I’ve had a long absence from this blog… while I enjoyed my wedding and my month long honeymoon!

Everything was a huge success and Phil and I enjoyed every minute of our day. So here’s a little list of the best and the worst of our green successes and failures, for anyone who is planning to try some of our experiments for themselves…

These worked…

Homegrown table flowers – daffs, crocuses and primroses – made great table and floor decorations which are living on in gardens and conservatories

Silk flower bouquets from ebay looked great, were cheap and were much easier to organise than cutting home-grown flowers to hold! I can now also give my bouquet to an Oxfam bridal shop as it is pristine and another bride could easily use it.

Online invites and reminders got all our guests to the wedding on time and worked beautifully

My biosustainable silk dress was fab and everyone said it looked stunning (I guess people say that to brides whatever they look like, but I chose to believe them!!)

My Oxfam shoes held up even for my very spinny wedding dance

The Fairtrade, organic home made cakes got gobbled up really quickly

The recycled gold rings are beautiful and comfortable and we are really pleased with them

Borrowing things was very helpful indeed – cake stand, potted plants and studio lights (for the photography which was all done by a friend) were borrowed and returned without mishap, and saved us lots of cash and carbon.

Asking for honeymoon contributions instead of presents worked really well and most people were intrigued by the whole thing. Some disregarded it though (see below!)

My free range hen party was a complete success and some of the hens were even wearing their own jewellery creations at the wedding. Hooray!

… and these didn’t work

Hiring minibuses for shared transport failed because we didn’t book the buses early enough. By the time we had our lists of routes and pick-ups prepared, all the minibus companies in the area were booked out for a Harry Potter filiming session that was going on nearby. In the end we emailed all the guests who had ticked ‘yes’ to shared transport, and tried to match them with other guests living near them who could car share. If you want buses, organise them a few weeks beforehand!!

Cutting homegrown flowers for bouquets would perhaps be ok in the summer, but as we had fairly fragile bulb flowers and I have no flower arranging skills whatsoever, I am glad I chickened out of cutting our own flowers and bought silk ones.

Asking guests not to bring cards or presents half worked… everyone signed the message plates we used instead of a guest book, but many guest brought cards as well, and some brought presents too. Actually it was lovely reading their card messages and we enjoying looking through them! So I guess the conclusion we drew from this one is that it’s a great idea to ask people not to bring stuff… but be prepared for them not to listen, and just accept and enjoy if they give you stuff!

Lots of people told us how much they enjoyed it and how impressed they were with the green aspects. One person had expected it to be a bit odd, but even she was pleasantly surprised and told me so.

 So good luck to all the brides out there who are trying to make some ethical choices! It is well worth it and will make you even more pleased with your day if you can make one or two things more green. And if you want to borrow anything do ask me!! If I can lend it I will!!

 So a few days ago I had a panic about bouquets!

There should still be enough plants in flower to do the table decorations, as there are some which haven’t come up yet – but not enough to make the posies for me and my bridesmaids from.

Googling for inspiration I discovered that lots of people sell silk flower bouquets (new and second hand) on ebay, for a fraction of the price they cost in the shops! I bought three small rosebud bouquets for my bridesmaids and a bigger bouquet for me, all for less than £15. It all arrived all within two days as well.

So even though my potted flowers have turned out to have their own timescale ideas, I have still managed to avoid nipping to Tescos and panic-buying hothouse flowers the night before the wedding. Hooray! I can thoroughly recommend Ebay for all things cheap and cheerful - and of course reused if you are buying second hand.

Not only that… the pots of flowers that have all come up early are decorating the house and garden at the moment helping me get into the wedding mood.

If I had to do it again, I think I would get round the problem by planting more different varieties that come up at different times, and planting some indoors and some out – so that there are some blooms every couple of weeks throughout the spring. 

If anyone else has had more success with this I’d love to hear how you did it… I plan to grow flowers for other big parties in the future now too. It’s been a lot of fun.

They hope to have converted all their retail sugars by the end of 2009, starting now with their most important product - white granulated sugar. Other sugars will follow. This is brilliant news for 6,000 growers in Belize, who will be entering the Fairtrade system following 2 years of work on the ground. It’s one of the biggest certification and product conversion projects in the history of Fairtrade – the volumes of sugar for 2008 alone are ten times the total volume of Fairtrade sugar sold in the UK (in every kind of product containing sugar) in 2007.

