Green Love & Weddings

Riverwired.com: Offbeat Bride Tribe = Tips, Deals and Steals for Green Brides

ckane — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 00:00:00 -0400

If you're planning a green (or partially green) wedding, and are stumped about a specific aspect of the planning, I know of a free forum where almost 200 other like-minded brides can help answer your question. Nothing gets me more stoked to plan my wedding than the original Offbeat Bride site, but about 3000 of the blog's readers also participate in an interactive community on ning called the Offbeat Bride Tribe, or the OBT for short.

The OBT has a few groups of interest to green brides. The main one is Eco Brides, where 176 members have helped each other with planning everything from affordable organic wedding food (a question posed there by yours truly) to affordable eco wedding dresses (yes, it's a theme, this stuff ain't cheap) to how to explain the green theme to your guests, to debating silk vs real flowers. Another group, Wedding Swap. enables OBT members to give away or claim wedding supplies, decorations, or dresses. One photographer just starting out is donating her services via that group to fill up her portfolio. Some brides use Wedding Swap to give away or sell their dresses at a significant discount, so that's another potential dress source. Another group that may be of interest to green brides is the Outdoor Weddings, and then there are dozens more fun groups for tattooed brides, brides in combat boots, witchy brides, and so on.

Riverwired.com: Organic Lingerie and Wedding Dress Ideas

ckane — Fri, 30 May 2008 00:00:00 -0400

The problem with most of the lines of organic lingerie, I've found, is that often they look beautiful and delicate and all that sexy lingerie jazz, but the bras look to be useless for any kind of support purpose. If you're going to wear one of those flimsy confections (that are not cheap), then why even wear a bra? The Oko Box makes the first organic bra that actually looks practical to me: their organic underwire bra. True--it's not very sexy, but the line has cuter little undies (the ones pictured here made from vintage tree-print fabric), or go to Stella McCartney's organic, sustainable line for the really frilly, lacy fancy pants.

The Oko Box also maintains a rather girly, quite readable blog that recently did a thorough rundown of organic/ eco-friendly wedding gown ideas. Curses to The Oko Box blog for turning me on to yet another droolsome vintage gown online boutique to comb through when I should be working: TheFrock. Le sigh.

Other right-on topics they've covered include organic plus-size clothing, DIY herbal remedies and sex health for teens. This little company also regularly donates to the National Wildlife Federation and they use "100% real people models." They are awesome.

Riverwired.com: How to Register Wisely for Kitchen Appliances

ckane — Wed, 28 May 2008 16:28:34 -0400

What’s the first item you think of when you picture a bridal registry? For me, it's the KitchenAid stand mixer (so the Kitchen Aid marketing and promotions department is doing a good job).

I imagine most people register for that appliance for that very reason. But I'd venture to guess that a large percentage of people who register for it don't bake from scratch anymore. So here’s a simple test to see if you need to register for a stand mixer: when was the last time you needed one? If you answered “Never” or “What’s a stand mixer even for?” then you don’t need to register for one. Ditto for any other kitchen appliance, no matter how sleek and shiny with chrome or stainless steel they may be, or what pretty colors they may come in.

But if you do bake or make homemade pasta or waffles or use other specialized kitchen appliances, Sprig recently reported that Hamilton Beach (which also makes Proctor Silex products) has begun to green their industry. In an effort to reduce their carbon footprint, they've adopted the Restrictoins of Hazardous Substances Directive (ROHSD), using less packaging and recyclable materials, and designing more energy-efficient appliances. The new standards haven't been applied to all of their products yet, so call 800-851-8900 for specifics.

image: Hamilton Beach

Riverwired.com: Ain't Love Greened?

ckane — Tue, 27 May 2008 23:51:33 -0400

I might be stretching the "Green Love and Weddings" theme here, but I'd argue that there is love all over the blog I'm about to share. This week, TypePad promoted Sallygardens Smallholding as one of their featured blogs. With the tagline "Where living the dream becomes your reality," it shares the lives and stories of of Rebecca and Dan Hillman, who run a 13-acre sustainable farm together in rural Ireland (Co. Leitrim, to be exact, where part of my family hails from and some of them still reside). They also run workshops to share what they've learned along the way.

I just enjoy reading their stories and virtually touring their farm, like seeing the new kid goats, reading their plans to attempt making their own wine and cut their minimal food bill down even further, and actually cooking with nettles, a plant I've only known to sting painfully if you brush against it. And you can enjoy turns of phrase like this one, about a missing red hen: "she must either have gone broody in the hedge with a secret clutch of eggs or a fox got her."

As they wrote in their online forum, the blog is where "we move smoothly from one crisis to the next and teach others how to do the same!"

Image: Sallygardens Smallholding

Riverwired.com: Steal This Idea: Replantable Wedding Bouquet

ckane — Mon, 26 May 2008 00:00:00 -0400

With flowers, all the green talk has centered around local, sustainably grown, and fair trade, but there's still another aspect for consideration. Can your bouquet keep living beyond the day? The Los Angeles Times Magazine's wedding issue just featured a floral designer who makes a wedding bouquet you can replant after the wedding. Krislyn Komarov of Krislyn Designs chose cyclamen with succulents that were cut to keep the plants alive, then she wrapped the stems of the creation with antique ribbon. What a great idea!

That particular creation is $250 and may not be convenient to your own wedding's location, but there should be no reason you can't work with your own florist to plan something similar, or try a little DIY bouquet-making. There's plenty of info online about growing your own bouquet, but I couldn't find any other examples online of replantable ones. However, it seems doable for anyone with a green thumb if the event is local: even if you needed to keep the stems in a slender container of soil, that whole kaboodle could still be disguised by ribbons.

