Introducing our ethical wedding
Jul 13th, 2009 by emma
We’re Emma and Philip and we’re getting married in just 5 days – the 18th July! Because the wedding is so close I’m going to try to blog about things we’ve done rather than what we will be doing.
Philip and I met in 2007 and he asked me to marry him in December last year.
Philip is an eco consultant whose last big project was installing solar panels at an eco lodge in Mozambique (which then won the best small hotel in the world awards!!) – www.mandawilderness.org.
The General Died at Dawn movie
I run an organic and fair trade baby and children’s clothes, washable nappies, eco friendly toys etc store called Makes a Change. We live and work a very eco lifestyle and so naturally we wanted to make our wedding as low-impact on the environment and as beneficial to the people who will be involved in suppliying us as possible.
The flowers
Depth Charge trailer This weekend was spent trying to tie down the last of the details! We’re having a marquee in the garden, after the wedding, and I’ve been trying to grow sweet peas to use as table decorations. Unfortunately I’ve not really got a green thumb so they’re not doing brilliantly, but have the back up of a great supplier called The Organic Flower Company which can be found at www.tofc.co.uk.
They will be doing the bridal bouquets, button holes and also decorating our cake for us – which we eventually found after lots of searching for ethical wedding cake suppliers. A lovely lady called Joy, of www.joyofcakes.co.uk, is making us a cake from free range eggs, organic ingredients and fair trade dried fruit and sugar. We asked for a simple, white iced cake and the organic flowers will just finish it off beautifully.
The caterers
We’ve found that so many people are willing to change details of their standard products to fit in with our ethics – you just need to ask. Joy is a great example. She’d been wanting to “go ethical” and just needed someone to ask her to do it. Another example is our lovely caterers, Claire and Nigel of Claire’s Country Catering. We’re having a hog roast for a semi-formal wedding breakfast. They were pleased when we insisted on a locally produced, organic, free range hog as they say that it will cook much better than the horrifically grown caged pig that is normally used. Because the pig is able to move around freely, and grow naturally, it has more fat through the meat making it beautifully tender and delicious. Ethical and nicer! Bonus!
Claire and Nigel are also going to be supplying locally produced, organic salads and accompanyments to our hog roast for very little extra cost which is important as we are on a tight budget.
The bridesmaids
My main task this weekend was the bridesmaid dress fittings. My oldest bridesmaid, 13 year old Natasha, is my Fiance’s niece who lives abroad, so getting a dress fitted was always going to be a challenge. I asked her to choose a dress that she liked, which she could wear again, as we weren’t going to be able to get one fitted with eco fabrics. She chose a lovely, rich blue which then became the colour theme for the wedding.
We then bought two sashes in a matching fabric, and fortunately Philip’s mother knows one end of a sewing machine from another and has run up stunning little dresses for my other two bridesmaids (8 years old) in ivory coloured veggie silk and hemp with organic cotton lining (from Conscious Elegance) and the sashes will just pull the colours together. Even though the fabric cost was higher than non-ethical versions, the two dresses came to about half the cost of just one dress from a wedding dress store – or even high street department store!
This is just some of the examples of how we’ve tried to buy ethical versions of regular things needed for every wedding. It’s just an extension of how we buy everything: 1) Do we actually need it? and 2) is there an ethical version of it? I hope it gives you some inspiration.
That hotel looks so amazing. Its kind of like a treehouse.