When I began planning our wedding, I knew I wanted it be as green as possible, but I had no idea where to start. I'm fortunate that I knew where our ceremony and reception would be, as we are having the ceremony in my parents' yard (they live on a beautiful lake and have a large yard) and we are holding the reception at the community banquet hall, which is also located on the lake. In fact, that's how we decided to have it there. We will be boating from the ceremony to the reception :) So this is the idea behind it all, is that we would be taking a boat from our ceremony to our reception, and that sounded so great (I hate cars, and my fiancee and I are constantly trying to figure out how to love as car-free as possible, so this was a great suggestion from my aunt).
Once we had established the locations, though, all sorts of other things came into the picture...all the arrangements, in fact! We will be doing a lot of it ourselves, as we are not financially secure right now (my fiancee got laid off last spring and only recently went back to work). I have many friends who are in the same economic boat as us right now, and many of them are postponing getting married because they say they cannot afford it, but we wanted to get married anyway.
My mother just retired and has been invaluable to me in helping to plan our wedding, as I work full-time and commute a far distance and have really no time for this right now. She picked up a book called "The Green Bride Guide" which I cannot recommend enough. I have already loaned it out once, and there are more highlight marks and scribbles and post-its in it than any book I read for school. Here's a link to the book's website so you can check it out: greenbrideguide.com
I only went through one or two themes before picking one that struck me as particularly wonderful, which is cafes. We are having a Cafe-themed wedding, as we both love cafes (me especially) and have spent many times together in cafes (we are both poets and have hosted many open mics and magazines in cafes as well). Once the theme was established, I picked the colors. I picked one of my favorite colors as the brightest, which is Dark Salmon, and it will be accented by Champagne and Ivory. We are having a summer wedding, so this seemed like a great summer color scheme. Originally I had picked Peach, Ivory, and Blue, but everyone told me it looked too much like a creamsicle! I changed it when I started to look at bridesmaid dresses.
As for the reception, we are blessed to live in an area that has an Organic Catering Company (Rustic Foods Custom Catering in Clifton, NJ, rusticfood.com - check out their site, they're amazing). I'm a vegetarian but my fiancee is not, so we are compromising and having a few meat and fish dishes. The catering company has been great working with us on a menu and finding meat and fish from sustainable, humane places. After we selected the caterer, we started thinking about decorations, etcetera, and I came up with a few great ideas (or I think so!)...
Seating Cards: We are saving the paper sleeves from cafes and coffee shops (the ones they put on paper cups) and asking our friends to do the same. We are then going to print labels with names and table arrangements on them and place them on a table as seating cards. Working within a budget makes the idea of re-using objects even more appealing than it would if we had money to waste (although we try not to waste anything!).
Centerpieces: My mother actually saw an idea for these centerpieces on a wedding website (not sure which). We are going to have hardcover books stacked with a mug (a regular-sized coffee mug) on the top of the book stack. We will have small flower arrangements in each mug. On the bride/groom big table, we are using coffee cans for the flowers. We've asked all our friends and family to save coffee cans for us as well, and I think we already have enough of those (with nine months to go).
Favors: We will be giving out tiny bags of coffee beans with tiny cards or labels attached. This is actually a hard thing to make green, as the companies who prepare these do not generally use fair-trade coffee. I think I may buy those tiny organza bags and attach a tiny card (made from re-used greeting cards) with our wedding info handwritten on them, or I will re-use pieces of greeting cards and then affix labels we print.
Tables and Chairs: We are renting everything, so I do not feel as if we will have that much of an impact on the environment, but we are choosing wooden chairs over plastic for the reception as I would like to keep the plastic to a minimum.
Attire:
This is a huge problematic. I do not want my bridesmaids to have to shell our hundreds of dollars for a dress they may never wear again, but I also do not want to support a place that is not fair-wage or uses materials that are not green. The book I mentioned above, The Green Bride Guide, had many great ideas for this problem. I found a dress I love on AriaDress.com and they have all their dresses made in the US, pay fair wages, and use great materials. The only problem is that the dress I like is $200. The other idea I'm toying with is letting my bridesmaids pick their own dresses. I may do what the author of the Guide did and send them swatches of colors and materials and then let them choose their own dress so that they can wear their dresses again.
I am going to be buying a used wedding dress. I prefer to go somewhere that supports charity, such as The Bridal Garden in NYC, but it may be too expensive for my budget, so I may be buying a wedding dress at a consignment shop (there's one in Wayne, NJ). I do not like the idea of going to a traveling show like Making Memories to buy a dress, but that is a great option if you can stand the crowds.
I am not going to be wearing a veil, as I am not that traditional. I will be wearing a headscarf or headband, and I will update you when I find a "green" headpiece. I may make one myself out of fabric I already have.
Everything else is up in the air as of right now, but I wanted to make this blog so that other women (and men) who are trying to plan a green wedding know that it is possible, even on a small budget. I hope green weddings become a trend, as it would help the earth. Who wants to celebrate love by killing the planet?
