Seasonal wedding flowers

The church was beautiful, we found a florist who was a friend of my parents, and who was sympathetic to our green ideas.

She sourced flowers and greenery as seasonally as possible, including some raided from my parents’ garden the previous day (!), and also made up some planters of growing flowers and herbs that we took away to keep afterwards.  The results were stunning.

A very personal wedding ceremony

Our church wedding was fantastic too.  As we are both Christians, the spiritual aspect of marriage was really important to us, so getting married in church was particularly special.

The service was wonderful – our friend and university chaplain led the service so he was able to tailor it to us quite a lot (his address to the congregation after the marriage involved Bagpuss!) – and as there is quite a lot of choice about what wording to use for the marriage service, and which readings (Bible or not) and music to use, the whole thing felt very personal.

We entered the church to the Beatles’ ‘Here comes the sun’ in the end, very happy! We involved friends and family in leading the readings, prayers and music too, which was lovely.  We exchanged wedding rings from Cred (who really impressed us), and our little ‘engagement ring’ trees made it along to the church too as decorations.  And we made our own service sheets (using Evolve recycled printer paper), including our story in them.

Snap happy guests

After the ceremony we did a big photo session in the pretty churchyard, with my keen amateur photographer uncle doing the ‘posed’ photos, and the rest of our photos taken by the guests who then posted their digital photos on to us.

It worked out really well, despite what you hear about how you must get in a professional.  With so many people doing your photos you are bound to have a fantastic selection of shots, and they covered different groups of guests, as well as getting some fantastic informal pics to add to the posed ones.

Homemade confetti

We had made our own confetti the previous summer, by drying rose petals in the oven and storing them in warm, dark and dry boxes. We decorated the boxes we stored it in with some shiny red paper from Oxfam (again – they did well out of us!) to make pretty serving boxes to pass round for guests to pick out handfuls from.  And it was so beautiful, the colours were preserved really well.

The cherry tree in the churchyard decided to add to our confetti and showered us with blossom as soon as we stepped out of the church, which was VERY cute.  It made a wonderful backdrop to the photos too.

Love,

Helen and Mike

I found them when I was looking for some ethical new baby gift cards for Makes a Change, but I’m posting it here as there are gorgeous cards for the bride and groom

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Churchill: The Hollywood Years movie download

if you’re off to a wedding, and also well priced packs which can be used as Save the Date, Invitations and Thank you cards for your own wedding.

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www.justcardsdirect.co.uk

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I have been checking out the website for about a year now, and with 4 months to go (gulp) I am going to try and let you all know how I’ve been getting on with planning our wedding. I’m pleased to say there’s lots to write, but that does mean I may not get it all down today…

Well, this week we’ve sent our invitations out.  I know there have been ongoing debates in the forum about invitations download Brothers of the Head

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, and we decided to try to do it all online. I was a bit unsure, especially as it’s so nice to get post which isn’t a bill, but we knew that ultimately, they would all end up in the recycling box.

A friend from the USA invited us to their wedding last year and had a website, which I thought was great.  There seems to be tons of places where you can get a free site, but I chose webs.com.  It was incredibly easy!  I couldn’t quite believe it. 

In fact the most difficult part has been working out what to write.  It’s also been a really nice thing for Graham and me to do in the evenings. You can add links to your venue, maps, photos, music (the only bit that doesn’t seem to have worked).

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One of my friends said “So, are you doing fancy online invitations too?”  – aaagghh! I’d originally had in mind that we would just email people with a link to the website, but it seems you can do pretty online invitations too! 

The Moguls film Again, there are loads of sites, but I picked Pingg (mainly because of the designs).  They send them all out for you and you can also choose for them to send printed invitation postcards, or texts, for a small charge. We could also have had our website with them too, but I found that out too late. We’re pretty lucky in that 99% of our guests have internet access.

So all in all, our invitations have cost about £7 -2 printed cards and a fee to have an ad-free website. Hooray!

I hadn’t realised how emotional it would be to hit send and know the invitations had gone.  Suddenly made it all seem very real.  Everyone we’ve spoken to so far has loved the invitiations and website – it has made a couple of them cry.  I’m really pleased we took the time to make it so personal. 

