The World According to Weddlady

Introduction to Green Weddings

“Green” or Eco-Friendly weddings are finally taking their rightful place among the greater body of events as legitimate and common affairs. There are eco-bridal shows, “green” pros and even magazines and books dedicated entirely to green weddings.

  

 

I particularly like Kate L. Harrison’s The Green Bride Guide (2008, Sourcebooks, Inc.) as a resource when I have questions about the growing trend. I have gleaned the following terms from Kate’s book which I highly recommend and which can be purchased at pretty much any major book retailer and easily online.

  

 

Here are a few terms to get you started with investigating Green weddings:

  

 

Carbon Offsetting: while you may minimize the ways that your wedding consumes resources and releases carbon dioxide, you will still have a “carbon footprint” or the cumulative effect of your wedding activities on the environment. There are several websites that you can use to determine what your wedding carbon footprint will be. You can take action and pay a carbon offsetting company to “offset” your impact.

 

 

Your money is used to support initiatives that will take carbon by-products out of the environment, such as tree planting, renewable-energy development and advanced farming methods that actually remove greenhouse gasses from the atmosphere. Let your guests know that you’ve made a carbon-offsetting donation in lieu of a favor to get them involved and educate at the same time!

 

 

Clear-Conscience Diamonds: Thanks to the movie “Blood Diamonds” we’re more aware than ever about the human cost of mining for jewels and precious metals. There is a huge environmental toll as well. Clear-Conscience Diamonds no longer contribute to the human and environmental tragedies that surround this violent marketplace. These include heirloom diamonds, antiques that predate 1880 or the large-scale mining operations, synthetic and cultured diamonds.

  

 

LEED Certification: The Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design program is administered by the U.S. Green Building Council. Hotels and venues can be LEED certified by making major modifications to their structures and processes.

 

 

Tree-Free Paper: Paper made from fiber crops like papyrus, bamboo, flax (linen) and hemp.

  

 

Clean-Burning Candles: Soy, palm and beeswax candles are clean burning and emit 95 percent less soot than paraffin candles!

  

 

Harrison’s The Green Bride Guide is tightly packed with environmental education and implementable alternatives. Pick up a copy before you start your planning and turn your wedding green!

 

 

Happy (and Green) Planning 

 

Shayna Walker,

Williamsburg Wedding Design

 

What Does it Mean to Be Green?

As part of a 14-month research tour of bridal shows, I attended the Mid-Atlantic Green Wedding Showcase this past weekend in College Park, Maryland. It was an eye-opening experience, full of dedicated, creative professionals with a great cause.

The Green Wedding Movement, like most newer concepts, has been a little bit slow to reach the wedding industry in this region of Virginia. I have read blog posts and magazine articles about ways to make weddings more eco-friendly, but attending the showcase on Sunday made it glaringly clear to me that I am a total newbie on the Green scene.

Fortunately, I loved what I learned, and I can’t believe how many ways there are to make both your wedding, and your wedding business green!

 

One of the highlights of the show was a presentation by author and former green bride Kate Harrison. Her book, The Green Bride Guide, is a fun read and full of practical tips to make your wedding more eco-friendly regardless of your budget.

Harrison and the other vendors at the showcase, all of whom had to meet exceptionally rigorous standards to even participate in the event, emphasized that reducing the impact of your event could be achieved through a combination of material selection, best practices and innovation.

Some of the tips that Harrison shared for brides and grooms included:

-   Choose invitations made of recycled materials and printed with soy ink

-   Use local, seasonal flowers and reduce the impact of shipping, preservatives and excess packing materials

-   Donate your bridal gown or bridesmaids’ dresses after the wedding to a charity that reuses or repurposes them

-   Choose a venue that is green and LEED certified

-   Ask your caterer to use local items and organic foods

-   Select all-natural beauty products

-   Find vendors who offset their carbon footprint (a really interesting process!)

If you’re dedicated to hosting a responsible wedding, pick up a copy of Harrison’s book and subscribe to the Green Bride Guide blog. Another great new resource is Katie Martin’s Eco-Beautiful blog.

Thank you to Lori Hill and her co-producers for allowing us to attend the Mid-Atlantic Green Wedding Showcase. I look forward to featuring more of the vendors and their commendable efforts in the days to come!

Happy Planning!

Shayna Walker, Williamsburg Wedding Design

Green Tag!

When my super-talented and most awesome friend Isis Petrie of Posh Events, LLC "tagged" me with a Green Tag, I was certain I was being clued in to some game that my 3-year-old twins know but I don't.  But, I dutifully (and might I say promptly for once) read the instructions on her blog and discovered that I am actually supposed to "list my contribution to maintaining an eco-friendly, green environment". 

At Weddings by Shayna, LLC, we:

1. have a "use every paper twice" policy - I have a stack of halved 8 1/2 x 11 paper next to my desk that I use for notes, client consultation reminders, the occasional paper airplane (which gets notes on it too - so that's actually 3 times!) and of course, to entertain my 3-year-olds when they are at the office (a frequent occurrence certain times of the year).

2. have dramatically reduced our paper usage by maintaining the bulk of each of our client files electronically, and printing out only critical e-mails as necessary (down from huge quantities of paper used in the past to print every e-mail).

3. have replaced our office desktop (which met an untimely and early death in a tragic motherboard failure) with a re-purposed or re-developed or re-somethinged (I can't remember what the techie called it now) computer - essentially a new motherboard with my old hard drive in a shell of a computer that offered us upgraded features, but was previously owned, keeping one more computer shell out of the landfill.

4. have purchased a reasonably expensive laser printer.  How is another "printing monster" environmentally friendly?  In the past, our printing demand has been so large that we've "killed" economy deskjet after economy deskjet, creating a stack of useless cheap printers that I'm still seeking a recycling method for.  I committed myself this year to buying quality technology products (including a reasonably expensive all-in-one to handle tasks that my printer can't), along with maintenance plans.  Now, when I have an issue, I send the suckers back to the manufacturer, who gladly send me replacements - almost always factory re-tooled devices that themselves were previously used.  I actually feel much better, and with the laser printer, use significantly fewer print cartridges.

5. buy recycled paper for our all-in-one.

6. keep up to date and publicize new info on organic flower resources and products (see previous blogs).

7. travel in a single vehicle to most events, work within a mile of my office, work from home whenever possible and avoid making superfluous trips around town and to sites - we really try to pack in power weekends of site visits and vendor appointments, and otherwise use the technology we have to stick close to home base.

8. are in the process from transitioning our traditional paper mailing system (for client reports and reminders) to an e-mail based system that will play nicely with most e-mail hosts. 

9. require accommodations in our contracts for events a certain distance (give or take 60 miles) from our local area between the rehearsal and wedding - not only does it save gas and limit unnecessary risk of long-haul trips for our staff, but it also ensures our clients that we are on site and often times, on the "correct side of the water" (thanks to our many "reliable" bridge-tunnels) on their wedding day.  Surprisingly, it doesn't cost them much more than they'd pay us in a mileage surcharge, and it adds incredible peace of mind.

We have a long way to go, and we live in one of the least eco-friendly areas I can imagine (from an availability of recycling programs standpoint), but I have hope for the future, and am excited about the resurrection of the dying green movement.  Thank you Isis for making us reflect on this again!  I'm off to figure out new, green policies and tools!

Now I have to find someone to tag (prompt me CC'ers if you haven't been tagged - I'm at least a month behind on reading posts and blogs!).