The Five Biggest Green Wedding Cliches: Stop Saying That!

ckane — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 07:00:00 -0400

Speaking as someone who reads a lot about green weddings, I'd say we are beyond the saturation point of green websites, articles, issues, news reports, and TV shows. As Duran Duran might say in their comeback single, it's too much information. And after referring in a recent post to overused phrases in coverage of sustainable weddings, I decided to do a little research. By Googling the first five green wedding cliches that came to my mind, I present you with my very scientific list of the most overused phrases in eco-wedding coverage, from least to most.

1. My big fat green wedding.This phrase was my biggest disappointment a few months back--I thought I coined, it but did a quick search to make sure. Unfortunately, Google says about 129 writers thought the same thing.

2. It's a nice day for a green wedding. This Billy Idol reference hath wrought 583 results.

3. The bride wore green. Something like 970 articles use this phrase.

4. Something old, something new, something borrowed, something green. Maybe you're the editor of Supermarket Lady Magazine, you're planning your green issue, and you want to use this clever title for your wedding article. If you don't mind that somewhere in the neighborhood of 1330 other articles have used it already, go right ahead.

5. Green is the new white. Searching this term on Google gets you about 4,260 results! And backing up what I said above about general green information overload, when you just search "Green is the new" it yields around 297,000 results.

Don't get me wrong, I think this is a great trend. I'll be interested to see how the current rage of green weddings plays out over time; what sticks, what changes get incorporated even into mainstream weddings and event planning.

Can anyone suggest cliches I missed?

Disposing With Disposables

ckane — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 01:31:59 -0500

The recent tradition of bequeathing a disposable camera to each table at a wedding reception and letting the hoi polloi have at it, is universally agreed to be fun. These are the cameras that all the naughty bits will get shot on. (Sometimes a little too graphically.) Nonetheless, this less-stodgy of modern-day wedding tropes is also wasteful, like so many other modern-day wedding tropes. A service called YouShoot has stepped into the arena, with digital cameras for rent and a unified method for all guests to share their own digital photos from their personal cameras. It's a little like Netflix: pre-purchased CD mailers are distributed to the guests so they can burn their photos onto CD and share them with everyone else.

Of course, photos could also be shared on free websites like Flickr without using this paid service, but YouShoot is an easier way to coordinate all photos on one wedsite. So on the one hand, this seems like another service cashing in on the boucoup bucks to be made on big bridal business. On the other hand, at least there won't be more disposable cameras in the world.