was really excited to see that random people were reading my blog and commenting. Of course, the two random commenters were plugging services, but that’s ok: they both have created great Web sites that help wedding-planning couples save paper and so they both contribute to the green wedding theme.

So, let me share with you a few ways you can cut out a little paper and money from the invitation process.

My Invitation Link is a site (described as “completely green” by random commenter no. 1) that designs totally personal invitations that can be accessed online by your guests. Now there’s no excuse for ignoring my wedding Web site and blog ideas because this is a very easy way of inviting your guests sans paper. All you do is pick a provided template, upload pictures and add text and music and voila: the site creates a personalized slideshow that tells the love story of you and your fiancĂ©. The templates are really cute and elegant and the site is always adding new ones.

You might not have liked the idea of having your own wedding Web site or blog, but My Invitation Link provides something that’s almost better and more telling than an invitation. You can have the invitation online for up to a year, with prices ranging from $39 for three months to $75.

There is one problem though: it’s most likely that our grandmas know absolutely nothing about the internet. Inevitably, there will be at least one invited guest who doesn’t use the internet. But that doesn’t mean you have to abandon the online invitation idea. You can always send out a few paper invitations but use the online service to invited most of your guests. Or, just use a system like My Invitation Link to announce the wedding in the place of sending out a save-the-date card, then you can call the few guests who don’t use the internet.

Also, I don’t think you can have inserts in the invitation, like a map for your guests. That’s where random commenter no. 2’s product comes in. Wedding Mapper helps create an interactive Google map of your wedding venue, church, nearby hotels… whatever you want your guests to know about the area. You can add photos, comments and descriptions to any of the locations. Once you’re done, share the map with all of your guests for them to print out and use. Simple, fun, non-wasteful and free!

Thank you commenters for sharing your paper-saving ways!

I could even imagine using Wedding Mapper as an invitation. My boyfriend and I have tons of memories around Tucson: what about telling our “love story” using an interactive map with pictures and stories about where we fell in love?

I’m learning more and more that a green wedding is about using your creativity to find fun ways around using tons of resources.

I'll see you soon!

Sunday, April 20, 2008

Could you give up presents?

If you and your eco-aware significant other are a young couple just starting out in the world, you both are probably extremely excited about the day of opening your wedding presents. You’ll finally have one set of dishes and not 42 mismatched plates found at yard sales that sort of look the same. But if you’re both a little older with some money and clout (and your dishes already match) think about whether you really need all those presents you’re registering for. If you decide you can forego the gifts, just know that there’s a slew of charities out there that your wedding can help generate money for.

Having your guests get you gifts ups the eco footprint of your wedding and adds carbon and waste to the Earth. They’ll usually have to drive out of the way to purchase the gift, so there will be more carbon emissions. The gift will most likely be wrapped and you’ll end up throwing that away. Plus, there will be extra paper, cardboard, Styrofoam and plastic used in the packaging of the gift. Wedding gifts can end up generating a lot of waste. So, if you don’t really need a product, consider this alternative: ask your guests to make donations to an ecological charity in lieu of gifts.

Some charities have made this a very easy gift to give. The World Wildlife Fund has its own weddng Web site to help guests make contributions in your name.

You can also register with JustGive so that your guests can just log into the site, click on a link to donate to your chosen charity (pick an ecological one if you’re green wedding status needs a boost) and then leave you a message including how much they donated. JustGive also lets guests give to any of the 850,000 charities in your name, not just the ones you’ve chosen.

Here’s another idea to cut out gifts: Instead of giving out wedding favors, you can make a small donation in the name of each guest. The Knot reports that lots of couples have been trading little bags of chocolate labeled with their names and wedding dates for tiny pieces of paper reporting a charitable donation. Your wedding is a great excuse to give back to charitable organizations, and giving back is a perfect gift for you Earth-loving couples.

Greenpeace and the National Arbor Day Foundation are two other green charities that could use your wedding’s help to raise money. It’s easy for guests to donate to both charities in your name online. The National Arbor Day Foundation, which replants trees in national forests, also offers a way to swap regular wedding favors for brand new trees in your guests’ names. Each dollar plants one tree, so this can be an eco-friendly and wallet-friendly favor idea.

Planting trees instead of giving favors is a great way to cut down on consumption and waste, plus, it helps offset your carbon emissions. Figure out your wedding’s carbon footprint at TerraPass.org’s wedding calculator and find out how many new trees would be needed to neutralize these carbon emissions. Planting trees, instead of buying carbon offsets, is probably a more Earth-friendly way to offset carbon footprints.

