wedding dress

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.

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.

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

Design Your Own Eco Wedding Dress

ckane — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 01:00:00 -0400

I'm probably going with a vintage gown for my own wedding next year. But for brides wanting a custom-made gown, or if you don't want your bridesmaids to looks like carbon copies of each other but you still want them to match in gowns they like, Olivia Luca is easily the coolest resource for bridal and bridesmaid dresses I've found so far. You design your own dress using their website, and they have numerous sustainable fabric options.

Remember that game Fashion Plates, where little girls could design their own outfits and and color them in? Welcome to your online version of that game.

Olivia Luca's eco fabrics include organic cotton, hemp, hempcel (a hemp and tencel blend), bamboo/organic cotton knit, organic linen, some layered options, and coming soon, soy knit. They also have several printed organic cotton choices as well.

I'm going to try making a few gowns to see what the prices are like and will present this to my girls as an option. And it's not just because I really want to play with Olivia Luca's online dress designer. Really.

Image: Olivia Luca