helping the world a teensy-bit with our wedding

Sometimes I struggle with our wedding because we are so blessed. I struggle with the thought that while our wedding budget is relatively small the money that we and our families and our friends are spending could be used for far greater things, and that so many people in the world could never imagine having even a fraction of the money we are spending on one day. I struggle with the fact that even eco-weddings are inherently not green and generate lots of waste, and burn lots of consumables (think of all the people traveling to your wedding who otherwise would likely not be traveling).

That said, I do still want a wedding - I love the symbolism and I love that we are bringing together our community of family and friends for likely the only time in our lives. I also did not have the time, energy and (often times) extra money to have a green wedding. But we are trying, in small ways, to reduce the negative impacts of our wedding.

First, the restaurant (The Rabbit Room) we chose for our venue uses locally sourced food whenever possible.

Second, I found a great, well priced source for the paper for our wedding invitations - The Green Paper Co. The paper for our invitations will be made from 30-100% post-consumer waste (PCW), some of it will be chlorine free and the energy used to produce the paper comes from wind- and hydro-power plants. I would like to do web-based, or email-based RSVPs, but considering how many people haven't managed to find their way to the website and how many older people we are inviting, I am resigned to traditional RSVP cards.

Third, on our wedding website we have encouraged our guests to join our Kiva group and help many other people enrich their lives and the wellbeing of their communities. So far, this has been a little bit of a fail, as no one has yet joined, but I think that might have more to do with lots of people not noticing the website on the save the dates and it still being very early for buying wedding gifts. We are also trying to limit the number of items we put on our wedding registries as we already have many of the things people traditionally register for and do not think that it is necessary to replace (most of) what we already have with new things just because others are paying for it.

Fourth, we are planning on hiring a shuttle bus to transport people from the hotel to the wedding and back. We also chose a hotel in a part of town that has many restaurants, bars, coffee shops and museums in walking distance, in the hopes that once people arrive they will not need to drive.

Finally, I am hoping to find money in the budget to buy TOMS for the members of the wedding party to wear at the wedding. I will also hopefully be buying TOMS for myself and Beau, regardless of whether we get them for the rest of the wedding party. For those who don't know, TOMS gives a pair of shoes to a child in need whenever a pair of shoes is purchased - "one for one" as they say. Today, while looking for wedding appropriate shoes I noticed that sometime in the month or two since last I perused their website they have added page on TOMS "for your wedding". They now offer discounts if you buy for a group and an email address for questions specifically regarding weddings. This made me really excited because I previously did not know who to email about some questions that I had regarding availability of other colors and special orders. It also was the mental impetus for this post - since i know there is at least one future bride reading who would probably find some of my thoughts and sources helpful for her planning (ahem... Future Mrs Dunbar...) and there are likely a few of you reading (including the afore mentioned future Mrs) that may have more ideas for me.