Other charitable agencies with not-so-green ideas are also cashing in on the wedding gift trend. I’ll only include this one because it’s important to me and my dad, a 3-time cancer survivor: You can help fund world-class cancer research by having your guests give to UCLA’s Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center.

Presents are a fun part of the wedding experience, but if you don’t really need them, and you want to save some carbon emissions and waste, opt for donations instead.

Saturday, April 12, 2008

Go get a gocco

Don't underestimate the gocco. I know it looks like a child's toy (one that's ready to break any second) but it’s actually a sophisticated printing device that brides-to-be are swooning over. In fact, the topic of gocco-ing your invitations, etc., has been tearing up the forums at The Wedding Bee for over a year now.

One look at these forums proves the gocco's abilities (just check out the picture of a gocco-created invite to the left): with a little creativity and know-how, you can create a professional, artistic and totally individual wedding invitation, perfect for your style, theme and personality.


And, here’s the best (green) part: you make your own design and you print it with more eco-friendly ink on more eco-friendly paper.


Having a gocco gives you the freedom to use eco-friendly alternatives in your invitations, envelopes, placecards, save-the-date cards, menus and programs. I have scoured the market for recycled paper invitations and I am sad to say that they just aren’t as visually appealing as regular non-green invites. That’s just due to the smaller size of the market. And using cotton paper is more expensive, especially if you’re not willing to really shop around. Plus, one of my fellow CatScan-ers recently pointed out that cotton is a dirty industry because of it's polluting farming practices and unfair labor and trade policies. So, a green bride has to find organic and sustainably made cotton for her invites. And that's hard.


But, organic cotton paper is out there. And so is recycled paper. All you'll need is a gocco to print your perfect design.


My wedding-planning friend Laura Dean, who's dreaming about buying her own gocco, is excited about showing off her and her fiance's originality. Plus, the little device will save these youngsters some much-needed money. The gocco is sold by Paper Source for $148. A set of print screens cost about $16 (you need one print screen for each different set of images) and tubes of ink cost $4. Laura said the gocco would save her about $1,500 on her paper goods but she estimates the average savings would probably be about $1,000.


Remember also that wedding invitations contribute to pollution through their use of slightly toxic ink. Making invitations with the gocco uses a very small amount of ink and creates a very small amount of waste, as well.




I’m going to let savegocco.com explain the gocco details:

“In the 1970s Noboru Hayama, a printer and the Japanese inventor of the ‘print gocco’ system, wished to develop a quick and easy household color printing system. Cleverly combining the basic principles of screen-printing and rubber-stamping, ‘print gocco’ is a clean, easy, and fully self-contained compact system that exposes and prints all in one unit. Using flash bulbs similar to those found in old cameras, an original image is thermally imprinted on a master screen. Next, colorful prints are made by pressing the ink-applied master screen against a sheet of paper placed on a sponge pad.”


There are tons of tutorial videos on YouTube that will help you use your eco-friendly craft skills and create gocco-ed invites.

Sunday, April 6, 2008

Be a do-it-yourself-er

Do-it-yourself avor ideas from Green Elegance Weddings

Green weddings are becoming synonymous with low consumption and low waste. One great way to cut down on both is to do some of the things for your wedding by yourself. My advice this week is to do it yourself!

Brides on a budget have taken this advice to heart for years. But it's a green practice, too: doing it yourself is a way to skip throwing away packaging, save receipts and eliminate the carbon emissions from driving all over town to pick something up or have it delivered to you. Plus, DIYs are wonderful ways to get your family and friends involved in your wedding. Here are several practices you can do all by yourself to help save money and resources.

First, going with a seasonal theme is one great tip from DIY Bride. Sticking to a seasonal theme will help you find local vendors more easily and reduce the carbon emissions from trucking or flying supplies in. For instance, you can buy in-season flowers from your local florist and support your town's economy instead of buying daisies in the winter from a grower in the opposite hemisphere.

Confetti is a main staple at many celebratory events like weddings. But paper confetti makes a huge mess (especially if you live in a rainy locale) and uses up paper and trees. Confetti Direct, based in England, sells dried flower petals that make great confetti because they're all-natural and biodegradable. But do you really need dried flowers all the way from England? Why not just pluck a good bit of wildflowers and dry them yourself? This could even be made into a fun event with friends and family. Or consider planting flowers in your own garden specifically for this purpose.

If you really have a green thumb, and you live in an appropriate climate, you could grow all of the flowers for your wedding. Green brides do this all the time. You would need to start way in advance, of course, but this practice could eliminate a substantial amount of waste and cost. It's a local and healthier technique for the environment because there are less pesticides and chemicals being used. Plus it could cost a lot less money.

