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 fiancé 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.