My Big Green Wedding
Kate Harrison’s idea of a fairy tale wedding goes something like this:
Gather more than 150 friends and relatives at an organic farm for a prewedding day of hikes and environmental tours.
Calculate the mileage guests will travel and offset their carbon dioxide emissions by donating to programs that plant trees or preserve rain forests.
Organic wedding bells will ring out in a scenic trail area for Kate Harrison and Barry Muchnick.
Use hydrangeas, berries and other local and seasonal flowers for her bouquet and the decorations, instead of burning up fuel transporting flowers from faraway farms. Design an organic autumnal menu (same reason). Find a vintage dress to avoid the waste of a wedding gown that will never be worn again.
“It’s well worth it to start your life together in a way that’s in line with your values and beliefs,” said Ms. Harrison, 28, a graduate student at Yale, who is to marry in October. “You don’t want this event that is supposed to start your life together to come at the expense of the environment or workers in another country.”
Call Ms. Harrison the anti-Bridezilla, whose wedding is all about the planet, rather than “all about me.” People in the wedding business say the eco-friendly or “green” wedding has arrived, its appeal having expanded to spur a mini-industry of stores and Web sites offering couples biodegradable plates made of sugar cane fiber and flowers grown according to sustainable farming practices.
The quality and choice of products has so steadily improved that the green concept is spreading to other kinds of parties, allowing hosts to embrace the earth without sacrificing style, party planners and others say.
“People are making purchasing decisions based on environmental concerns,” said Gerald Prolman, the founder of OrganicBouquet.com, an online organic florist. Mr. Prolman, who said his Web site has doubled its sales yearly since it began in 2001, added a wholesale business last August to meet growing demand.
“Whether it’s food or cotton or flowers,” Mr. Prolman said, “people are asking questions: How are farmworkers treated? Who produced the product? How is the environment affected in that process?”
Eric Fenster, an owner of Back to Earth, an organic catering company in Berkeley, said that when he started his business in 2001, his clients consisted almost exclusively of social justice and environmental nonprofit groups. But that market has expanded to make weddings a third of his business.
And few events offer as many opportunities to say “I care” than a wedding, whose average cost is $25,000 to $30,000. Bridal magazines, too, have recognized the trend, and a new online site, Portovert.com, made its appearance last month, catering to “eco-savvy brides and grooms.”
Millie Martini Bratten, the editor in chief of Brides magazine, said that over the last five years the interest in green weddings has blossomed from a desire to incorporate a few green elements, like a vegan menu, to making sure the entire celebration won’t contribute to the depletion of natural resources. This may include finding halls that recycle, hiring caterers who use locally grown ingredients, decorating with potted plants that can be transplanted and using soy-based candles, rather than those of petroleum-based wax.
“If anything, it makes the wedding even more meaningful,” said Ms. Martini Bratten, whose magazine’s February-March issue features a planning guide for a green wedding.
[Read the full article from the New York Times here.]
