Smother trailer Green blogger, Josh Dorfman, otherwise known as The Lazy Environmentalist, now has a regular Tuesday evening slot on The Sundance Channel helping people from all walks of life to green-up in the easiest (or laziest) way possible!

daybreakers movie download Imagine our delight when we saw that Episode 3 is all about The Lazy Bride!

This episode introduces Michelle Poor and her fiancé Jason Rubenstein who are in the last stages of planning their wedding. Green event planner Dana Morgan helps the couple explore the options for an eco-friendly wedding from cakes to flowers and wedding favours, some of which may well make an appearance on the big day.

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Take a look at a clip from the show:

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The full episode doesn’t seem to be online yet but we’re trying to track it down and when we do, we’ll share it with you.

Happy planning!

Katie

Why then? Perhaps the evidence of climate change had started to become too hard to ignore. Perhaps awareness of fair trade had reached a tipping point.

Or perhaps the fact that the cost of the average wedding was tipping £20k was a wake-up call.

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Whatever the reason, we were hungry for a different type of wedding…. and hungry for information on how to plan it.

We turned to our trusty keyboards and tapped in terms such as ‘ethical weddings’, ‘eco weddings’ and ‘green weddings’ only to find that they yielded… not very much.

And so the trawling began, the endless emails, phone calls, long late night internet searches and brainstorms to figure out how you go green – but on budget – for your buffet, your venue, and of course your dream dress.

After celebrating in something at least approaching sustainable style, it seemed a shame simply to file away those folders marked ‘ethical wedding’ with their little green books of suppliers and ideas.

So some of us began websites to share our experience – as was the case with our own Ethical Weddings – while others got out their recycled notebooks and started to scribble.

The result a couple of years on is a veritable verdant library for the green bride and groom with four books on the subject out last year and another this month!

Here’s our run-down of the green wedding guides that will save ethical brides and grooms-to-be a whole load of hassle…

Green Weddings That Don’t Cost the Earth by Carol Reed-Jones
US – 1996 – 163 pages – ISBN-10: 0965083306 ISBN-13: 978-0965083300

This guide was ahead of its time arriving nearly a decade before any other author put pen to paper on the subject. As with many of those that followed, however, it was born out of the author’s desire to share what she had learned when planning her own green wedding. It starts with a detailed section on what exactly a green wedding is and is then packed full of tips – especially DIY ones. Some of the resources will no doubt be out of date by now but the ideas remain strong and well worth a read.

Organic Weddings: Balancing Ecology, Style and Tradition by Michelle Kozin
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US – 2003 – 192 pages – ISBN-10: 0865714967 ISBN-13: 978-0865714960

This was the first book I found on ethical or organic weddings when I was planning my own wedding and although the author and I are on different sides of the Atlantic, her suggestions were still very useful and the case studies inspirational. There are plenty of pics too which is always important!

And now we get to the latest flurry of green wedding guides just waiting to find a place on your bookshelf!

Eco-chic Weddings: Simple Tips to Plan a Wedding with Style and Integrity by Emily Anderson
US – 2007 – 168 pages – ISBN-10: 1578262402 ISBN-13: 978-1578262403

Former Event Director at Martha Stewart Living, Emily Anderson knows how to do weddings in style. But with her passion for conscious consumerism, it’s not going to be at the sake of the planet. Pick up this book to steal Emily’s great style tips while polishing your green halo!

How to Get Married in Green: Have an eco-friendly wedding without compromising on style
by Suzan St.Maur
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UK – 2008 – 192 pages – ISBN-10: 1845282701 ISBN-13: 978-1845282707

By a veteran wedding writer passionate about the planet, this book is determined not to send you off on a guilt trip but to help you keep a healthy balance between green aims and budget. Covers every aspect of planning in an easy-to-digest format and includes a great resource directory too.

Green Guide for Weddings: The Handbook for Weddings That Don’t Cost the Earth by Jen Marsden
UK – 2008 – 224 pages – ISBN-10: 1905731493 ISBN-13: 978-1905731497

This is a great guide (and not just because I wrote the foreword!). Jen Marsden leaves no (ethically sourced) stone unturned from engagement ring to eco venue, confetti to low carbon honeymoon.

There are tips galore, all served up in a lighthearted, unpreachy way that will have you tripping down the aisle green-guilt free. And if you’re looking for people to show you how it’s done, it’s packed full of green couple case studies so you can copy their best bits (including pretty pictures!).

The Green Bride Guide: How to Create an Earth-Friendly Wedding on Any Budget
by Kate L. Harrison
US – 2008 – 304 pages – ISBN-10: 140221345X ISBN-13: 978-1402213458

Kate works in environmental law and policy and her husband is an environmental historian so this is a stylish looking but seriously green guide that goes into each and every area of wedding planning. As the title promises, it also provides options for all budgets with a handy $ / $$ / $$$ coding system. As it follows their 2007 wedding it’s bang up-to-date too. The only thing it’s missing is the pics!