Shadow Puppets film

I’m trying to resist checking my emails at every hour (Pingg emails you when someone RSVPs – it really is a great service).  I am a little concerned some may have ended up in people’s junk filters, so I guess I may need to chase some up at some point.

Over the last few days I have come to realise that the least eco-friendly part of our wedding will be how much time I have spent on this bloody computer, researching options.  Still, seems to be paying off.

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OK, that’s it for today.

Sam
Read Sam’s full profile

Location: Gateshead, Tyne & Wear

Tell us a bit about yourself and your business
Ethicalsuperstore.com, the one stop shop for ethical gifts, gadgets and groceries was founded in 2003 by social entrepreneurs Vic Morgan and Andy Redfern, who saw an opportunity to create global change through an ethical consumer revolution.

We are committed to helping the ethical consumer to “Buy What You Believe”. We have a wide range of the finest quality fair trade, organic, and eco-friendly products. We strive to provide you with a simple and secure online shopping experience, with personal service always there when you need it (we actually pick up the phone and respond to emails!), together with a fast and flexible delivery service.
We’re always looking for ways to minimize the impact our service has on the environment – we’re working to make our packaging as eco-friendly as possible and we even offer a service to carbon offset our deliveries to you.

We realise it can be confusing deciding which ethical products to buy for your wedding and what information to believe, so we do our best to share product background information to help you make informed ethical purchasing decisions. We’re committed to providing you with comprehensive and accurate information about the ethical credentials of the products and brands we sell.

What or who inspires you?
A million ideas that show how trade and technology can be used to help create a more sustainable world.

What do you enjoy most about running your business?
Working in a dynamic team environment that combines passionate individual effort with a collective spirit towards the creation of a truly unique social business.

What is the most challenging aspect?
So many opportunities, yet so little time… but if you have to be married to a business, Ethicalsuperstore.com is a great mate!

What do you feel you bring to an ethical wedding?
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If it’s a high quality product that makes a positive impact to people and/or the planet that you’re after, we want to help you, the ethical wedding consumer, to find it – anything from Fairtrade and organic wine & champagne, to ethical jewellery, organic clothing and unique ethical gifts and wedding favours that give back to the people that made them.

We sell products from leading ethical brands as well as supporting products from independent traders and producers, including products sourced from fair trade suppliers in over 40 countries.

In order for a product or brand to be sold by Ethicalsuperstore.com, it must have established ethical credentials in at least one of the following areas:

• Fair Trade
• Organic
• Eco-friendly
• Health and Wellness promotion
• Education and Awareness building

How do you see the wedding industry changing over the next five years (if at all)?

The Collective release

We’d like to think that more and more “traditional” weddings will start to incorporate elements of an ethical wedding.

Because “green thinking” has become so much more of a factor in everybody’s day to day lives, we think that we’ll see couples choosing to serve locally sourced food that’s in season not only because it tastes better, but also because it will lower the carbon footprint of their wedding.

The current economic situation means that couples will be more cautious about spending money and getting good value for what they’re spending. But if Fairtrade wine is your usual tipple then why should you compromise your ethics for such a special occasion?

There’s not even that much of a premium on fair trade and organic shopping these days, and there has never been so much choice for the ethical wedding planner. By bringing everything under one roof, we hope that Ethicalsuperstore.com will make it much easier to source and plan your ethical wedding, as well as make it more affordable.

Most of our products have a case option, so that when you buy in bulk you’ll automatically qualify for a bigger discount too!

Find out more about Ethicalsuperstore.com

Just quote “ethical08” when placing your order.

All orders must be placed by 31 August to take advantage of this offer.

So what are you waiting for? Check out cherrygorgeous now!

Katie
Chat about ethical wedding stationery and invites in the Ethical Weddings forum

Read on to find out more about Dee and cherrygorgeous…

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Name: Dee Grismond
Location: Yorkshire

Tell us a bit about yourself and your business
It all began on a beach in Southern India with a proposal of marriage!