Take your blossoming ideas a step further to the realm of wedding favors. I've told you about having a “green favor” and offering your guests potted plants that they could take home and enjoy for months and years to come. You can make those yourself by buying inexpensive pots and soil in-bulk and planting seeds in advance. Get creative and paint your names and wedding date on the pots. This would work best for a smaller wedding, but there are self-watering planters (which you can even make yourself) out there that could save the twice-per-week waterings you'll have to keep up on. I somehow managed to let my self-watered rose plant die, so clearly this would not be a practice I would take part in. But, if you have some gardening experience, or the will to learn, you could definitely grow your own favors.

If your gardening gloves are too dusty for my above suggestions (I don't even have gardening gloves...) Green Elegance Weddings has a whole bunch of DIY favor ideas which mostly involve putting a store-bought chocolate or cookie into original packaging you create. Remember that you or your family members can always make the cookies or chocolates yourself, as well. Store-bought or shipped items will come with packaging, which you'll end up just tearing off and throwing away.

Everyone with a computer can stick to this next DIY tip: e-vite your guests. I know a bit of HTML and am smart on the Internet, but that doesn't mean I can make a Web site. If you can, that's great: go for it! An easier, user-friendly way is just to start a blog through Blogger or WordPress. Also, The Knot hooks their wedding-planning members up to Google Page Creator. You can do this on your own by just signing into googlepages.com with an e-mail address and password-- you don't even have to have a Google account.

Jessika Higganbotham's invitation Web site. Made with Google Page Creator.

These main tips will make it easy for you to think of even more DIY ideas: stick to a seasonal theme to facilitate easy access to local resources, think about cutting down on waste when you're buying, and look for the most natural ingredients and resources you can find.

Sunday, March 30, 2008

A green car to match your green wedding


Transportation to and from your wedding is a large part of the event’s carbon footprint. Guests are driving or flying into town, driving from their hotels or homes to the ceremony, and sometimes even driving from the ceremony to the reception if the two events are being held at different venues.

For a wedding of 100 people, where about 35 guests are flying in and about 65 are driving, Terrapass.com estimates that about 40,000 lbs of CO2 would be emitted by transportation means.

What if you could cut that in half? Using biodiesel, an alternative fuel source made from vegetable oil, is one way to help reduce CO2 emissions.

The good news is that there are lots of car services that offer eco-friendly alternatives to gas guzzling limos or rental cars. Carolina Biodiesel and Clean Air Limo are two examples of this service. EcoLimo has services all over California. Bio-Beetle rents affordable and eco-friendly Volkswagen Beetles which are powered by 100 percent biodiesel fuel in Maui. Choose a green alternative, like a biodiesel car, over a 10-miles-to-the-gallon limo for your eco-friendly wedding.

Megan Hartman, the owner of Fourth Dimension Fuels, brings biodiesel to areas north of Tucson. She explained that biodiesel is thinner than regular gasoline and combusts more fully in diesel engines. This causes there to be less “junk” emitted, as more of the fuel is used as energy.
According to Hartman and Biodiesel.org, there are tons of benefits to using biodiesel.

Running 100 percent biodiesel eliminates:
48 percent of carbon monoxide emissions
47 percent of other particulate matter
67 percent of unburned hydrocarbons emissions

There are other benefits too.
Less emissions causes less of an effect on the ozone layer and better air quality
It takes less energy to produce and refine biodiesel
The fuel can be locally grown

Biodiesel is only available for diesel engines but there are other eco-friendly choices for transportation to and from your wedding. Encourage your guests to carpool to your wedding and rent hybrid or alternative fuel cars while they’re in town. Enterprise Rent-A-Car, National Car Rental and Alamo Rent A Car all have an optional carbon offset program that helps fund offset projects that remove CO2 from the environment.

Monday, March 24, 2008

Your wedding has big feet

-Set up invitation Web site? check.
-Limit the number of guests flying or driving into town? check.
-Make sure your wedding favors weren’t made with child slavery? check.
-Truck in special organic champagne? Let’s think about that one.

Even though organic champagne and sparkling wine is made without synthetic fungicides, herbicides or fertilizers, locally purchasing the bubbly stuff might actually be better for the environment. That’s because buying locally means you’re not trucking or flying in a product from who-knows-where. One of your main goals in planning a green wedding should be to keep the event's carbon footprint low, and reducing the number of miles travelled is a great way to do so.

But, if you’re near a good organic vineyard, you should definitely serve organic wine and/or sparkling wine at your reception. Diamond Organics is located in Moss Landing, Calif., about 100 miles south of San Francisco, so if you’re nearby, you could consider purchasing from them. My research has revealed that these organic items aren’t actually much more expensive than non-organic. Treehugger.com road-tested several different champagnes and sparkling wines.

