Green Festival Highlights Part Deux

At the Green Festival, a joint project by Green America and Global Exchange, I happened upon the Beer and Wine garden. I was able to get a little background on organic wines and production by speaking with a few of the winemakers. I also happily tried a few of their offerings.

If you are a green bride or groom, you may be looking to incorporate alcoholic beverages into your festivities. One way to do this is to share your wine picks with guests. They can be offered at the bar and by servers or to cut costs, you can put a bottle or two at each table and let guests help themselves. However you do it, there are ways to go green with wine purchases just like everything else.

There are more and more wines made organically and naturally. They can be made with organic grapes, or additionally made without additives like sulfites and acids, and/or without added yeast. Some farming techniques can go beyond organic or additive free and can include Biodynamic Farming, which ensures a more self sustaining farm with a healthy ecosystem.

Here's a look into some of the locally grown and made organic wines that I tried:

Beaver Creek Vineyards are located in Lake County, CA and produce wines using a biodynamic approach, ensuring living micro organisms, bugs and grazing animals and fertile soil. Their wines are made with natural yeast, little added sulfites and are not filtered.

Le Vin Winery and Inn is located on 164 acres in Medocino County, CA. They produce both organically grown wine and Olive Oil, and use hand culivation and other low impact methods. They also do not add sulfites and have low growing clovers and insects that enhance their soil and ecosystem.

Frey Vineyards located in Mendocino, CA provides organically made wines without sulfites or acids and at times without added yeast, and goes beyond that to include other sustainable methods in their production. They include a biodynamic approach to cultivation and land use that supports biodiversity. They are also ensuring that carbon emissions are reduced and eliminated with solar power, tree planting and recycling.

Overall, learning about wines and the steps that these and other vineyards are taking to be organic and sustainable has been a real pleasure. Adding your favorite organic wine picks to your wedding reception would be a great addition to a green wedding. It would help ensure that yet another human pleasure is enjoyed responsibly and may even reflect positively upon the land, animals and other humans on this earth.

G&G

Green Festival Highlights for the Green Bride or Groom

Last weekend, November 13th, 14th and 15th, the Green Festival came to San Francisco. With it came vendors, information booths, artists, lecturers, education, guest speakers and food. There were so many booths and events that happened over the weekend. I tried to get my hands on as much information as I could. In the next few posts I hope to show you some of the most exciting highlights of the festival that may be helpful to you as you plan a green wedding.

Hemp wedding dresses, suits and lingerie:

Cristal Miller

The owner and designer of Conscious Clothing getconscious.com who uses sustainable and environmentally friendly hemp fabrics for her wedding designs. They provide wedding dresses as well as suits and lingerie.

A Conscious Clothing hemp and silk suit.

Floral designs by Gorgeous and Green Events.

A beautiful ruffled wedding dress that was showing at the Conscious Clothing booth.

A silk hemp dress with dark ruby red accents. It was shown in the Hemp Fashion Show at the festival.

This suit has a great ruffled brown shirt. Very retro.

Photograph from Conscious Clothing.

A pair of Conscious Clothing's ruffled panties.

Rene Geneva

Her designs are made of organic cotton and hemp fabrics and all designs are offset to be carbon neutral. She also offers to rent bridal gowns. For more information or to look at her offerings visit: ecochicclothing.com

Rene Geneva's ruffled silk and hemp gown. Available in formaldehyde free silk or peace silk.

A corset dress, possibly for a bridesmaid or bride.

A waist cincher from Rene Geneva. Laces up in the front and back.

Photography by Corduroy Media.

Hope you enjoyed these cool designs.

G&G

Green your Wedding Registry

Before your big day, you've probably got a lot of things to do. You've got to order the cake, get the dress/suit, find a DJ, get your hair cut, etc, etc. It can seem like the list is nonstop. One item on your list that can either be exciting, overwhelming, or both, is your registry.

It's pretty standard and almost expected that you make a list of the things you would like to receive as gifts for your wedding. Most guests are pretty familiar with registries, and some may even start asking for them as soon as you pop the question. Whether or not they actually choose a gift from that registry, is another conversation. But in the case that they do, it's better to be prepared. Of course, as a green bride or groom, you probably also want to register for items or actions that reflect your mindset. There are a few online resources that can help you set up registries that reflect your tastes and your green practices and ideals.

There are a number of eco-friendly and sustainable stores online that offer registries. There are also some registry services that allow you to register for non-tangible gifts like car washes or donations, for example. I've taken the liberty of doing my own "shopping" at some of these sites so you can see what they have to offer. Take a look:

1. Handmade ceramic pottery and dinnerware:

The handmade ceramics above are from www.dodgestationpottery.com. It's not only made by a person's hands, but it is also art. The website offers a wedding registry that allows you to choose the pieces you want so that your guests can order them for you. They have dinnerware(photo at top) as well as kitchen items like these cute ramekins just above.

2. Dining, Bedding, Bath, Children's, Gifts and Garden products:

These super cute "bird" measuring spoons are found on www.arenaturals.com
and go well with a trendsetting couple's kitchen or just someone who likes birds. They are handmade in the US and are food safe.

These lovely spa towels are made of organic cotton can be found on www.vivaterra.com. They are free of chlorine bleach and synthetic finishing agents and are 100% organic.



Check out this composter I found on www.greenfeet.com, very useful for the green couple who has a yard. Sounds like making rich compost from your yard trimmings and food scraps can be pretty easy with this device.

