Project Green My Wedding: Gifts and Favors

So I have never planned a wedding before. I am guessing the most logical place to start is by doing research on the venue. However, in my initial research I got a bit sidetracked and so my very first green wedding blog is about Gifts and Favors.

First I'll start by touching on some of the research I am doing. I am attempting to find out the average carbon footprint of a wedding in the US. Different websites are telling me very different things. I have heard 22 tons, 62 tons, 8-50 tons, etc. I don't know where they are getting their numbers from, but there doesn't seem to be an agreed upon amount. Also, the World Wide Web contains a number of wedding footprint calculators, such as Terrapass and Native Energy where you can calculate the carbon footprint of your wedding based mostly on the traveling done by your guests (and offset it by giving money to the site). These calculators also give different results. I am being told that my footprint will be anywhere from six to ten tons of carbon (although a group in New Zealand calculated the footprint of the recent royal wedding in the UK to be six tons).

Regardless of where my wedding falls in terms of a carbon footprint, there is one thing the sites all agree on: the best way to reduce the carbon impact of your wedding is to invite very few guests who have to travel to get to your wedding. Cory and I will be having our wedding in our hometown of Appleton, Wisconsin where most of our friends and family still reside. There will be approximately 100 guests. I will discuss ideas for travel and accommodation in another post.

Gifts

At a typical wedding, the bride and groom receive gifts for their home such as bedding, silverware, and a toaster. It can probably be assumed that the items have been made and shipped from overseas and likely were not produced in a sustainable manner. Also, to ship or transport the gifts to the wedding requires fuel. Cory and I have decided we will ask people not to give physical gifts. We will hopefully be living in Seattle at that point, so it would be a pain in the butt to get everything back home anyway. We will not be registering at any stores, nor will I be having a bridal shower.

Instead, we will tell guests that if they would like to give us a gift, they can make a contribution toward our honeymoon or make a donation in our honor to a nonprofit of their choosing. I will provide a few examples of nonprofits we support to help them out.

Other options for couples striving for a more sustainable wedding include:

• asking for gifts that have been locally made
• asking for gifts that have been certified by an accredited sustainability certifier
• asking for eco-friendly items such as an indoor composter or a rain barrel

Favors

So this is reason I focused my topic on gifts and favors this week. I found an idea for favors that I am really excited about. I'll start by mentioning that the theme of our wedding is "family tree." We thought it was the perfect blend of our passion for the environment and our love of heritage. So what would be more perfect than giving each guest a baby tree to plant at home?

Typically at a wedding, each guest receives a small bag of candy as a token of thanks for attending. Though it probably isn't a terribly shock on the environment (though we could talk about the source of sugar and chocolate), I never really thought it was that exciting. In my exploration of green weddings, I came across the website for the Arbor Day Foundation. For $3 each, your guests can take home a baby evergreen tree. The tree comes in a plastic tube with a customized label for the wedding. The tubes are made of 50% post-consumer plastic and can be recycled or turned into a bird feeder.

Not only does it make for cool favors that fit the theme of the wedding, but this is a great way to offset the carbon emissions produced by my wedding along with some other benefits. The website shows you what your options of trees are based on region and stats about each species of tree. Since most of the wedding guests will be from Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Tennessee, I have decided to order Norway Spruce (perfect since I am marrying into a Norwegian family) and Eastern White Pine.

The website also has a tool to calculate the benefits the tree will produce. When the 100 trees reach maturity they will:

• intercept 460,500 gallons of runoff each year
• conserve 18,500 kilowatt/hours of electricity by cooling each year
• reduce the consumption of oil or natural gas by 2,500 therms each year
• reduce atmospheric carbon by 31,000 pounds each year

Of course, this assumes that all of the trees reach maturity. I know that not all guests will be able to plant trees at their home, so I will encourage the guests to give the tree to someone who will be able to plant it.

Other options for eco-friendly favors include:

• seed packets
• stainless steel water bottles
• a small piece of art from a local artist (preferably using recycled materials)

So there are my ideas this week for greening my wedding. I am planning to post every other week (weeks where I don't write a regular blog). As always, comments and suggestions are welcome!