But we are still capturing our expereinces and will bring them to you here on Go Green In Style soon!  

Thank you for your questions, comments, and suggestions.  We are looking forward to sharing more of our journey down the green aisle…

Sean and Mandy

Choosing eco-friendly wedding stationary doesn’t have to be a daunting task. In fact, when armed with the right information, it’s actually quite simple. Just keep these four “P’s” in mind: Paper, Printing, Place, and Practices. 

We’ll start with the first “P”: Paper: As opposed to just “100% recycled,” seek out invitations printed on 100% post consumer recycled paper. This paper is created from consumer products, usually retrieved from curbside recycling, and ensures there are no new trees used in making the paper. There are also other eco-friendly options, such as FSC certified paper, which guarantees the fibers in the paper come from responsibly maintained forests, and tree free papers, such as bamboo and hemp. 

Printing: There are four common types of printing for wedding invitations: offset printing, letterpress printing, thermography (raised printing), and digital and inkjet printing. Without getting into a long diatribe about each, each one has their pros and cons. Talk to your invitation provider or browse through their website about what environmentally friendly methods they implement first. You may have a local print shop who offers to print your invites for a great price, but perhaps they don’t recycle scraps (you’d be surprised how many don’t). While Crane & Co. uses offset and thermographic printing, but they work hard to minimize their carbon footprint by investing in pollution prevention strategies and tree free paper.

Place: This refers to the location of your invitation provider. The less traveling you have to do, the better. And the less traveling your invitations have to do to get to you, the better. This minimizes pollution resulting from transportation. Seek out online invitation providers that purchase carbon offsets for shipping or explore local invitation artists or designers. This is something we at EarthlyAffair.com do for every single shipment. 

Practice: Last, but not least, this “P” refers to practices. What eco-friendly business practices, if any, has your invitation provider implemented? Most online providers will put something on their website, but for others you might have to do a little more digging. Some of the things you might look for are in-office recycling, keeping documents in electronic format to save paper, and installing energy efficient equipment and light bulbs.

I had a DJ ask me how to be a “GREEN Wedding DJ”?  Other that using solar powered instruments, string instruments, etc., What can I tell him?   Any suggestions?

Dianne

That is so fun. I love to see how people are trying to make green their own. That is so exciting.

Here is a starting place.

1. Consider using equipment that’s energy efficient. Look for the Energy Star brand. According to EPA, Energy Star products “use less energy, save money, and help protect the environment.”
2. Examine how you get to gigs. Do you drive a diesel vehicle?  Why not use biodiesel made out of left over restaurant grease?  Local biodiesel suppliers exist all over the U.S. Click here to learn more about biodiesel.
3. Having an outside event that requires a generator? Use a green generator rather than a traditional diesel generator. Tree Sound Studios offers a totally green power solution. The Tree Power and Sound Equipment harnesses wind and solar to power your music. Consider renting this for your next event.
4. Many musicians and DJ’s require a rider. Ensure your rider seeks eco friendly solutions. Low level packaging, local/organic/in season food, tap not bottled water, etc.
5. Be sure not to idle your vehicle when you’re loading and unloading.
6. Buy carbon offsets for your travel to gigs.

Have other thoughts? Know a DJ who is embracing green?  Let us know by adding a comment below!

Rock on!

Mandy

(image used under Creative Commons License by Auroramixer)

Enjoy!

Books

Eco-Chic Weddings: Simple Tips to Plan an Earth-Friendly, Socially Responsible, Affordable Green Wedding by Emily Elizabeth Anderson

The Everything Green Wedding Book: Plan an elegant, affordable, earth-friendly wedding (Everything Series) by Wenona Napolitano

The Green Bride Guide: How to Create an Earth-Friendly Wedding on Any Budget by Kate L. Harrison

Green Wedding: Planning Your Eco-Friendly Celebration by Mireya Navarro

How to Get Married in Green by Suzan St.Maur

Green Weddings That Don’t Cost the Earth by Carol Reed-Jones

The Green Wedding Guide: Creating a Celebration That’s Elegant and Ethical by Valerie Edmunds

Anti-Bride Guide: Tying the Knot Outside of the Box by Carolyn Gerin and Stephanie Rosenbaum

Organic Weddings: Balancing Ecology, Style and Tradition by Michelle Kozin
 

Websites & Blogs

Eco Chic Weddings by Emily Anderson, the ultimate blog about eco-chic weddings

Everything Green Weddings by Wenona Napolitano

It’s a Nice Day for a Green Wedding, A blog with suggestions about greening weddings and other events you are planning.

