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   Sep 23

Greener wedding planning

I’ve been a wedding photographer for 10 years, so I’ve seen all kinds of weddings from ginormous to small and intimate. When Nathan & I got married, we wanted something fun, simple and non-traditional. Who wants to go to work for their wedding, right! We were pretty green at the time, but not quite as conscious about the possibilities of a Green Wedding. In fact, Green Weddings have become incredibly popular now, and I have to say, I’m pleased as punch to see how many of our choices land our wedding well into the Green category.

First off, we had the whole thing at one location, our friends’ house. They have about 6 acres surrounded by woods. In the middle is their vegetable garden and right behind the house were these awesome trees that we got married under. Nathan & his friend built a cool platform for us to stand on using wood from the old barn on the property. We bought and prepped all of the food (we hired someone to run the grill and keep the tables stocked) and saved all of the leftovers to eat the next week.

I made the bouquets and boutonnieres which was a bit of a pain, but I kept them all pretty simple. They weren’t as gorgeously elaborate as many I’ve seen, but I thought they were perfectly sweet and Nathan seemed satisfied (he’s the one with the picky design eye). Our center pieces were pots with sand and zebra grass from Nathan’s mom’s house. After the rehearsal dinner, we had a bunch of friends over and built them together assembly line style.

We were also green on the invitations. Nathan & I had our engagement portraits made by a commercial photographer friend of ours. We took those shots and Nathan designed an awesome postcard with the pertinent info and a link to our website which had more details like maps and such. We did a 100% electronic RSVP system requesting them on the website, through email or over the phone. I tracked it all on the computer, no paper print outs to lose. :) Then for our thank yous, Nathan took a shot from the wedding and designed another awesome postcard with room on the back for us to write lovely things about the gifts people sent. We got so many complements on our invitations and our thank you cards! In fact, we still go to some of our friends’ houses and see them on the refrigerator 5 years later! (and no, I’m not talking about my mom and my grandmother, although they have them up on their fridges too).

In fact, the least green thing about our wedding, I think, was the fact that I had 2 dresses. See, in my ideal world, I was getting married in the sundress from the top photo. It’s super cute eyelet cotton, and I have worn it several times since our wedding. I’m just too practical to buy a dress to only wear once! Especially a dress that is that expensive! And I spent $200 on that sundress because it was going to be my wedding dress. But Nathan wanted to wear a suit (which we bought because he didn’t own a suit at the time, and I think it looks super snazzy on him!) which may have left me looking a bit too casual, and my mom was appalled that my wedding dress would be something I would wear over and over. She wanted it to be more special. I have to say, it does photograph nicely. We bought the fabric and had it made by some lady who did an okay job, but as a former seamstress (I worked in the costume shop in college), I would have done some things differently. But my mom was aghast at the idea of me making my wedding dress (she worried about the stress and my ability to procrastinate, and she was probably right). So I have two dresses which sort of un-greens things. But I did make that bouquet! Doesn’t it look nice?

But for some redemption for my un-green dual dress situation, my best friend and another dear friend (and awesome blogger) and I all got married a month apart, so we had a group bachelorette party which was a blast! We didn’t really share much actual wedding stuff because we were all so DIY and each of us limited what we used to things our guests took home (like apples for wedding favors and homemade mini-Jack o’ Lantern centerpieces) or that we kept as keepsakes. We were a group of green brides before the term was even popularized. My friends are very trend setting.

It’s been 5 years and we still don’t have our album (our friend photographed the wedding, a perk of being in the industry and friends with other wedding photographers, and gave us the rights to all of the pictures, so it’s all our fault, not hers at all), but I’m actually kind of glad we’ve waited. I finally found a green album company with Eco-ratings for their albums (you can go pretty green or full-on Eco). It was something I’d been looking for to offer to my wedding clients, and I’m totally going to get one of them for us too! We just need to take the time to design the thing. Sigh. 😉

For more suggestions on Green Weddings, you can check out this blog post by the Broke-Ass Bride.

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