When I got back to the UK, after all the vividness of India, I found that all the invites here were a little bit dull. So I decided not to go back to my job as a graphic designer in London, and set up cherrygorgeous instead.

It was obvious to me that the business would be environmentally friendly; it was only once it was up and running that I realised that this wasn’t how everyone set up their business.

So many people have told me that if I ditched the eco aspect of my business it would run at a bigger profit and reach a bigger audience, but to me that’s really not the point!

What or who inspires you?
Anita Roddick because she changed the way that people thought about business. She made people realise that businesses can be ethical. She also reminded us that everyone can make a difference and that’s really empowering!

What do you enjoy most about running your business?
I love being part of the ‘happy industry’ and being able to take a bit of the stress away from my prospective brides. And as I’m passionate about design it’s great to be able to inject some eco-chic into people’s weddings.

What is the most challenging aspect?
Everything about running your own business is challenging but with weddings you can’t rely on repeat business (unless your customer is Liz Taylor!). But as customer service is so important to my business we get a lot of customer referrals, which is great as it shows we are doing a good job!

What do you feel you bring to an ethical wedding?
A sense of style, individuality and creating a bit of character, that will blow away the old clichéd concepts of what a wedding is.

I sometimes get the feeling that people still think that being ethical means that you have to lose your sense of style but that’s just not true.

And I hope that having a greener wedding will inspire people to make greener choices in all aspects of their lives.

How do you see the wedding industry changing over the next five years (if at all)?

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I think the wedding industry is evolving as we speak and lots of people are making their own rules about what a wedding should be and what it means to them.

So whether you are after a traditional wedding or a something a little bit different if you look hard enough you’ll find something that’s perfect for you.

Find out more about cherrygorgeous – recycled wedding stationery

An ethical bride-to-be on a budget and in a hurry emailed us to ask for our thoughts on the etiquette of sending email wedding invites. Here’s the original question followed by Ethical Weddings’ reply and some suggestions from our blogger brides.

We’d love to find out what you think. Does etiquette rule in this scenario or is email the obvious way forward? Maybe you’ve created your own gorgeous wedding e-vites – if you have, we’d love to see them. Send them in to info@ethicalweddings.com and we can create a little gallery of them to inspire other online brides!

The question – to email or not to email?

We have decided to get married in 2 months. We are only asking our closest family members and friends to attend. Would it be acceptable to email their invitations to our little celebration? We thought we would send a formal invitation and RSVP through an attachment.

Ethical Weddings’ response

As far as we are concerned, there is absolutely nothing wrong with sending email invites – providing of course that you can be sure your guests will receive them. You could always follow up with a phone call to make sure.

If you’re looking at websites that give instructions about wedding etiquette, they’ll probably tell you it’s not the proper way to do things, that it isn’t formal enough… but this is your wedding and if you’re helping to save a few trees (and be more efficient at the same time), we think that can only be applauded.

Are you confident in creating a beautiful e-invite? If not, you might like to look into getting a designer to create one for you. Ethical Weddings website designers, Make Hay had some lovely designs for their wedding, for example, which would work on paper or by email.

Alternatively, you could go to a do-it-yourself site such as evite.com – see their wedding invites

We have a couple of posts on our blog about email invites that it might be useful for you to look through first:

Internet Invites

Invites & Wedding Maps

We also asked our blogger brides for their thoughts and here’s what they had to say:

Jenny’s response – email invites no problem!

“Hi there

We invited all our guests by email and many people commented that they liked our invitations! I think it’s perfectly acceptable, especially now that people understand the ‘green’ reasons for using email a bit more.

In fact we put the actual invitations on a website, and simply sent people a link by email. Each person’s link was individual, so that when they clicked on it they were sent to an invite with their own name on, where they could click to RSVP and access info about the venue.

The advantage of doing this is that the website statistics can tell you which guests have seen their invitation. If you simply email an invitation out, you don’t know whether people received it. Some people don’t check their email. And not all faulty email addresses will send you back a warning that the email ‘bounced’.

We found it took a few attempts, with some people, to find an email address where they could receive their invite. But it saved us lots of money and time – we had 200 invitations and only three, in the end, had to be sent in paper copy!

Good luck!”