Great Green Wedding

Green Elegance Weddings

Green Bride Guide

Articles & TV shows

Altar-native Energy: How to green your wedding, Grist Magazine

Green Weddings, The Knot.com

CAUSE FOR CELEBRATION by Sheryl Eisenberg, NRDC

Planning a Green Wedding, Coop America

It’s not easy going green, Rich Bride, Poor Bride, WE TV

How to Go Green: Weddings, Treehugger.com

Say ‘I do’ Green Wedding, Today Show

Have a Green Wedding, Time Magazine

Have other sources that you have found?  Have a recommendation based on your experience?  Let us know!  Add a comment below to help other folks Go Green In Style…

Lets begin with a primer on the basics of a good skincare routine.  The following steps are the basics of a routine for beautiful wedding day skin: 

1.  Cleanse - whether to remove makeup, or just the grime we accumulate in the environment, cleansing the skin is the cornerstone of a good skincare routine.

2.  Exfoliate - necessary to remove dead skin cells from the surface of the skin.  This can be accomplished manually (such as with a washcloth, scrub, or microfiber cloth) or chemically (such as with gentle acids).

3.  Tone - helps to protect the skin by returning to proper ph (somewhat acidic, between 4.2 and 5.6).  Toners can also help to hydrate the skin.

4.  Hydrate - the skin is about 70% water, and we need to hydrate both internally and externally.  Internal hydration requires drinking plenty of water, while external hydration can be accomplished through spritzing the skin with water or based products (for example distilled or spring water, aloe vera juice, and hydrosols – distillates which are a by product of the essential oil making process), or applying water based serums, lotions or gels.

5.  Treat - there are many natural and green products that can treat various imbalances or problems with the skin (such as essential oils, hydrosols, antioxidants, acids, fruit and nut oils, and other “active” ingredients).

6.  Emollience - oils, lotions, and creams help to seal in the hydration and protect the skin. 

While this may seem complicated, we don’t necessarily need to include all of these steps everyday (depending on your individual skin care needs, exfoliation and treatments might only be necessary a few days a week). 

The very basic daily routine should include: 

• Cleansing (even if its just wetting your face with water),
• Toning (with a mild tonic, such as a spritz of aloe juice mixed with a small amount of vinegar, or an herbal hydrosol)
• Hydration – for some a toner will be sufficient hydration, others may want to follow toner with a water based serum or gel
• Emollient – seal in hydration and protect the skin with a few drops of natural oils (NOT essential oils – these are too potent to use straight on the skin) or a naturally formulated lotion or cream.

Speak up!  Have a favorite green skin care product?  Let us know by adding a comment below.

Renewable Energy Credits and Carbon Offsets 

Reducing the Footprint of Your Wedding

The events surrounding a wedding, just like much of our everyday lives require the use of a significant amount of energy.  Whether used by guests travelling by plane and by car, or the electricity used by the wedding, rehearsal dinner, and hotel facilities, energy is used in every aspect of a wedding.  The gasoline for cars and planes and the electricity generated and sent through the grid is primarily (over 90%) from greenhouse gas emitting fossil fuels.  Transportation and electricity production are MAJOR contributors to global climate change.

Since most of us aren’t able to get to every wedding by walking or riding our bike, and not every facility has solar panels on the roof to produce 100% of the electricity or a wind turbine out in the back, we have to find other ways to make energy consumption as part of a wedding more sustainable. 