The Everything Green Wedding Book: Plan an Elegant, Affordable, Earthfriendly Wedding
by Wenona Napolitano
US – 2008 – 304 pages – ISBN-10: 1598698117 ISBN-13: 978-1598698114

Wenona has written for Ethical Weddings (see her articles on Wooden wedding rings and Vintage wedding dresses) and her green wedding guide came out in December.

A trained bridal consultant and floral designer, she has gone for the green life wholesale – she and her husband even run a green cleaning business! The Everything Green Wedding Book focuses on easy and affordable ways to turn your wedding a stylish shade of green.

Green Wedding: Planning Your Eco-friendly Celebration by Mireya Navarro
US – 2009 – 208 pages ISBN-10: 1584797126 ISBN-13: 978-1584797128

Here’s a quick peek into a green wedding guide out this month. Mireya Navarro is the style correspondent for the New York Times so we should be able to expect some pretty on-trend tips in what is promised to be ‘a savvy, authoritative, insightful guide that will help readers conceptualize the wedding experience to reflect the I-care-about-the-planet values of the bride and groom’.

Couple this with some fantastic photography and it’s one to watch out for. My copy just arrived in the post so the full review will follow soon!

And that’s the end of our list… for now. All you need to do is factor in an extra month to your wedding planning schedule to get through all that reading!

If you’ve already read a green wedding guide and want to tell us what you thought of it, send in your review and we’ll post it on our blog.

Happy planning!

Katie x
Cross-posted from Wishpot

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Starting the year with a wedding to plan offers even more of an excuse to go stationery crazy. After a relaxed festive break without too many questions from the family on when the invites go out or who sits next to Aunt Joan, this is the time to gird up your garter and get down to some serious list making.

For the eco-minded bride, I think I’ve now found the perfect planner. Lovingly crafted by Evotive (otherwise known as Jenna Ashley and Kathleen Koeneman, “hard-working mothers of small children, who value family, friendship and coffee”), the BE WED guide is “made locally, using soy-based, non-toxic inks, Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) paper and a 100% eco-friendly case”.

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With a simple, stylish, nature-inspired design, the planner brings together:

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— guides you through every aspect of your wedding plans and includes a Be Connected section with contacts, websites and other resources “to help you put your socially and environmentally motivated choices into action.”

The Be Inspired folder— for all your samples and clippings

The Be Relaxed folder— a place to keep estimates, contracts and invoices. The idea is once you’ve done the planning, everything you’ll need on the day ends up here “in one portable, organised package.”

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You also get a refillable pen and a CD for printing extra copies of the worksheets and checklists.

It’s so beautiful; you’ll want to hold onto it as a memento of your special day.

Now why weren’t these around when I was planning my wedding?

Coming in at around the price of an average personal organiser, the BE WED guide should suit most pockets, but if your budget is particularly tight, you could click on over to the impressively efficient diyplanner.com and print off your own diary refills and to do lists from their templates – on recycled paper of course!

Katie x

Following hot on the vegan kitten heels of ‘The Green Guide for Weddings The Moving Finger divx ‘, I was chuffed to receive an advance copy of ‘The Green Bride Guide‘, now available from all good bookstores.

Where ‘The Green Guide for Weddings’ is written from a UK angle, ‘The Green Bride Guide’ by Kate L. Harrison comes from the other side of the Atlantic; but the ideas, arguments and even some of the resources are relevant wherever you are in the world.

The look of the book is gorgeous – the epitome of eco chic – and the quality recycled paper meant I didn’t want to stop stroking it! But I finally managed to tear my fingers away from its textured surface and started reading…

Now Kate L. Harrison is clearly not one to do things by halves.  This is an extremely thorough book that delves into every possible nook and cranny of green wedding planning.  From someone who works in environmental law and policy with an environmental historian husband, what did you expect?!

She begins by telling us a little about her own wedding in 2007 and offers some concise and well thought out arguments as to why you might want a green wedding – arguments that could come in rather handy for a green bride-to-be whose family and friends are so far unconvinced.  As she explains, get them on side and everything else becomes a whole lot easier!

Throughout the book, as the sub-heading suggests – ‘How to create an earth-friendly wedding on any budget’ – there are options for every budget, marked with a user-friendly $, $$, $$$ code.

However, Kate is keen to point out that you don’t need to go completely green to make a difference, and certainly shouldn’t feel as if you’ve failed if you don’t.  If you have to make difficult decisions she advises that you focus on the ‘big-ticket items’ such as how many guests you invite, the food you serve, or the flowers that decorate your venue: ‘…as a general rule of thumb’, says Kate, ‘the more expensive an item is, the more important the choice.’