Hooray! Making ethical desserts, wedding cakes and edible favours might now get a whole lot easier. Read more about it from Tate and Lyle here: http://www.tateandlyle.presscentre.com/content/Detail.asp?ReleaseID=763&NewsAreaID=2

It’s working out pretty cheap if the quotes I’ve had from minibus companies are anything to go by, and will mean fewer people have to drive.  But I do now wish I’d asked people to name the town they’d be coming from when they signed up for shared transport!  It would have saved us emailing them all to find out who wants to be picked up where.

Meanwhile, I’m proud to say my free-range hen party last weekend (which I’ve been posting about for a month or two now) was a fantastic success!  Ethiopian food and jewellery-making both proved a hit with everybody. I will try to get a photo for the blog soon, but meanwhile if you want to see where we had our hen feast, here’s a link to Tutu’s Ethiopian Table at the Global Cafe, RISC, Reading: http://www.tutus-ethiopian-table.com/ buy The Unborn  

My creative friends Lucie and Jo are all prepared to give us a fun jewellery workshop and have come up with loads of special pieces they can demonstrate and help us to make.

I have ordered all the beads and tools I need for thirty people, and booked a room to hold it in from the lovely green people at RISC (Reading International Solidarity Centre).

Madam Tutu, the talented chef of RISC’s global café, is making our Ethiopian buffet dinner. Many of my hen friends have never tried Ethiopian food before, but I have tried it and loved it! Ethiopian cuisine seems to be a mixture of really hearty stews and rice dishes all served on a yummy flat bread, with plenty of flavour and not too much spice.

With the RISC policies of local, Fairtrade and organic ingredients where possible, I am hoping that it will be an ethical feast to make even the most nervous eaters in my hen coop go back for second helpings.

Some of us will then venture off into town as well for a few drinks and a night of dancing. I’m most looking forward to the jewellery. I love learning new things and I’m hoping that maybe I can even make something to wear with my wedding dress (which I collect from the dressmaker next week – that too is nearly finished).

I’m also glad that my hens and I have found something close to home that’s not too extravagant.  All my girlfriends have been able to afford the £5 contribution to the jewellery and the £7 dinner and everyone, from my Gran to the most party-mad of my friends, is coming along to at least a part of the day. I ‘m hoping it will work out fairly green to book a local room and learn a new craft, too!

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But of course I won’t know how successful my idea is until after we all get together on Saturday. I’ll be back on the blog next week to let you know how it goes….

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I have also now made the fruit cake with help from my Grandmother who has been making fruitcakes for all the family for about sixty years.  She uses Delia’s classic fruitcake recipe and she soaks the fruit in brandy for at least a week before making the cake.

(She also said the brandy-soaked fruit is great for putting on your muesli in the morning, but I think I would have a bit of a wobbly bike-ride to work if I did that!

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For the ethical fruit cake I bought Fairtrade fruit, Fairtrade nuts, Fairtrade sugar, Fairtrade mixed spice and Fairtrade oranges and lemons.  I also used organic butter, organic free range eggs and local flour. (Wessex Mill flour was the most local flour I could find – I live in Berkshire).  

After soaking the fruit for a week I took it to my Gran’s and made the mixture in her mixing machine.  I would not recommend making the mixture by hand as it would take AGES.  It took quite a long time by machine! The cooking takes a long time too – four and a half hours. 

However, I can recommend this cake as I’ve had it at Christmas before and it is lovely. The carrot cake is now in the freezer. I know it freezes well as I have frozen my practise versions and they are still yummy afterwards!

The fruit cake will not need to be frozen as apparently it tastes better after time spent ‘maturing’. I will simply ice it with roll-out icing and keep it in a tin. Just before the big day I will get the carrot cake and the chocolate cake out of the freezer and ice them too. 

For the carrot cake I have been practising cream-cheese frosting and I have found that one part cream cheese to three parts icing sugar makes a good stiff mixture. You need a lot of frosting to get a nice smooth finish though.  I haven’t worked out how to ice the chocolate cake yet – maybe I’ll use Fairtrade white chocolate. 