The primary tools we have to do enable individuals to support renewable energy projects and carbon reduction are known as Renewable Energy Credits (RECs) and Carbon Offsets or Voluntary Emissions Reductions (VERs).  Now it just so happens that as Director of Resource Development at Renewable Choice Energy, a leading marketer of RECs and carbon offsets in the US, I lead our efforts to support these types of projects (so that’s why Mandy asked me write this!).

For more information about RECs and carbon offsets, how they work, and what the difference is between them, please visit http://www.renewablechoice.com/residential-why-it-works.html – our marketing people have put together a great series of diagrams and explanations that help make this all much clearer than I could type here.

Carbon offsets have their origin in the Kyoto Protocol signed in 1997 as the international community’s effort to stem anthropogenic (human produced) greenhouse gasses.  The voluntary market standards and projects have their basis in the Kyoto Protocol. A carbon offset is measured in units of one metric ton of carbon dioxide equivalent (there are six greenhouse gasses – it’s a lot easier to convert them all to their global warming potential based on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s conversions).

The Renewable Energy Credit market is a U.S. based market that has developed into an important element of driving financial and other support for renewable energy development in the United States.  One REC equals One Megawatt hour or one thousand kilowatt hours. 

Lets take the example of Mandy’s wedding.  For our purposes lets assume:

• That there are 300 people coming
• All 300 people are driving an average of 170 miles (distance from Atlanta to Macon). 
• Of those 300 people, 100 of them are flying an average of 2,430 miles roundtrip (that’s my flight from Denver to Atlanta). 

The impacts of that travel would be approximately:

• 51,000 miles driven emitting approximately 50,000 pounds of carbon dioxide
• 243,000 air miles flown emitting approximately 94,800 pounds of carbon dioxide

That’s a total of 144,800 pounds of carbon dioxide or 65.7 metric tons of CO2.  That’s a lot of CO2 emissions for a single weekend! 

On the electricity side, you have the electricity used in the hotels people stay in, at the facilities for the dinners and other events.  There are a lot of different factors that go into how much electricity those buildings use like how old the building is, how efficient their HVAC and other systems are, whether they have compact fluorescent light bulbs or incandescent, how much they have the air conditioning turned up, etc. 

A 100,000 square foot hotel in Macon, GA would:

• Consume approximately 1,770,000 killowatt hours per year, causing approximately 1,094 metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions. 
• A three day weekend at the hotel (assuming all events occurred there), would use approximately:
  • 14,548 killowat hours and emit approximately 9 metric tons of carbon dioxide. 
• Purchasing 14,548 killowatt hours of Renewable Energy Credits from a wind, biomass, small hydro or other renewable facility (like the products we sell) would ensure that a commensurate amount of renewable energy went onto the grid to offset the power consumed that weekend. 

Energy consumption is not typically something that we think about in our daily lives.  We flip the switch and the lights come on, we fill up the tank or get on the plane and it goes.  There are significant impacts to our energy consumption in the United States – we emit 25% of the world’s greenhouse gases yet account for only about 5% of the world’s population.  Tackling our energy consumption by improving efficiency, reducing consumption, and aggressively developing renewable energy is one of the greatest challenges and opportunities in front of us today.  Supporting a more sustainable, low carbon energy infrastructure is a contribution every individual can make, and what better time to start that than with a wedding?!?!

We have your answer! Well, we have an answer to at least one of your dilemmas. It is almost certain that you will end up with some new towels as wedding or shower gifts.  As you are going through your old towels wondering what to do with them – don’t fret! We have a place that will gladly accept all of your old towels. They will even take the stained and tattered ones with your monogram that you received as a high school graduation gift from your loving grandmother.  Local humane societies welcome towel donations that they utilize to line and clean the kennels as well as bath the animals.  We promise that the dogs will not mind a nail polish stain, a tear or festive color. Plus you can feel good about recycling your weathered towels while enjoying your vibrant, soft, stain-free new ones. 