Em’s response – hand made invites

“Ours is a fairly small affair at just 40 invitations going out, so I did still want to send some ‘hard copy’ invitations. Many of those we have invited are elderly and even some of the younger ones aren’t all that internet-savvy, so I tried to compromise.

I put out the equivalent of ‘save the date’ by making a group on Facebook, and inviting everyone who we would reasonably like to have at the wedding. We created a wedding event, and ‘invited’ all our guests along. Several people quickly responded with ‘wish we could but..’ messages, so that enabled us to cut down the guest list to those who thought they might be able to make it.

Next, we hand made our invitations.. and it’s got to be said, it wasn’t HALF as much fun as it looks on Etsy! We enjoyed planning our design, and I enjoyed cutting the first few.. but 20 invites in, and I had lost all will to make invitations myself! I think I finally understood why the much-coveted letterpress-on-Lettra designs I had seen were super expensive.

Admittedly, we did opt for the super-economy version for our invites. I’d researched lots of eco-friendly paper, but ultimately I realised that it wasnt worth ordering fresh paper and card in when I could probably source some locally and make the most of a small amount.

I eventually bought one A3 piece of textured card, used some old note cards that I had in my correspondence set, printed with our home printer, encased it in some folded brown card (I think I bought 15 sheets of A4 from a local shop where they had been gathering dust) and packaged it up with some handmade paper from a local shop.

It didn’t fit my ideal of the super eco-friendly, ethical invite, but I know that it used minimal resources and we were vaguely happy with the results!

I still have a couple of friends overseas who I haven’t offically invited yet, and I’ve come to the realisation there is a much better way around it. Using Adobe’s In-Design program (which I am very much a beginner at!), we can create a PDF invitation with clickable links and all the inserts we wanted to include.

I’m going to put our original invite design in there, and add on some local accommodation info and maps… and probably wind up emailing it to many of the people we sent the original one to anyway!

If I was to do it again (oh hang on, I will, back in Australia!), I’d create a PDF invite using In-Design, and only print it for the few people who aren’t online.”

Kate’s response – postcard invites

“We sent postcard invitations – I ordered them from a photo website, with a photo I’d chosen on one side and the invitation wording on the other. All I had to do then was address and stick a stamp on each one.

The postcards had a link to a website we’d designed and created, which had all the details on it, plus a form to RSVP.

The only reason I didn’t send an email instead was that there were quite a few guests who don’t really use email.

We’ve had lots of positive comments about the website – including a few from friends who said they wish they’d done something similar for their wedding.

For those who had no internet access at all, we printed the web pages out and sent them with their invite so that they had all the info.”

Why not carry on the debate about email and paper invites in the Ethical Weddings Forum?

Take care,

Katie
Ethical Weddings

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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!

So I purchased these cards from a local nonprofit called DrawBridge. They have a variety of cards for all occasions. The designs are by homeless children, and the proceeds go to programs benefiting these budding artists. As an added bonus, they’re even printed on recycled paper, using vegetable-based inks.

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DrawBridge isn’t the only source for cards that give back. Another program in the U.S. is called CASA Cards. And here’s a link to a PDF listing a ton of organizations that offer Cards for Charity. It looks like they’re all American sites, so if anyone knows some overseas sources, please feel free to comment about them.

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Things are winding down to the last month before our wedding. We have gotten a lot done, but there is still a lot to do of course. Our major accomplishment last month was sending out our invitations, which we screen printed on plantable seed paper. It was a lot of work but we’re happy with how they turned out. I was also excited to get the short dress that I’m changing into for our reception, a pretty vintage dress that I am borrowing from a friend. My project of the moment is finding my shoes. I want them to be comfortable and ethical (and pretty since they will be clearly visible when I change into the short dress). I’ve looked at many websites selling eco-friendly, vegan and sweatshop-free shoes but I haven’t found anything that I really like (or like and can afford). So I think my best option right now is to look for vintage or used shoes on ebay. Previously worn shoes are the most eco-friendly option anyway since no energy is used to make new shoes (just the energy required to ship them to me). So I’m keeping an eye out on ebay and hopefully I will find something I like soon!