3. Fair trade & Sustainable home, jewelry, clothing and gifts:

Look at this spacious fair trade hammock made of reclaimed cotton by a family owned workshop in El Salvador. The workers are paid above standard wages and receive benefits. Available on www.globalexchangestore.org

4. Non-material, secondhand and homemade registry:

This registry allows you to create a wishlist of items that you'd like people to give you, and can be both material and non-material. A sample item might be: a freshly baked pie, or maybe some homemade pancakes?



Once someone selects that gift to give you, the registry notes that your wish has been fulfilled.
www.alternativegiftregistry.org

5. Donation registry:

This registry allows couples to register for charities, so guests can donate using their credit card or write a check to your favorite cause in place of a tangible gift. From The Global Fund for Women to Amazon Watch, they probably have a charity you support on their list.

www.idofoundation.org

Whatever registry you choose, remember that some guests may be unfamiliar with some of these green online stores or non-material registries. It may be important to explain them on your wedding website or by teaching family and friends who can act as registry guides. Most of these registries however, try to make it easy for both the couple and their friends and family to use their registries.

G&G

Eco-friendly Weddings can be Classy Too

"Green and Glamour"

One of the most recent green weddings I was involved with this summer was a wonderful event in San Francisco, atop Nob Hill. The view of the City skyline was amazing, as was the old-world charm of the University Club where the event took place. Just look at that old gold elevator! The whole event was classic and glamorous. You wouldn't know it, but it was also very green!

The Bride and Groom held their ceremony at St. Patrick's Church in SoMa, not far from the club. The bulk of the partying however, took place at the University Club, on two separate floors. Guests mingled and socialized in the bar, game room and lounge area on the 4th floor, while Kelly and Mark took their wedding photos.

After cocktail hour, guests were invited downstairs to dine with the wedding party and make toasts to the new couple.

From the looks of things, Kelly and Mark's wedding was super elegant, but not without a lot of green and sustainable influence. I asked Kelly to tell us about the green decisions she made:

The Gown

"My dress was a sample gown from encorebridal.com. Instead of purchasing a brand new gown (and probably made of synthetic fibers in my price range), I was able to attain a somewhat used gown that had outlived its use for the showroom, but was great for me! I would highly recommend this to any bride looking for a designer gown on a budget. I really didn't care that it was used. In fact, I preferred it used because I was one less bride demanding the production of another gown. I will wear the gown only once, anyway.

The Invitations

The wedding invitations were made from recycled paper. The invitations were a HUGE concern of mine. I didn't want to waste so many trees and ink on wedding invitations, with the inserts and all, that would eventually be thrown out (I actually just recycled someone's invite tonight). I could have done better with the paper and ink choice, but not on my budget. I wanted invitations sent out (I don't like e-vites for weddings), but I did not want to use a lot of paper. I searched for weeks for invitations that I could afford and were at least, at the VERY least recycled. I finally found them at weddingpaperdivas.com.

Transportation

We provided transportation for guests from selected hotels to reduce the amount of cars on the road. This also doubled for ease of the wedding guests navigating San Francisco and not worrying about parking in such a busy part of town.

Favors

Instead of handing out favors to guests, we donated to charity. Mark and I donated the amount of money we budgeted for wedding favors to one of my favorite charities, The Square Peg Foundation (everyonefits.org). This issue again touches on the paper/plastic dilemma. I really didn't want to contribute to the demand for mass production of more 'stuff' that would most likely be thrown out anyway. Any amount of money, in my opinion, spent on wedding favors would go so much further donated to a charity, especially in this economy. I think its also a great way to personalize the wedding and show others what causes really move you, and promote awareness.

Floral and Event Design

And finally, we had absolutely beautiful flowers and decorations! :) Finding sustainable flowers for the wedding was extremely important to me. As I began looking into floral designs, I started to wonder about these flowers that seemed so easy to obtain, though I knew that a lot of them were out of season. That snowballed into research on flower growing, labor involvement in other countries (South America particularly), pesticide use, the amount of fuel required to transport out of season flowers from a country in South America to a wedding in San Francisco. None of this made sense to me. To use so much fuel transporting flowers, chemical pesticides (that are not regulated in other countries) that put the environment and people at risk, just for my wedding, didn't sit well. I really hoped that the 'green movement' had already extended to florists, but it really hasn't yet, though its starting to, which is awesome. I was so happy to find Pilar online. I had talked to other florists who were willing to find organic and local flowers for me, but I really wanted to work with someone who was absolutely committed to the idea, not just a bride's wish.

For eco-friendly flower design we use vases made of recycled glass for the centerpieces and large arrangements, locally grown flowers and greens, biodegradable ribbons made of cotton and hemp, we totally avoided floral foam, composted all leftovers, recycled and used rented and reusable vases and hurricanes.

Advice for the Green Bride or Groom:

My advice to other brides interested in planning a 'greener' wedding is to do your research. It can be done, and it doesn't have to cost more or detract from the beauty of the wedding. Instead, I think it adds to the personality of the event. Our wedding was fun, elegant, and everything we wanted, and I'm happier now knowing that that our one day didn't do quite as much damage to the earth and its inhabitants as it could have!

The vendors who helped make this event possible included:

The University Club

Gorgeous and Green Events

LucieXYZ Photography

Jean Marks

Copenhagen Bakery

If you too are interested in greening your wedding, but are unsure how it will affect the look and feel of your event, now you know even the greenest brides can have grand and gorgeous weddings!

G&G