In addition to towels, they also accept newspapers, newspaper bags, toilet paper rolls & paper towel rolls.  The cardboard paper rolls make excellent “new” chew toys for puppies.  

If you’re in Atlanta- the Atlanta Humane Society is located at the corner of Howell Mill Road and 10^th Street in Midtown.  The Atlanta Humane Society is open seven days a week, so drop by at your convenience and be sure to say “hi” to the adorable puppies and kittens awaiting their new forever home.  

To find your local human society visit: http://www.hsus.org/

by Erin Clark & Beth Ament

Brides are looking for dresses that are not only green, but are elegant, beautiful and flattering.  The eco-friendly dress is not just for the hippy bride, but is becoming more mainstream, and therefore, there is an increasing demand for designs with more mainstream appeal.

By wearing an eco-friendly gown, a bride is able to not only look stunning on her wedding day, but make a difference.  Her dress is a statement in support of environmentally friendly and socially responsible causes.  In addition, natural fabrics are so gorgeous and have such a luxurious feel to them.  After working with the eco-friendly fabrics, polyester dresses just don’t have the same appeal to me anymore. 

Some of my dresses may be made with detachable bottom skirts, so they may be worn again or in their shorter form at the reception. This enhances the “greenness” of the dress. 

I have always been environmentally conscious and try to be eco-friendly in both my personal and business life.  When I decided to start my business, I looked around to see what eco-friendly dresses were available.  I was surprised to find so few options available and knew that I would make beautiful gowns that are better for the environment. 

My collection, Natural Bridals, is designed to be everything that a bride dreams of in a wedding dress: elegant, beautiful, well-made, luxurious. And it also happens to be eco-friendly!  I believe sustainable fabrics are not limiting, but have endless potential for creating fabulous designs. 

When choosing an eco-chic wedding dress, a bride should find out what makes the dress eco-friendly.  She should find out if the designer uses sustainable fabrics and if the dress was made in a socially responsible manner.  Another thing that some designers do is to donate or give back to the environment or to communities in need.   

I recommend that a bride finds a style that flatters her figure and one in which she will feel beautiful just like with regular gowns.  A bride can be beautiful and still make an eco-chic statement! 

Morgan Boszilkov, Designer, Natural Bridals 

About the author: Morgan Boszilkov is a premier international eco couture wedding gown designer based in Atlanta’s leading sustainable neighborhood Glenwood Park.  The Natural Bridals line has been sold globally and Ms. Boszcilkov has been featured on TLC’s “Who are you wearing”. Ms. Boszilkov is designing the attire for the wedding party of GoGreenInStyle’s editor Mandy Schmitt.

1. Use locally ingredients- Go to local farmers markets and try the 100-mile diet concept. Studies show that most food in America travels more than 1,500 miles from the farm to table.  Eating locally cuts down on petroleum demand, supports our local agriculture economy, and provides consumers with a higher quality product. Plus, you can experiment with foods in season to create exciting new menus. Georgia Organics offers a rich set of resources.
2. Make smart seafood choices - Use the Monterey Bay Aquarium Seafood Watch Guide. Buying the right seafood is a complex web of decisions. The Seafood Watch guide does all the work for the consumer. This pocket-sized guide decodes which seafood are the right choice based on health issues and environmental impacts. Download one from their website or pick one up at the Georgia Aquarium.
3. Reconnect with American heritage - Buy heritage poultry, beef, and pork. Industrial agriculture relies on a small number of breeds of livestock, threatening the nation’s food security.  Heritage livestock promotes genetic diversity and has a unique and special flavor to spice up your next family meal.  Free range and organic meat is also a great alternative.  Whole Foods, Atlanta’s Star Provisions, and farmers markets are great places for these finds. Visit Heritage Foods USA for more information about heritage meats.
4. Piece de resistance- Finish with a rainforest-certified and fair trade chocolate dessert. Rainforest certified and fair trade chocolate is a rich, decadent dark chocolate. It is produced with methods that protect the rainforest and the farmers. K Chocolat in Atlanta’s Inman Park will provide your perfect finishing touch www.kchocolat.com.
5. Spice up your outfit- Buy vintage and environmentally sound clothes and lingerie. Buying vintage is recycling, period. Environmentally-sound clothes and lingerie use recycled fabrics, organic cotton, bamboo, and over-run fabrics.  Atlanta has great vintage stores and a number of boutiques that carry eco-couture, including Evolve Boutique in Emory Village and Eco-Bella in Virginia Highlands. Also check out [online retailers]
6. Uncork your passion- Choose biodynamic or organic wine.  Biodynamic and organic wines are grown and produced without the use of synthetic chemicals and with care and preservation of the surrounding land and watershed.  Looks for these wines at Sherlock’s Wine Merchant, Whole Foods, or your local wine shop. Brands to look out for include Yorkville Cellars, Fetzer’s Bonterra line, Benzinger, Frog’s Leap, Opus One, and Domaine Begude.  For more information about biodynamics check out the Biodynamic Farming and Gardening Association.
7. Set the mood- Select domestically grown flowers or consider clipping some greenery from right in your back yard.  Magnolia and American holly offer lovely, vibrant color and elegance in the Valentine season. Opt for soy or beeswax candles over the traditional synthetic variety.  Synthetic means petroleum based! 