The same deal goes for food. Many cities have wide selections of organic foods and you can just ask your caterer to use organic products or use an organic caterer. But, if you live in a small city, don’t truck in organic food just because it’s organic without comparing the environmental impacts of miles travelled vs. using inorganic food.

Wedding planner Candace Flores pointed out to me that having a green wedding is about trade-offs. You can spend less on organic food (and use regular inorganic products) if it means you’ll be able to rent out a venue that recycles. Think about the amount of cardboard, aluminum and glass that your wedding will produce and if it’s a lot, choose the recycling venue. But, if you’re doing a lot to minimize waste and having a smaller event, go with the organic food.

Of course, there are other ways to minimize your wedding’s carbon footprint besides serving organic food and recycling, like having a smaller wedding or using recycled paper. Some brides are buying carbon offsets from sites like Terrapass.org and Atmosfair to have a big wedding but still contribute to the environment. Before buying these offsets, which work by helping stop companies from polluting, check out this article by the New York Times about what you should know before buying.

Monday, March 17, 2008

A green proposal: Use recycled jewelry



a ring from greenKarat

Jewelry is a part of our culture that won’t soon be forgotten. The old routine of “put a ring on her finger” is a long-standing tradition prevalent in most of the world.

But many organizations have stopped to think about the environmental impact of jewelry.

Mining for precious metals is a leading cause of environmental pollution, according to Enviroblog. Gold, for example, comes with a whole slew of environmental and social problems.

No Dirty Gold, an organization trying to clean up gold-mining, lists the impacts of gold-mining.

It’s a major source of water pollution because miners let acid drainage, byproducts like mercury and other toxic chemicals seep into nearby water sources. Cyanide is one chemical leaked by gold mines that ends up killing populations of fish.

Dust from mines and smog from smelting plants is a considerable source of pollution from gold-mining.

Because of a process called heap leaching, almost all excavated material during gold-mining becomes solid waste. Cyanide is leaked through ore to separate gold from other materials for collection. The gold is processed to remove the chemicals but the rest is polluted and becomes waste.

These processes endanger natural areas and displace communities. In addition to polluting areas and creating unfit living conditions, gold-mining can change cultural traditions and is associated with alcoholism and prostitution.



GreenKarat is a company which promotes an eco-friendly jewelry movement by selling jewelry—including engagement rings—made from recycled and synthetic resources which cause less social and environmental harm.

Their site reports that there is enough pre-mined gold in the form of old jewelry to satisfy the gold demand for 50 years. In other words, we wouldn’t have to mine any more gold if we demanded the use of recycled gold.

Diamonds are another source of detriment to the environment, contributing to war (see this entry on blood diamonds) and energy and solid waste from mining practices.

There is truly sustainable jewelry out there.

www.greenkarat.com
www.brilliantearth.com
www.leberjeweler.com
www.miadonna.com
www.ringworksstudio.com
wiserjewelry.com

Recycling is a top way to end harmful mining techniques. Old precious metals can be re-processed and re-shaped into beautiful new modern pieces.

Using synthetic diamonds is another method. GreenKarat sells these “created” stones and they’re quite pretty (see picture above).

This eHow article lists other tips on how to buy eco-friendly jewelry, like shopping at vintage or antique stores for the perfect ring.

Earthworks is a watchdog organization that can tell you if miners are really using sustainable practices, so check with them before purchasing a ring.


a ring from Leber Jewelers

Eco-friendly jewelers are beginning to emerge. They point out to me the fact that our ways of life aren’t always sustainable. It’s becoming more and more clear that we can’t just keep consuming blindly: we must stop and think about how our traditions and our conditioned wants (like my own yearning for a big sparkly diamond) stack up to their environmental impacts.


Saturday, March 8, 2008

An eco-aware venue



It might make you cringe to think about how much from an event bypasses recycle bins and gets thrown straight into the trash, only to cease function as just another piece of waste in a landfill. In order to prevent your wedding from becoming an everywhere-I-look-I-see-trash event, ask each venue you’re considering if they recycle.

The Stillwell House is a gorgeous estate in downtown Tucson which is rented for weddings and parties almost nightly. It’s a perfect venue, not just because it’s beautiful (picture a bride making her way down a wide winding staircase to a beautiful outdoor courtyard), but because the folks at the Stillwell House recycle religiously.

After chasing down her runaway pug Louie, owner and planner Candace Flores gave me a list of why the Stillwell House is eco-friendly when I went to visit her on Saturday:

· They recycled everything they can
· They use organic ingredients in their catered food
· They donate leftover food
· The venue is cleaned with environmentally friendly cleaning supplies
· Only real linens are used (no plastic tablecloths)
· The staff encourages couples to give guests edible or recyclable favors to minimize waste
· Plastic use is minimized as much as possible
· They serve food and drinks in glassware, which is reusable
· They use environmentally friendly light bulbs
· Low-water irrigation systems are used

“It’s just some small stuff we can do to help,” said Flores.