Riverwired.com: Green Speed Dating

ckane — Thu, 22 May 2008 23:10:17 -0400

If you're an L.A. treehugger looking for love, The Hideout in Santa Monica is hosting a green speed-dating event for you on June 15 (uh, Father's Day?). The $20 admission donation goes to Developing Communities, and for that you get 20 brief face-to-face matchups with environmentalists of the opposite sex. Free appetizers and some free drinks are available. Take notes on the ones you'd like to plant gardens with, and then within 24 hours you'll get your list of the ones you liked, who liked you back.

Developing Communities is a small volunteer organization (half of the six members are former Peace Corps Volunteers) focusing on communties in South America, particularly Nicaragua.The reason for the green theme, as if anyone needs one these days, is that the group is working on bringing solar electricity to a small town in Nicaragua.

So there you have it: only 20 males and 20 females will be admitted (24-40 age range), two dudes and two chicks were already signed up and at "press" time it was still almost a month away. So if you're up for the speed dating, make haste and sign up.

Riverwired.com: Hot Chocolate: The Wedding Favors That Save the Planet

ckane — Mon, 19 May 2008 12:25:07 -0400

This is one of the best ideas I've seen yet for a pre-made green wedding favor: Endangered Species Chocolate. The company donates 10% of profits to protect "species, habitat and humanity," and they are partnered with Chimp Haven, The Ocean Conservancy, and a Nigerian co-op.

They offer a few different options for wedding and party favors, to name a few: for $35, you can get 144 squares of ethically traded, milk and/or dark chocolate. Or for the same price, you can get 120 squares of organic dark chocolate. They also sell boxes of organic, ethically-traded chocolate bars in three flavor variations. (So when some wise guy at your wedding claims that tree-huggers care more about the planet than people, throw this factoid from the Endangered Species Chocolate website back at 'em: "By purchasing ethically traded chocolate, we guarantee cacao farmers a fair wage that lead to more sustainable farming practices.")

These would also work for out-of-towner gift bags...but if you're planning a green wedding, you may not be so hot on the idea of including 100 or 200 bags of more stuff in your event. But talk about a feel-good wedding favor: gourmet chocolate plus organic, plus all the causes, plus ethically traded.

Riverwired.com: Wedding Dresses Made From T.P.! Don't Squeeze the Charmin

ckane — Fri, 16 May 2008 14:59:16 -0400

Seven New Zealand brides competed last month before a wedding expo to see who designed the best toilet paper wedding gown, according to the website Stuff. Flushing bride (I wish I made up that joke, but I didn't) Vicky Heir was the winner. Here's another pun I wish I'd made first, from the article: something old, something new, something borrowed from the loo.

Participants were allotted 16 rolls of Cottonsofts toilet tissue with which to create their dresses, and most took about 8 to 10 rolls. Expo manager Peta -Marie McLeod had this to say about the entries: "They were absolutely stunning. It was just amazing -- the amount of effort some put in. They looked like the real thing."

The contest was concieved as a promotion for the expo. As to why this particular dress material was chosen, I remain completely in the dark and the article offers no clues. But hey, anything made of toilet paper biodegrades, right? And it's not the first time: here are toilet-paper-dress contest winners from last year on Cheap Chic Weddings. (Do check it out, some of the entries are unbelievable.) The grand prize was $500, so theoretically she could have made dozens of more gowns with the prize money...

Photo: Stuff

Riverwired.com: Earth Mothers and Moms: Mutually Exclusive?

ckane — Mon, 12 May 2008 23:18:30 -0400

Many moms have famously claimed that having children has made them more conscious of their impact on the planet, like Julia Roberts, Cindy Crawford, Soliel Moon-Freye and now Jessica Alba. But the question has been raised as to just how eco it is to even have a child.

Last November, the Daily Mail published an article called, "Meet the women who won't have babies--because they're not eco friendly," featuring a 35-year old woman, Toni Vernelli, who had an abortion then got sterilized at aget 27 to reduce her carbon footprint, with no regrets. Another woman made the choice to not have children for the same reason, which ended several of her relationships, and she's now with a man who's had a vasectomy.

Then in March, Treehugger mused on "Why Eco-Activists Still Have Children." It links to a piece in The Guardian weighing the pros and cons of bringing extra little consumers and potential destryoyers into the world.

Here's another view on it, from the author of Gross National Happiness, which takes a whole different analysis, considering the measured happiness of couples with children vs childless couples, and weighing that against how rewarding it is to have raised someone well in a world that needs more good eggs in it.

Image: Toni Vernelli, from the Daily Mail

Riverwired.com: Sustainable Food Swapping

ckane — Fri, 09 May 2008 00:00:00 -0400

Here's a green idea that's like an updated version of the consciousness-raising women's lib groups of the 70s (or a little reminiscent of spouse-swapping key parties, except much healthier for the couples involved). A group in Woodstock, Oregon calling themselves the Green Team first banded together to clean up local bus stops. Their next act, back in September, was a sustainable potluck supper, with the goal of promoting the 3Rs and to get spouses to join the team. Dishes had to be prepared with locally-grown ingredients, and the bearer of each dish explained how each stage of the preparation was green, considering aspects like the transportation of prepared and refrigerated foods. Four couples came, and the next dinner brought five couples. Now the group gets together for sustainable potlucks monthly.

Conversation flowed naturally, since they already had the shared interests of green living, and some of the discussions over locally-sourced dinners have included:"solar energy, IKEA packaging, recycling in Holland (where Dan and Ann Steigerwald had lived for many years), the possibility of recycling styrofoam with orange extract, ways to store food without using harmful plastics, and – the ultimate recycling – organ donation."

Image: The Bee