Eco Invitation Primer

As I begin to write my guest post, let me thank Mandy from GoGreenInStyle.com! This site is amazing and I’m so glad to have found another Atlanta-based eco-blogger. To introduce myself, my name is Jennifer Stambolsky and I own and operate the eco-friendly invitation boutique, EarthlyAffair.com. Our job is to create wedding invitations in the most earth friendly way possible.

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.

 

 

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Thanks, Jennifer!  For the marketing minded people out there you now have a new list of the four P’s.  Let us know what you’ve encountered with your green printing projects.  And don’t miss Jennifer’s Blog over at EarthlyAffair.com.

Green Skincare for a Green Wedding

While a bride might be willing to make sacrifices to go green on her wedding day, most brides would not be willing to sacrifice looking fantastic.  People talk about “beautiful brides” for a reason!  Most brides and grooms are very happy on their wedding day, and that internal glow often translates to an external “radiance.”  One way to maximize this wedding day glow is to prepare with a good skincare routine combined with high quality skin care products.  Many brides fear the possibility of waking up on the day of the wedding to discover the dreaded stress induced blemish!  The good news is that there are many options to help you achieve gorgeous, glowing wedding day skin, as well as great skin everyday, with natural, green products that won’t blow your wedding budget. 

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.

Reducing the Footprint of Your Wedding

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?!?!

GGIS Exclusive: Eco-couture designer Morgan Boszilkov

As awareness and concern about environmental and social issues increase, a bride’s desire to be greener on her wedding day has also grown.  Women are looking to extend their eco-friendly lifestyle into their wedding, because the event reflects the personality and is a great opportunity to share green values with friends and family. 

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.

Bridesmaid Dress Brew-ha-ha

Last night was definitely an experience.  (I have a feeling that I am going to describe a lot of this wedding preparation as “an experience”).  I arrived at Mandy’s house to find a 3-person film crew, a dress designer, the mother of the bride, and 6 bridesmaids, along with several other “groupies”.  I was immediately pointed in the direction of the wine, so I guess someone tipped off the film crew in terms of my lack of desire to be filmed while trying on dresses.  As things got started, it was evident that there was no way for this not to be a night to remember.  All of the girls went upstairs to try on dresses while the film crew set up downstairs.  We then descended the stairs while the cameraman zoomed in on our midsections (a girl’s most flattering angle, I am sure) and our legs (mind you, we are all barefoot and in cocktail dresses that don’t necessarily fit…again, very flattering).  There were about 4 “rounds” of dresses when you take into account all of the different dresses and then some girls trying on the same dress another girl had already tried.  While we stood in a line, side by side (sort of like awaiting a firing squad), the others in the room would look us up and down and critique the dress, the fit, etc.  I just concentrated on the fact that, somehow, the humiliation was making our world a better place.

Eventually, we all agreed on certain dress features and colors that we liked and the designer took tons of notes.  Mandy was interviewed on camera for the TV show (while I made sure I had to be in the bathroom each time the “record” light came on).  Overall, the night was fun and definitely helped us understand the details that have to be taken into account when visualizing and designing the perfect eco-dress.  I am excited to see what the designer comes up with!  Oh, and I learned that not only does the camera add 10 pounds, but it also removes all hint of tan from my skin, always catches my worst angle, and makes me as nervous as a prison escapee.

Picture courtesy of Andrew Turner

Real Green Brides II – Amanda and Daniel

Green brides are sprouting up all over!  This week we are thrilled to share the story of Daniel and Amanda and the steps they took to green their nuptials.

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The Green Wedding of Amanda Flaim & Daniel Ahlquist

 

Wedding Location: A gorge in Ithaca: Ithaca is gorges after all.
Robert Treman State Park, specifically.

Date: June 17, 2008

In a locally produced, fairly-traded, certifiably organic, recyclable nutshell, our wedding reflected a very united attempt to be as environmentally sustainable as possible. Luckily, this priority merges quite well with our commitments to social justice, supporting local communities and economies, and my affection for all things vintage and home-made. If we couldn’t make it ourselves, to every extent possible, we hired local artists and vendors to do it for us.

