Green Wedding Spirit & Rubber Duckies for Re-Use

Kim and Rob were married on Sunday, 9/26 at the Inn.  A trendy Soju cocktail party, with guests loving the hot pink "Femme Fatale" concoction and the fresh "Sojitos", set the mood for a classy reception with a few quirks and smirks...

 

... like the rubber duckies bobbing in the fountain and the Fresh Fries food truck, which was the hip farewell surprise. I handed out cute little tickets worth a bag of  creative fries from slightly frightening ones with peanut butter, sweet potato fries with three tomato based dipping sauces and of cause the curly spicy stuff, my favorites.
The party continued in the parking lot, right so, as we find food trucks on the road - to midnight happiness.

 
 One Vampire Repellent please....

 

At the end everybody was invited and "street folks", meaning valets, servers, dish washers got their share of the amazing potato heaven, even Ray from the book store couldn't help it. 

The fries weren't organic but definitely vegetarian and the spirit was surely green: sharing your happiness with your family and friends and your community - and of course the vivacious vibes spread into the whole world...

Handmade steampunk cake topper

Robot couple on cake? Not for the Sci Fi ethereal lovers but with a rustic steampunk feel; I like the quirky touch. Handmade by Builder's Studio.

More to Green Wedding venues

Minimalist venues like manufacturing lofts or art galleries are an amazing background for green weddings as they are expressing the wish to be stuff-less. Smack Mellon Gallery in Brooklyn, NY features emerging female artists, which is another green wedding love: to support nature, arts, education, the life confirming goodies of our culture.

A keg of beer rather than a hundreds of little beer bottles has less production needs and in this case also is from a local brewery. All paper used for invite and programs is recycled and printed the eco way.

Congrats to Colleen and Jason. Check out Jason's Mind Body Green Company.
Creative Documentary Photography by JP.

Green Wedding Invitations

Jody and Hunter sent their invites for their fall wedding with Paperless Post and loved how pretty and easy it was. They even tell you when an email address doesn't work anymore, very professional and thought through.

Green Wedding Signs, reclaimed and rustic

Eileen and Ian celebrated their country style wedding at the Orella Ranch in Santa Barbara, a gorgeous nature paradise with ocean views. Not only that, celebrating your best day here means supporting sustainable land use and lifestyle practices.

Ian and his father Paul created rustic-cool wedding signs from reclaimed wood and nearly all other details were natural, re-usable, in short: eco-sweet. Their invites held up to their promise of rustic fun, captured perfectly by photographer Jackie Wonders.  Read more...

Indian Wedding 2010

 One of my favorite photographers, Jihan Abdalla, is becoming an expert in Indian weddings.

Every Indian wedding I coordinated elevated me to a whole new level of vibrancy and happiness. The joy is expressed in overwhelmingly marvellous colors and is very infectious. Jihan Abdalla dove into the feast of Tarun and Malini’s wedding at the Rockleigh Country Club in New Jersey and came back out with a cornucopia of amazing pictures.
Many meaningful and ancient rituals make the ceremonies hours long. Guests are not glued to chairs but entertain themselves during the ceremony with food and drinks and come back to join again.
The trend of American weddings to begin with a welcome reception might have grown out of these easygoing celebrations.

 Pre-parties, ceremony and reception - colors change using the whole painter's palette.

To play with these rich colors, ah the happiness...

 Can life ever be dull again?
 Thank you, Jihan.

Eco Friendly Venue

The Malibu Nature Preserve is one of my favorite venues for couples who love the natural approach and also like to support a Preserve and it's wildlife. Several areas to choose for ceremony and reception and never another wedding around...