Portions reprinted from previous publication in Atlanta Intown by Polly Sattler and Mandy Schmitt.

1. Choose a florist that has experience in or can guarantee environmentally sound wedding flower.  Emily Anderson, Eco chic Wedding author, recommends floral designer Livia Cetti, owner of The Green Vase.
2. Choose flowers that are cultivated in a sustainable method. Think organic vegetables and fair trade coffee. Fair Flowers Fair Plants (FFP) is a new initiative to stimulate the production and sales of flowers and plants cultivated in a sustainable manner.  FFP offers a search feature so that you can find FFP certified growers and retailers in your area.
3. Choose flowers that are fair trade certified.  Fair Trade Certified Flowers label “on your bouquet means that flower workers, most of whom are women, can put food on their tables, send their children to school, invest in community development, and use sustainable farming methods” according to TransFair USA. Click here for of list of certified vendors.
4. Use local flowers. You may have to sacrifice local for regionally and domestically grown. Avoiding flowers are flown in from another part of the US or another continent will help you lower your carbon footprint.
5. Choose flowers that are native and in season in your area. You will have a better chance that you’ll be able to find them from a local or regional grower.  Most states have native plant societies that can be great sources of information. Here are a few Georgia Native Plant Society, California Native Plant Society, Native Plant Society of New Jersey, Native Plant Society of Texas, Native Plant Society of Washington
6. Use flowers and greenery from your back yard.  Some florists will also allow you to supply your own flowers for them to use in your arrangements.  For example, hydrangeas are popular wedding flowers that bloom readily in the late spring and early summer.
7. Avoid the use of invasive species.  Invasive species are devastating our local streams and rivers. Most of these invasives have been introduced for landscaping and aesthetic purposes.  By avoiding using them in your wedding you are avoiding being part of the problem.  Visit the National Invasive Species Information Center for more information.
8. Use potted plants for table arrangements.  These can be great gifts for special people in the wedding. Be sure to go for native plants and avoid invasive species.
9. Use edible arrangements and fruit. My Eco Chic Weddings offers a fun and attractive faux rose table centerpiece made of cupcakes! Do It Yourself Weddings and Earthly Affairs.com show you how to elegantly use fruit as centerpieces. Edible Arrangements also offer a delicious alternative to the traditional.
10. Use the same flowers at your rehearsal dinner and reception. Reduce, reuse, recycle. J
11. Structure your floral decorations so that guest can take them home after the wedding events.
12. Compost the floral arrangements that are not used after the wedding events.

Recommended articles and links:

How to have Eco Friendly Wedding Flowers, EHow.com

Listing of sustainable florists in the UK

Fair Trade Certified Flowers

Fair Flowers Fair Plants

Edible Arrangements