We will not lie and say this was a super easy undertaking. Even in eco-magical Ithaca, New York where local foods and alternatives abound, planning an event like your wedding is never easy. Moreover, the bridal industry is a well-oiled machine, geared to make your wedding day vision a reality with a few visits to the nearest bridal shop or brides-are-us website. In your exhaustion, you will be tempted. But we swear it’s worth it to RESIST! In the end, our wedding was entirely ours. As an added bonus, we saved a lot of money-we were $1000 under budget and we honestly don’t feel like we missed out on anything! We could have done a lot of things better, but here’re a few ideas and lessons learned!

Invitations:

Designed by Amanda with the help of a local artist we hired who formatted and printed them on recycled paper.

Rings:

Made from recycled gold, and made by a local artist!

Canvas bags:

Given to all of the guests to use at the Ithaca farmer’s market.

Dress:

I initially wanted to turn my favorite French nightgown into a wedding dress. After my mother protested, I resigned myself to something new.  I designed it, bought the fabric at a local fabric store (fabric not made locally, however!), and hired a family friend to make it. It was amazing and no one else has it.  I also wore the veil that nearly every woman in my family as worn in her family since the 1950s. In many ways traditional = sustainable.

Cake:

Our friends made the wedding cake from as many local ingredients as possible. It was DELICIOUS and really beautiful. It was so special to see what tremendous effort and love was put into making our cake. I can’t think of a better first meal to eat as a couple. Also, I made the wedding topper out of scraps from my wedding dress. 

Flowers:

Our flowers were spectacular. They were organically grown and best of all, they traveled a total of 5 miles to the wedding site. Our favorite florist at the Ithaca farmer’s market made the bouquets and flowers for the bridal party, and provided us with four buckets of flowers. Our friends came early and placed the flowers in baskets and tin cans collected over the year from various flea markets and yard sales. At the end of the wedding, we gave the flowers to all of our local guests and the band to spread the love.

 

Chuppah:

The Chuppah is the four-posted canopy used in a Jewish wedding that represents the house that the couple will build together. A local artist who makes simple and exquisite structures from fallen wood constructed our Chuppah, which was absolutely perfect. We decorated it with Daniel’s grandfather’s prayer shawl. We couldn’t believe how beautiful it was. We rented it so that other people can use it and enjoy it!

Decorations:

We rented things that could be washed and reused, and bought vintage table cloths to decorate the tables at the wedding. For gifts, we gave them away at the end of the wedding. They were spectacular and so original!

Music:

We hired a local bluegrass band that plays regularly at the local farmer’s market (our favorite hangout). They powered the speakers with a solar panel. It was totally rockin.

Food:

We hired all local vendors, who used as many organic, locally-produced, in season products as possible. We wanted to serve the food family-style, but we opted for the buffet because less food is wasted this way. While we would have preferred to use washable dishes, after lots of debating, we ended up using compostable plates, cups and cutlery. The caterer made sure everything was composted. Because the Finger Lakes produce a lot of local white wines, we used all local wine.

Activities:

For the weekend, many guests stayed in local bed and breakfasts. We took them to the farmer’s market for lunch and perusing, the local museum (rehearsal dinner), and hiking at the state park (wedding venue).

Registry:

We registered with the Nature Conservancy and some friends also gave us fabulous gifts from Heifer, one of our favorite NGOs. We registered at local shops and even registered for our dinnerware from a local potter (who lives entirely off the grid). Because so many of our guests live far away, we asked that they call in their gifts to local shops so we’d have less shipping and packaging.

The Evolving Fashion Industry: Eco-couture

Today we’re proud to bring you thoughts from one of our favorite eco-retailers, Joyce Justicz of Evolve Boutique.  That fabulous dress Mandy was wearing on the night Sean proposed?  It was selected by Sean with Joyce’s recommendation from her boutique!

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First it was a beautiful recycled cashmere jacket that caught my eye.  Then a leather handbag reconstructed from a vintage motorcycle jacket.  Pretty soon I was on the hunt for even more one-of-a-kind wearable works of art.  A few years ago, finding such pieces was a real challenge, yet lately I was noticing the start of a trend.   Moreover, not only were these items becoming my personal favorites, other people wanted to know where to find similar things for themselves.  A retail spot opened up near my house, and before I knew it, I signed on as a boutique owner, one with zero retail experience. 