An employee who helps set up for events showed me the back of the house where cardboard and aluminum resources are stashed away for recycling.




“It stinks back here,” he said. “But hey, we recycle!” he said proudly.

Find a venue like the Stillwell House, which will put eco-friendly practices to use to make sure the waste generated by your wedding is handled with good intentions.








Friday, February 29, 2008

Where do I begin?

I’ve told you guys before that I never expected there to be so many resources on how to have a green wedding. (I love the top-10 tips on how to green your wedding by Treehugger.com, which even helps you find where to get the green resources. And Emily Anderson’s EcoChicWeddings.com is an awesome resource for all things green and stylish.) But this past week, I started thinking—where is an eco-aware bride meant to start? What are the most productive changes she and her fiancĂ© can make?

Think about all the tips we’ve seen about having a green wedding: serve organic food and drink, have organic flowers, don’t use a lot of decorations, don’t use a lot of paper and plastic, have an organic wedding dress, print your invitations on recycled paper, have a small wedding, don’t buy things you won’t use, change your wedding dress into something you’ll want forever…

It’s probably not plausible that a couple will spring (or settle) for all of these green alternatives. So, if you’re a bride- or groom-to-be, you’re probably asking: where do I begin and where can I make the most difference?

Luckily, I had the chance to ask Beck Cowles from the Ecology Center in Berkeley, Calif., about how wedding planners can sort through all the green resources.

Cowles had tons of ideas but she picked three that she thought were simple and would make the most difference:

1. Don’t fly off in a jet airplane and don’t have your family fly in one, either. Jet emissions have the biggest and worst impact on the environment, especially in climate change.
2. Use local and organic resources. She emphasized using organic food.
3. Simplify the wedding to consume less in general and don’t ask for a lot of gifts because they produce a lot of waste in wrapping paper and natural resources.

I really think keeping the wedding small is the only way to prevent your family from traveling by air. I can imagine it being extremely difficult to say, “Cousin Jenny, I don’t want you to come to my wedding because I care more about the environment than you.” It’s easier just to say, “I’m sorry Cousin Jenny, we’re just having a small wedding to save money.”

If you do have some guests flying or driving in, check out TerraPass.com to buy carbon offsets. They have a wedding calculator that will help determine the carbon emissions caused by the travel to your wedding. Or better yet, just plant a bunch of trees at your house.

Cowles second tip came with an explanation of how much better organic foods are for the environment. Here’s a list of some other organic elements out there: organic flowers, organic suits and dresses, organic sparkling wine, fair-trade coffee and organic and all-natural linens like silk and hemp.

Her last tip is to just cut general consumption and don’t get more than you need. A wedding is a party, which is excessive by nature, but you don’t have to go overboard. Keep your resource use as low as possible by having a small, humble affair.

Sunday, February 24, 2008

Step into a green white gown

photo by Kyle Egan from http://www.naturalbridals.com/

Having a green wedding is kind of like the trendy thing to do nowadays. When I started my blog, I never imagined the resources out there for eco-aware brides and grooms. There are invitations on recycled paper, organic flower companies, organic sparkling wine, eco-friendly hotels and resorts… basically everything you need to minimize your wedding’s environmental impact (you can even buy carbon offsets for those traveling to your wedding).

But what about the dress? Buying a bright white wedding gown that is worn once and then shoved to the back of the closet only to be fondly remembered is notably un-eco-friendly. Usually a wedding gown consists of a lot of material— think layers upon layers of tulle. Production of fabrics causes a lot of air and water pollution.

Having an eco-friendly wedding dress means having one made from organic and all-natural materials. Silk and hemp, or a blend of the two, are the most popular eco-friendly materials for wedding dresses because they’re high-quality natural fibers which are renewable and have smaller environmental impacts in their production.

So, who makes wedding dresses out of this sustainable material? Unfortunately, there are not many choices out there for eco-friendly wedding gowns. (Business-minded folks take notice: there’s some room for improvement in this market!)

When I talked to event planner Dani Archer of Chic Celebrations by Dani, who is in the middle of planning her own green wedding, she told me that she searched high and low for a designer who would create the perfect eco-friendly gown with no luck.

Some brides buy silk or hemp or a silk/hemp blend from their local fabric store and bring it to a skilled tailor with a design in mind.

In her town of Rochester, N.Y., Archer was unable to find a tailor that she could trust to make her gown out of silk and hemp.