Other brides that plan to make their own ethical wedding cakes may also be interested to know that you can buy little packets of sugar flowers and sugar swirls in Tescos for about £3 if you want to decorate the cake. Or you could always use Fairtrade chocolates and nuts!

I wrote and asked my Gran about what weddings were like in the war years. Her reply was really interesting, and actually quite humbling.

It made me realise how amazingly easy it is to organise a wedding now (greenly or otherwise!), and has really put the ‘wedding stress’ we all think we suffer into perspective. Here is what my Gran remembers:

“There were rather “greener” weddings in the war time years. We had to re-use as much as possible, make as much as we could, travel not at all and avoid waste. If this sounds dull, it was, but it never diminished our excitement when an engagement was announced and we could all help towards making the wedding day very special.

“Wedding receptions would in those days be held in a nearby hall to avoid using precious fuel for trains and buses. (Petrol was severely rationed to civilians as it could not be spared from fighting the war).

The food served would have been saved bit by bit from the weekly rations. Considered acceptable in those days would have been a menu of, say, salad accompanied by Spam which came to us, courtesy of our very gallant allies, the Canadians and Americans, the bringing of which seriously cost lives crossing the Atlantic.

“As a result of the government’s Dig for Victory campaign when we all turned our lawns into vegetable plots, the salads were either home grown or grown at a nearby market garden. Shopping was never wrapped. We saved our own wrapping paper which could not be replaced and carried our own shopping bags throughout the six years.

“Wedding cakes were usually made at home from ingredients horded secretly for months and added to by friends and neighbours when the wedding was imminent. Some extremely professional tiered cakes were produced and many new talents were discovered.

“There would be a honeymoon if the bridegroom’s leave permitted. The journey would be short, no more than thirty miles by train, the bride and groom taking their ration books with them.

“Dresses for bride and bridesmaids were mostly re-used by borrowing from sisters, cousins and girlfriends and making a few alterations. To buy new, even if obtainable, would have used too many clothing coupons, leaving nothing for necessities.

Most bridegrooms were married in uniform, thereby saving material and tailoring. There were sometimes ways of getting round the clothing coupons. Silk, retrieved from fallen parachutes, was sold in the market without coupons from which we made underwear at home. The “Make do and Mend” campaign had persuaded us all to darn our stockings and patch our clothes throughout the war….

“From each of these aspects of a wedding, it is noticeable that we were all living a “greener” life, albeit unconsciously and of course out of sheer necessity. I haven’t even mentioned shortage of electricity and gas which on many occasions we had to do without altogether!”

The greenest way to have a hen party would be, well… not to have one at all.

But I really love to go out with my girlfriends and I really want to have one! So I have decided to do it, but with as little negative impact on the environment as possible.

With a bit of creative thinking, maybe my free-range hens and I can even have some sort of positive impact…

My hen party is not a whole weekend. It involves no aeroplanes, long-distance car journeys, over-packaged food or fairy outfits and toys that we will chuck away straight afterwards. No pubs with patio heaters. It’s a good cheap knees-up with a special creative twist, and I’ve found the perfect ethical place to hold it.

At www.risc.org.uk you will see my hen party venue. It has big rooms for hire, a cave-like café-bar and a BAFTS accredited Fairtrade shop. Lots of local charities hold their meetings here, as well as local yoga groups, salsa clubs and other organisations. The local food co-operative www.truefood.coop Enduring Love download holds their markets there too.

It’s very local to me and to most of my friends, and is also close to both bus stops and a train station. So hopefully there won’t be too many fuel-heavy journeys.

I have booked a room for a jewellery-making workshop from my friends Lucie and Jo. These two trained jewellery makers will be showing the other hens and I how to make floating bead jewellery, charm bracelets and funky earrings. We will all have a chance to try out some beading techniques, and come away with something we’ve made that we can keep and wear.

I think it will be fun to have something creative to do, and with a bit of music and a few drinks the workshop could be a really good party to celebrate all things girly.

Then when we’ve made some nice sparkly things, we can go downstairs to the centre’s Global café for drinks and dinner. As we are a big party, we have been offered Global’s Ethiopian buffet for our dinner. This gives us a selection of casserole type dishes, some meaty and some vegetarian, with rice and Injera, an Ethiopian flat bread. Those that are not keen to try Ethiopian food can order from the normal menu which is stuff like baguettes, baked potatoes, falafels, soup, and other café staples. There are wines and beers from around the world and lots of organic ciders!