But I had been somewhat obsessive in my internet research and had educated myself on what was available, I already knew about several sources for re-purposed items.  However, because these represented such a small percentage of eco design, I expanded the merchandise to include new items made from earth friendly fabrics, as well as eco bags, jewelry and accessories.  And though my passion and focus is on eco merchandise, I have included some mainstream design to attract more people and hopefully turn them on to the beauty of the earth friendly items. 

I am continually struck with the ingenuity and resourcefulness demonstrated by eco clothing and jewelry designers in their beautiful creations.  For example, clothing designers employ several approaches in addressing the eco issue.  Some choose to make their designs with organic and sustainable fabrics, such as organic cotton, bamboo, and modal.  Others use “rescued” fabrics, ie fabric overruns from larger design houses that would be destined for disposal in landfills.  Then, of course, some designers upcycle several vintage or thrift store finds into a new and improved version.  One of the wonderful benefits to this last approach is that the customer gets a truly unique item, and generally with no added expenditure. 

Jewelry designers have a similar repertoire of ways to be earth friendly.  One of the most obvious ways to address the issue is to make jewelry out of melted down and recycled glass and metals.  Sometimes designers choose to incorporate materials sourced from discarded items, such as tins, broken bits of older jewelry, or vintage buttons.  Also there are those who make jewelry using found materials right from nature’s bounty:  rocks, shells, vine, even skeletons!  There is no more direct way of promoting a respect for the environment than by wearing a recycled piece of nature. 

So, really, eco-fashion is a combination of factors and encompasses a variety of ideas.  Though I have concentrated on the aspect of sustainable and recycled materials, it does include manufacturing the clothing in an eco-conscious way, such as factories that recycle waste water and use wind-power….or supporting companies that donate a percentage of their profits to eco-related causes.  It includes practices such as locally sourcing, which means supporting independent local designers, thus saving on fuel and shipping.   This has the added benefit of keeping a store’s selection a unique mix by including these neighborhood artisans. 

To sum up, I really think that eco-fashion is a form of conscious living, an informed decision to buy clothing that is made in an environmentally conscientious way, without sacrificing one bit of style or aesthetics.  And it is one trend that is here to stay. 

For your own eco-couture, visit Evolve Boutique. www.evolve-boutique.com

The Right Balance

Mandy and Sean asked a couple of tricky questions when soliciting articles for this website: Are we doing enough?  Are we crazy?  I think the answer to the latter is clear (yes, resoundingly, but not because of their desire to have a “green” wedding), but the former really strikes at the heart of what, to me, sustainability is all about.

The question of “are we doing enough” comes down to choices.  Life is all about choices, of course, but creating a sustainable lifestyle is fraught with high degree of difficulty choices.  For example, when renovating our house, our budget caused my wife and me to choose between installing solar panels and installing windows.  We, um, went with the windows.  We’re also expecting our first baby soon, and just found out that reusable cloth diapers have a slightly greater carbon footprint than disposable diapers do.  What to do?  But you came here for advice on weddings, not the musings of a slightly crazed dad-to-be.

What I’ve seen Mandy and Sean wrestle with is how to respect the environment while simultaneously respecting tradition.  Their desire to have a traditional Southern wedding has created a framework of expectations within which they have to work – some otherwise viable choices are no longer so.  It would be much simpler, cheaper and environmentally friendly to elope and honeymoon at the local CSA farm.  Unfortunately, that doesn’t quite allow Mandy and Sean to celebrate their love and marriage with family and friends in the way that they want.

In a traditional Southern wedding, the wedding party is quite large (question to Mandy and Sean: if I say “cast of thousands”, will that be too much of an exaggeration?).  Mandy has been working extremely hard to figure out how to clothe her bridesmaids.  There are, of course, environmental, social and economic implications to any course of action.  Does she use fair trade cloth, sewn in India, and shipped to Atlanta?  Can she find locally made cloth, a local designer, and a local seamstress?  Is there a “right” balance to be struck?

Unfortunately, I don’t know what that “right” balance is, but I trust in Mandy and Sean to make the right tradeoffs for them.  And, in fact, we must all make the right choices for ourselves in order to create a truly sustainable society.  Just ask me about that as I’m riding my bicycle to Vegas for Sean’s bachelor party.