For those who do want to turn a deeper shade of green, everything is here, even down to where to donate your hair (to an organisation that makes wigs for children with cancer – see page 50) if you decide to chop those locks after the big day.

At the back of the book, you’ll find a set of excellent worksheets with which to interview your potential wedding suppliers.  You could grade them and hand them back with a ‘Must do better next time’ if need be!

The only thing that was missing for me was a few well chosen photos to illustrate all the wonderful green wedding ideas.

If you’re in the early stages of planning your green wedding, grab this book and read it from cover to cover – you’ll be buzzing with eco-inspiration!

If you’ve got just a few months (or weeks, or days!) to go, get a copy anyway and you can dip in and out of the clearly labelled chapters to find the tips you need.

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The book is available on Amazon from $10.19.  It’s the easier way to a greener day!

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Happy planning

Katie
Need more inspiration? Read real ethical wedding stories.

If you’re already signed up to our Ethical Weddings Newsletter you can ignore this post but if not, read on…

Our March newsletter finally made it out of our inbox on Monday with the latest on what we’ve been up to and exciting forthcoming events.

For all those in the midst of wedding chaos, our special offer courtesy of Sally Steele Weddings may come as something of a lifeline!

Have a read of the March newsletter to find out how you could win a copy of Sally Steele Weddings’ DIY wedding planning DVD…

Happy weekends!

Katie
For the latest ethical wedding tips, chat, articles and more, free to your inbox, sign up to the monthly Ethical Weddings Newsletter or meet other green couples in the Ethical Weddings Forum

Business Standard reports on the growth of designer weddings in Punjab where the average wedding lasts between 3 and 7 days and where budget is not a constraint for most, according to one wedding planner from Canada who recently launched his business in India to cater to the Punjabi market.

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Another happy wedding planner, owner of Indian Wedding Planners, comments:

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“In a recent wedding, we designed a set to depict the moon and the sun. The idea was to show the bride descending from the moon and the bridegroom from the sun. People in Punjab believe in ostentatious weddings and appreciate our efforts.”

In Afghanistan, meanwhile, The New York Times tells that weddings are one of the most important rituals, a signifier of a family’s social status, and a confirmation of their position in the ‘tribal network’.

Whereas under the Taliban showy weddings were banned, the wane of their power has brought the big wedding back with a vengeance plunging bridegrooms (traditionally it falls to the groom’s family to pay for the wedding celebrations) into mountains of debt as they try to fork out for a feast for 600 (modest) to 2000+ (towards the top end) guests.

Even poorer families will scrimp and save to afford a wedding costing several times their annual salary.

When did celebrating love become so expensive? Is it time for ethical and green weddings to go global to cut the costs?!

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Tell us what you think in the Ethical Weddings Forum…

Sometimes it seems there’s barely time to think at all, let alone think about what you’re doing and why you’re doing it.

So it was really refreshing to meet Lesley of ‘Getting Married from the Inside Out’ at our Brighton ethical business event last week.

Lesley took the relaxed route to getting married, got everyone involved, didn’t allow tradition to dictate the day, and made sure she savoured every single moment – not for her the disappointed exclamation of so many stressed out brides:

‘I don’t know where the day went!’.

She enjoyed the experience so much that she decided she wanted to share it with others through her writings and workshops on ‘Getting Married from the Inside Out’ – personal coaching on what Lesley terms the ‘wedding journey’.

While not explicitly focused on planning an ethical or green wedding, Lesley’s approach sits well with both as she encourages the bride (she coaches individuals rather than couples) to take a step back and really consider what getting married is all about, why she is doing it and what it means to her.

Taking time out to stop and think helps you to strip away the commercial distractions that have grown up around this day – your day of celebration – and create a more authentic wedding.

To find out more, why not take a look at the Getting Married from the Inside Out website?

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Take care,

Katie
Meet likeminded brides and grooms in the Ethical Weddings Forum

Over a rice muffin and fresh juice at the yummy Neal’s Yard Salad Bar in Covent Garden, we swapped stories of our own weddings and shared ideas on where the whole green / ethical wedding is heading.

While Ethical Weddings is very much about providing the resources for couples to organise their own ethical weddings, and a space for them to chat and swap tips and advice, Green Weddings is a bespoke service where you meet with Ruth, tell her the type of wedding you would like to have, and she will organise it for you – with your input of course – in the greenest way possible! So if you’re short on time but big on going green, ask Ruth.

You can read some of Ruth’s top tips for having a green wedding in The Times’ eco-worrier article: ‘planet-friendly partnerships: their big, fat green weddings’.

Meanwhile, Ethical Weddings is keen to encourage ethical wedding suppliers to sign up to the online directory due to go live later this year. So if you are an organic caterer or a purveyor of fair trade confetti (for example!), sign up here.

Bye for now…

Katie
ethicalweddings.com

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