Her online searches for a gown weren’t helpful either. “There are some gorgeous gowns out there,” she said, “But they’re all soooo expensive.” Archer ended up buying a gown made of synthetic materials at a nearby vendor.

Nervously, I searched online for eco-friendly wedding gowns. I thought, “How hippied-out are these dresses going to be?” I was definitely expecting mu-mus accented by braided material and bright flowers.

I was pleasantly surprised to find some really pretty dresses. Here’s what my search uncovered:
Morgan Boszilkov is the amazing designer behind http://www.naturalbridals.com/. Her designs are for the fashionable and daring bride (See picture above).

Christina Dalle Pazze’s company Simple Silhouettes provides wedding and bridesmaid dresses made without sweat shop laborers.

Vegan brides can find a dress made by Conscious Clothing, which uses only natural vegetable fibers and makes simple, classic gowns that are easy to order. Silk and chiffon are also available in a few other gowns, like the Firenze, pictured.

Rene Geneva’s company makes two corseted green wedding dresses which are organic, fairly traded and made with only natural fibers.

You can buy a ready-to-wear dress through Threadhead Creations or you can work exclusively with a designer to create a custom-made gown. The company uses cotton, silk, hemp and bamboo.
photo from www.getconscious.com

The prices on these dresses are relatively high: from the sites that featured prices, there weren’t any under $1,000. There’s definitely a need for affordable eco-friendly dresses so that eco-devoted brides like Archer won’t be driven to buy tulle and lace gowns.

Sunday, February 17, 2008

Let's talk about consumerism...

...Because weddings have a lot to do with it.

I was 12, sitting in the front row of my uncle Ray’s wedding, when I underwent the transformation into a wedding enthusiast. Of course, I was pretty bored, being an obnoxious 12-year-old and all, until they got to the vows. I just thought it was so beautiful to see people sharing their love in front of all their friends and family.

And so I fell in love with that idea of being in love so much that you want everyone to know about it. But slowly, over a 9-year period, that love of love has become associated with the delight of the perfect wedding flower arrangement, the sparkliest engagement ring, etc.

This is particularly evident to me in the wake of Valentines Day. Why are women so obsessed with getting a dozen roses and chocolates? Valentine’s Day is supposed to be about showing your love—and, yes, spending some hard-earned money on a girl does show you care. But how has it happened that we’ve come to expect those things on a completely arbitrary holiday?

Sitting next to Julie, a fellow psych major who’s been married for two years, I looked down at her finger hoping to get a glimpse or two at a sparkly diamond. I saw only a thin gold band. I suddenly remembered that first enthralling experience of seeing people celebrate their love and I thought: how could a wedding band be any more perfect than Julie’s? (Of course, gold mining is terrible for the environment, but you get my point.)

And even as I write, it’s hard for me to separate the diamond from the engagement. The neurons have been firing in that same pattern—diamond, wedding, expensive, wedding, flowers, wedding—for so long now.

I guess we have to face the fact that weddings, just like holidays like Valentine’s Day, have become mass marketing strategies to get us to buy, buy, buy. I mean, how many of us really know anything about Saint Valentine?

We’re exhausting the world’s resources because of our desire to consume. A 2006 article from the Boston Globe reported that: “Americans consume like no other nation—using three times the amount of water per capita than the world average and nearly 25 percent of the world's energy, despite having 5 percent of the global population; and producing five times more daily waste than the average in poor countries.”

That’s why all the green brides and grooms out there need to adhere to tip no. 4: stick to a personal theme. Remember what your wedding is meant to do—celebrate your love, not impress your guests with giant balls of roses and 10-foot tall cakes.

Here are some other things to keep in mind:

-Don’t register for things you don’t need. The $40 spent on the 4-in-1 hot dog cooker, which will sit in the back of your cabinet after being used once just to laugh at, can feed eight kids for a month in a foreign country like Laos. In fact, small gifts under $40 can do a lot of social good.


-Don’t purchase things for your wedding that you will only use once. Invest in your dress (so that you can always wear it—see the last entry), don’t get expensive, crazy shoes you’ll only wear once, and get glassware and decorations that you’ll want to keep in your home for years to come.


-There are some people (like my and my boyfriend’s parents) who would travel to or from China to be at your wedding. But when you’re making your guest list, be aware of how much people will have to travel to get to your wedding. Having a small wedding will be so much more personal, anyway.

Saturday, February 9, 2008

A Socially Conscious Post-Wedding Decision

http://www.freedigitalphotos.net/


A few weeks ago, in the fifth episode of Bravo’s “Project Runway,” designer Steven was auf’d for “turning a wedding dress into a funeral dress.” For the first time in the four seasons of the show, I was thrilled to see a designer go home.