Lusting for Local Food

Why Going Local Is One of the Best Ways to Go Green

Sustainable weddings are a wonderful event to plan because every detail can be intentional – from the recycled paper or paper-less invites to the dress made of eco-friendly materials or, even better, found on consignment. Your wedding is the perfect opportunity to be authentic and share your environmental passion with guests. One commonly overlooked area to make a huge impact and drastically cut your carbon footprint on your big day is to serve local and seasonal food. And in Georgia, it’s easier, and tastier, than ever.  

Local food tastes better, doesn’t need a passport to arrive at your wedding and supports your local community and on your wedding day – good karma is great thing! In the U.S., food travels an average of 1,500 miles from farm to fork and arrives on your plate with added chemicals to make the long journey, reduced nutritional value and lackluster flavor. Treat your guests to local goodies by using these great resources and tips:

•          In Georgia, there are several caterers that specifically source local and sustainable food. Check them out in Georgia Organics’ Local Food Guide. Already have a caterer lined up?  Ask them what they can source from local farmers!
•          Plan a seasonal menu. Working with your caterer is the easiest way to do this but you can have some fun with your fiancé and find out what’s in season for your big day. Eating seasonal food guarantees the freshest taste and is affordable.
•          Source local wine and beer. Georgia has some great local breweries and wineries coming online every day. Treat guests to something different form the usual Monday night football brew and check out options like Atlanta Brewing Company, Sweetwater, Terrapin, Persimmon Creek Wines and others. All listed in the Local Food Guide linked above.
•          Don’t forget the meat! Eating local isn’t just about veggies. Georgia has some of the BEST local meats. Enjoy grass-fed and humanely treated items on your menu such as beef from White Oak Pastures and pork from Riverview Farms.
•          Consider using local flowers. Most farms grow beautiful wildflowers to facilitate pollination of crops. Many sell these flowers at local markets or directly. While most brides choose roses or lilies, think outside-the-box and feature big, beautiful bouquets of local flowers instead. To find a list of farms who sell flowers, check out Georgia Organics online Organic Directory - look through the farms for listing that include flowers. Who knows what else you may find?!

Save food miles, serve tastier food, support the local economy AND do a great thing for the environment on your wedding day – support local food!

Hungry for More? Check Out These Tantalizing E-Bites

Online Local Food Guide 

Interactive Organic Directory 

Whole Foods Farm to Market Blog – The Faces of Those Who Grow Our Food

Tales from another Green Bride!

We are happy to feature a fellow green bride this week.  Enjoy Erin’s story! – Sean and Mandy

Erin Oxford & Charlie Clark
Isle of Palms, South Carolina

April 19, 2008

 

Our wedding was held on the breathtaking Isle of Palms. Isle of Palms is located just north of Charleston on the beautiful South Carolina coast.  My wedding and reception were held outdoors. I took this as an opportunity to show respect for the environment and encourage my guests to appreciate our surroundings as well. 

Isle of Palms is a nesting ground for loggerhead sea turtles.  Loggerheads and all species of sea turtles are in danger of extinction due to humans.  One common cause of death to sea turtles is that they eat plastic bags in the ocean because they mistake the bags for jellyfish.  The bags are deadly because it suffocates them.  

I wanted to bring awareness to the plight of these magnificent creatures on our wedding weekend and ensure we didn’t contribute to the problem.  My solution was to provide all of our guests with a reusable tote bag as their out-of-town guest gift bag. I knew from past experience that the paper out-of-town guest bags were ultimately thrown in the trash.

 

I purchased reusable cloth tote bags as our out-of-town gift bags.  I was fortunate to find some great totes in our wedding colors at Garden Ridge for only $1 each.  So instead of having guests throw away their paper bags, they acquired a bag that they could use after the wedding weekend.  I spotted a guest utilizing the tote as a beach bag during the wedding weekend and I encouraged everyone to try using them at the grocery store.

In addition to providing reusable tote bags, I required recycling by the vendors at both the rehearsal dinner and reception.  To my pleasant surprise, neither vendor added an extra charge. 

I have always been an environmental advocate. I believe it is partially due to being raised in the country and enjoying untouched parts of our earth.  I knew that utilizing a weekend where I was the center of attention offered me a stronger voice for environmental awareness.  I will continue to try to educate my friends and family on the needs of protecting our earth.

 

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