The food at Global is tasty and also ethical. Wherever they can they use organic, GM-free and local food, and for things that come from tropical countries they usually manage to find a Fairtrade version. They play all sorts of music from around the world and light all the tables with funky candles. It’s a lovely place, and it’s nice to know we’ll be putting our hen party cash into a business with really ethical aims. This will hopefully also appeal to everyone.

It can be difficult to create a hen party that is right for all your different hens. But this does not take a whole weekend out of anyone’s calendar or too much cash from our wallets. The jewellery and the dinner will probably come to about £15 for each of us, so even the penniless students in my hen coop should be able to afford it. Also jewellery is something that we can all do no matter how old or young we are!

My first job is to source the beads, wire and tools for the jewellery. I have posted a ‘wanted’ notice on Freecycle, but if I can’t find anybody willing to lend them or throwing them out, I will buy the bits online. If there is any material left afterwards I will give it to Lucie and Jo, or offer it on Freecycle… or maybe even take up bead jewellery myself! Who knows…?

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I have a question for all the green brides today… what do you think about web-based invitations?

My fiancé Phil has built a website with all our wedding information on it (the venue, the plan of the day, maps and all the rest). He’s also made a database of the names and email addresses of all the guests, choosing whether they were a ‘full day’ or ‘evening only’ guest.

Pete’s Dragon Everybody in the database got an email. They followed a link to the website, where they found a proper invitation, with their name on it and nice curly corners and everything. A ‘click here to RSVP’ button took them to all the other information and choices.

Every day since we sent the invitations, I’ve been pressing a button on my computer screen marked with a smiley face (this is about the limit of my technical capabilities). When I press the button, the chart in front of me updates itself with all the latest online responses. Every day I can see which guests have been to the website, who has responded to the invitation, and all the other important information about each guest such as any food allergies, whether they would like to participate in car shares, and the name of any additional guest they are bringing.

There’s also a ‘gift list’ page. We don’t have a traditional gift list, but a clickable map of our backpacking honeymoon. There’s a list of things we need to pay for, such as visits to eco-lodges, national park fees and overnight trains from one destination to the next. Each item is clickable, with a picture of the place or activity we’d like a contribution to.

Our idea is that people who want to buy us a present can buy us a chunk of our honeymoon – and so far it seems to be working well, with several contributions already sent to us. From the accompanying messages I think our guests are finding it quite an interesting way to give a present!

Most of all, it’s very handy to know who has visited the website. Not everybody responds to the invitation straight away of course – but if we can see they have visited the website and had a look around, we at least know they received their email about it. One or two people did not follow the link and visit the website. So after a while we contacted them to check they had received the email. After all not everybody likes to use email for things! Since sending out invitations to 238 people, we have found we needed to send only six paper invitations to people who do not have computers, or who are not regular email users.

When I think of the amount of paper we have saved (not to mention the money) I am delighted! I’ve always thought that sending out paper invites leaves you in a slightly difficult position – if you never hear back, you don’t know whether the person received their invitation. And nobody wants to hassle their guests to answer! But this way we know.

So, my question is, are internet invites the way forward for green brides? Or is sending online invitations just too impersonal for many people? Perhaps recycled paper is a better option… ideas welcomed!

It freezes well (I know because I made several for a Fairtrade Feast we held last year) so again my plan is to make it in advance and freeze it, then defrost and ice it a day or two before the wedding. Maybe with white chocolate buttercream. Yum!

Ingredients:
200g butter
300g Fairtrade caster sugar (and an extra 50g on one side for the meringue)
6 separated free range local eggs
300g dark Fairtrade chocolate, melted
300g self raising flour Buttercream – 100g Fairtrade white chocolate, 200g icing sugar, little knob of butter

Method:

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Cream butter and sugar, beat in egg yolks, and stir in the melted chocolate.
Whisk egg whites until stiff and add the extra 50g sugar to them to make meringue.
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Fold the flour and the meringue into the chocolate mix.
Transfer the mix to greased 10” square cake tin and bake for 45 to 55 minutes at 180C.