To me, a wedding dress has always seemed like the perfect material for reinvention and Steven missed an excellent recycling opportunity when he turned a perfectly good, albeit ugly, wedding dress (and his client’s favorite outfit!) into a mostly black, shapeless sack of a dress—and complained about it the whole time.

The truth is, you can turn a wedding gown—a dress you’ll only wear once—into a fun and beautiful dress fit for any special occasion, especially an anniversary date with your new husband. Check out some of the ladies who did so here.

Why should a beautiful dress sit in the back of a closet, waiting to be eaten by moths or overgrown by mold? Recycle your wedding dress, just like you recycle your soda cans and newspapers.

Here are some options for what you can do with a wedding dress after a wedding:
* Dye the dress another color. If you purchased a gown that only says wedding because of its bright white hue, dying could be all you need to do to go from bridal gown to ball gown.

* Remove some of the fluff. This works if you have one of those chic Monique Lhuillier gowns, for example, where you could just take off a few bows and it would look like a modern, ready-to-wear gown. Also think about removing any lace overlay.

* Shorten it up. Floor-length gowns look extremely formal, but a knee-length, A-line dress can be worn in many more settings.

* Separate the dress. Many dresses actually come as two pieces: a bodice or corset top and a skirt. If yours isn’t two pieces, though, it’s still easy to separate a dress if it’s the right style. Then, you have two pieces that can be worn again and again—especially the top.
* Turn it into a whole new party dress. A skilled atelier will probably be necessary for this transformation to take place, unless you’ve got a few years of seamstressing under your belt, that is. Once all the seams are picked out, you'll see just how much fabric you have to work with. You could end up with a dress of a completely different shape, style, and color. Consider mixing your wedding dress with another dress, as well.
Sandra at Alterations, Etc. in Phoenix has done numerous conversions from wedding gown to party dress. She has her clients pick a type and style of dress and she makes the changes. The amount of work and price of this transformation depends entirely on the wedding gown, but she said prices usually range from $160 to $500.
Her most recent conversion was from an antique wedding dress into a party dress, which cost $250.

So while you’re shopping for your wedding dress, think a lot about wearing it on the big day and a little about revamping possibilities for the future.

You can also take your dress apart and make it into something special that can be reused by your family. There are hundreds of ways you can use wedding dress fabric, but here are just a few examples:

· Use satin as a lining for a baby blanket.
· Have a seamstress create a bringing-home-baby outfit or a christening gown.
· Line the inside of a bassinette.
· Make throw pillows.
· Use it in a scrapbook.

And if you’re not super attached to or sentimental about your wedding dress—like maybe it’s from a failed marriage!—donate it. Send the dress to Brides Against Breast Cancer to help raise money for the Making Memories Breast Cancer Foundation. The two organizations sell the wedding gowns to other brides and use the proceeds to help grant the wishes of terminally ill breast cancer patients. Read about the wishes that have been granted so far here.

Saturday, February 2, 2008

Invitations, Invitations

photo provided by naturallyeverafter.com


A big part of a wedding is paper: invitations, envelopes, place cards, programs, menu cards and table cards, plus all the paper you’ll use during planning—seating charts, receipts…

We all know that regular paper comes from trees and that we want to spare as many tree lives as possible. When you’re planning your wedding, think about which paper products you can cut out:

Will anyone—besides you—keep your wedding program?
Can you send out your invitations in one envelope instead of two?
Could you combine the menu card and program?

Invitations are something that can’t really be avoided, though: you’ve got to let your friends and family know when and where you’ll be getting married.

Consider making a Web site to announce your wedding and convey the details of the ceremony. This can be really fun because you can personalize the Web site more than an invitation. Some newly engaged couples even keep blogs about their wedding planning efforts which double as invitations (you can check out my newly engaged friend Laura’s blog here).

If paper invitations are a must for you, consider using invitations made from recycled paper or other materials. I was surprised to find out the wide range of options available for more eco-friendly invitations. I thought, “Alright, maybe they’re eco-friendly, but are they attractive?” The answer is yes, they are attractive! The picture above features an invitation from Naturallyeverafter.com, a site that sells invitations made from at least 30% recycled fibers.

Cotton is also a great choice of a material for wedding invitations because it’s an easily renewable resource: a cotton crop takes six to eight weeks to mature from planting. Compare that to a tree, which takes at least five years to grow and three to re-harvest. Plus, paper mills are one of the worst polluters according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Act.

I took a trip to Papyrus, a chain of paper stores all over the United States, to find out more about how cotton invitations compare to paper invitations. They’re much nicer. Just check out this amazing 100% cotton invitation made by Crane & Co, a famous supplier of cotton invitations, and the set to the left by William Arthur.

