Go GREEN! And save some green along the way...

This last year I had the pleasure of photographing Kara Albright's wedding in Estes Park, CO. Kara is an amazing person and really opened my eyes as to the importance of caring for our environment in our day to day lives as well as when planning a special event such as a wedding. I thought it would be an excellent idea to feature some advice on how to go about planning a green wedding... Without further adeau here is Kara...

"Living in Colorado, one might think it would be easy to plan a green wedding. However, this task was a little more difficult than I thought. Working as an environmental planner, it was important to me to have at least some aspects of my wedding be “green”. There ended up being some sacrifices, either due to cost or unavailability. Flexibility is also key… you can’t afford to be super picky about the types of flowers, invitations, etc. However, we were so pleased with the way everything turned out; we wouldn’t have changed a thing!

One of the first things I did was to find a florist. I did numerous internet searches for organic florists and kept coming up short- I was thinking of just ordering some flowers from an online mega-florist, until I happened across Plum Sage Flowers. Plum Sage is run by Erin Hornstein, out of her NW Denver studio. I gave her free reign, with the exception of a few colors I didn’t want, and she was able to find an organic farm, not far from Denver, that would allow her to pick out all of the flowers she wanted for our arrangements. They ended up being gorgeous and organic...

Next step was the invitations. Since we were having a mountain wedding in Estes Park, I didn’t want something fancy and ornate, I wanted something more natural, and of course, 100% recycled. Twisted Limb Paperworks is located in Indiana; however, they have an online store. All of their paper is either handmade or 100% recycled cardstock. We ended up with simple, but elegant invitations, embossed with small evergreen trees at the bottom. Also, instead of having reply cards with envelopes, we saved a few trees by using postcards (included in the invite price) for reply cards. In addition, instead of sending out “save the date” cards, we used emails to remind everyone- it’s easier, cheaper, and greener!

I had to sacrifice on the food and cupcakes… the only organic cake place that I found was really expensive and didn’t do cupcakes, so I sacrificed that little one. Our out-of-town gift bags though, were also made of 100% recycled paper (from nashvillewraps.com), as were our place cards for our guests. The place cards were attached to corks from the numerous bottles of wine we had consumed over the previous year and our centerpieces were wine bottle lanterns, also created from our wine consumption! Remember, reuse of items is also important!

Lastly, one thing that was really important to me was the recycling of alcohol bottles at the reception. The place we had the reception didn’t offer recycling, so the day-of planner we hired (her job was just to coordinate the ceremony/reception), Julie Farnham with Seasons of the Heart, brought the recycling bins from her home and amazingly carted away all of the wine/beer/liquor bottles at the end of the night.

Oh, and don’t forget your registry! If you try to live as green of a lifestyle as you can, places like Bed, Bath, and Beyond and Crate and Barrel have plenty of natural, organic, and sustainable items for your registry."

I am so impressed with the valiant effort Kara put forth on keeping her wedding green. I would encourage every bride to try and keep the environment fresh in your mind when making your wedding plans... So much so in fact that any bride who books with Ardent can recieve 10% off their wedding if they indeed go green! If you are interested please email me for more details info@ardentphotographyinc.com.