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.