One drawback with cotton invitations is that they don’t take dye as well as regular wood-pulp invitations (the dye tends to bleed), so some suppliers, like William Arthur, only offer higher-end printing options, like engraving with ink or using the letterpress method which can be more expensive. However, other companies, like Crane & Co., offer printing with thermographic ink-- the cheapest type of printing. The point here is that you can use cotton invitations, a more ec0-friendly option, for about the same price as regular paper invitations; you just have to shop around.

William Arthur and LCI Paper have great selections of 100% cotton invitations. And, for the bride on a budget, a paper supplier called Birchcraft Studios makes the most affordable cotton invitations that Papyrus sold. And they’re not bad!

The trusty Papyrus employee is a true pro when it comes to wedding invitations. Cathy, at Tucson’s La Encantada mall, pointed out several ways to save money and material when picking wedding invitations. I’ll let her have the last words:

1) Traditionally, invitations are sent with two envelopes, to keep the inside envelope containing the invitation nice and fresh. You can use only one envelope and save the extra paper.

2) Use as little ink as possible because the ink used on wedding invitations is not good for the environment. Looking through the giant books of invitation samples (that's me with a William Arthur book), I noticed plenty which were covered in ink. Sometimes, it’s not noticeable because the ink is a shade which almost matches the color of the paper.

3) Invitations often come with cards containing hotel information and a map of the ceremony location. If you can’t create a wedding Web site to convey this info, make that card double-sided. This is actually more convenient for guests, as when they’re coming into town, they don’t have to carry around several pieces of paper.

4) There’s a type of invitation called seal-and-send which uses a minimal amount of paper. You can get it from many different suppliers.

Saturday, January 26, 2008

Here comes the bride...

I'm not engaged (yet) and I've never been married. But, I am obsessed with weddings. I have cried through every single exchange of vows I've ever seen, swooned over thousands of stunning wedding gowns and thought long and hard about the perfect love songs to play at the reception. So when I was told that I was going to have to maintain a blog about green living for my capstone journalism course at the University of Arizona, I thought "WEDDINGS!" immediately.

Because of my obsession with weddings, I firmly believe that a wedding can and should be one of the most important days of a couple's life. Why shouldn't they go all out for such a big day? But when I started looking at the amount of resources used in a wedding--tons of flowers, cartons of invitations, place cards and menus-- I realized that a wedding's ecological footprint could use a little reduction. Think about what a wedding entails: engagement rings, engagement parties, bridal showers, bachelor and bachelorette parties, rehearsal dinners, wedding planning resources, all the wedding gifts and their packaging, plus the actual ceremonies and receptions. Does it make you cringe a little to think of all the waste that's generated? Me too.

My blog is all about helping the eco-thinking bride- and groom-to-be find ways to reduce their wedding's ecological footprint. If you're the girl who takes canvas bags to the grocery store to use less plastic, or the guy who dutifully recycles all of his beer cans, this blog is for you. Don't abandon your green thinking skills just because you're having a wedding! Let me show you how you can make your wedding eco-friendly, just like your lifestyle.

And if you're not already into the green scene, your wedding can be a great place to start. Skip all the decadence and have a personal and moving wedding, relying on more eco-friendly tactics to spread the word about your wedding (using a custom-made Web site instead of sending out invitations), and having a more modest number of guests (reducing the amount of miles travelled for guests to get to your wedding).

So to get you thinking, here are the top 5 tips I've discovered on my first green crusade:

1. Get all your resources as locally as possible. If there's a nearby paper store, have them print your place cards instead of catalog-ordering and having them trucked in. You can save a lot of carbon emissions by reducing the amount of miles that your resources have to travel.

2. Make sure your resources are ecologically responsible. Serve all organic foods at the reception and use recycled paper. And try to make all of your resources as reusable as possible. Choose a gown that can be worn again and pick decorations you can use in your own home, or can even double as gifts for bridesmaids or groomsmen.

3. Keep your wedding small. More guests means more miles travelled, and that means more carbon emissions.

4. Stick to a personal theme. The more over-the-top your wedding is, the more resources you'll consume and the larger your wedding's footprint will be. If you make your wedding about just you and you significant other, it will be less about consumption and more about your love for each other-- what everyone is there to celebrate!

5. Spread the green word. Your wedding is a great venue to help turn on more people about living green. Relax, this is not as hard as it sounds: just serving organic foods and using reusable resources in your wedding is enough to let your family know about your earth-friendly attitude, and make them think twice about theirs.

Stick with me this semester as I explore how you can make your wedding tasteful, elegant and, most importantly, green.