I have created all kinds of weddings here from classy elegance to eclectic DIY and vintage beauty.
Call to check it out: 323. 953. 0453
Photos: Jimmy Cheng

Green wedding venues California, San Francisco Special

We work with garden settings, vineyards, historic mansions, eco-friendly homes in the middle of nature and are proud to have friends with arty places. If you are looking for something personal and/or unique we might just know about a venue...
Angelica Weihs Events 323.953.0453
So what's up in San Francisco?
We are on a mission to visit this environmentally evolved city's green venues and will add photos and interviews with the green doers as soon as our busy summer schedule lets us. LA can learn a lot from SF.

Bently Reserve.
A perfect historic venue for the opulent event - but can you be lush in a green way? San Francisco is packed with creative minds, planners, caterers and organic florists so there's a good chance even an "over the top" event won't crash the environment. My own rule No 1: make what you offer re-usable, the best of all options or rent your decor from a local company after checking if they use organic dry cleaning and perhaps travel to their events on bio diesel.
"A Common Green 2011" will show the city's sustainable commerce, progressive technology. Green vendors and caterers will provide fresh ideas, organic drinks, and eco-friendly hors d'oeuvres.
The Fort Mason Center is amazing as it not only has a fire gouse fr weddings but the first and best organic restaurant of the Bay area ready for catering right there: Greens.  We loved the food, the service and the place itself hold 125 guests for seated receptions.

 

(Greens Restaurant, SF)
The San Francisco Planning & Urban Research Association (SPUR) opened its brand new, multi-functional venue space, the SPUR Urban Center, in May 2009. A bright and airy venue designed by renowned local architects Pfau Long Architecture, this $18 million facility offers a beautiful space for hosting events of all kinds.

Solage Calistoga offers 89 eco-friendly studio accommodations.

The healthy, thoughtfully balanced resort is gracious and green, indulgent and nourishing, sophisticated and whimsical. Solage takes the natural and makes it spectacular with organic design, conscientious service and attention to detail.

Green Wedding Extreme

Wow, green are couples making head lines. On Saturday, July 31 Pete and Andrea are getting married, applauded by the press: they will have paid most of their wedding with 400,000 Aluminium cans they collected over several months. Then later this year, on September 25, 2010 Julia and Andy will celebrate in Maine with local and sustainable food - with the small difference that they grow it all themselves in their rented 7,500-square-foot garden in a peaceful meadow. With all the ups and downs of farming, they most probably will find the Zen approach to life on the way.
Meredith Goad from the Portland Press Herald reports today: "Instead of a wedding cake, they'll have pies baked by their mothers and ice cream from John's Ice Cream Factory in Liberty. Davis' parents, Jane and Stan Davis of Wayne, are growing gourds and sunflowers, globe amaranth, statice and strawflowers for decorations. Appropriately enough, the wedding falls on Common Ground Fair weekend, a popular annual gathering of organic farmers and gardeners. "
Even if most of us don't yearn for a quaker wedding style, the cool thing is that stories like these are inspiring others to find something unique and green for our own celebrations, how fancy they might be.  Life is to short to be boring but too long to add to mountains of waste and rivers of tears.

It's a wrap! Green registries and the other gift wrap

I love my green couples, their requests often kick my creativity and I go beyond bed and bath stores, find the impossible re-recyclables, the total re-use idea and recall whatever I have heard, seen, read or thought to manifest their unique ideas. Shelley and Jason above celebrated their spring wedding in the thriftiest venue in Sierra Madre: Nature Friends, a jump into the thirties, and got me into all things DIY.

With Blake and Stephen who partied with 500 guests at their summer county fair feast in Bel Air we did it all: from email invites and website RSVP's over green hotels to gorgeous veggie-sunflower baskets on wooden picnic tables. In lieu of gifts they offered their guests to donate to their favorite charity, online. (come back for their stories)

Today, Robin, one of my future green brides, asked me about eco cool registries, "You know, something more than just the typical Bed, Bath & Beyond stores." Of course that gets you into the massive waste of opulent gift wraps and their fun and funky alternatives like the fabulous ideas of traceable gift bags from Wrap Sacks. 
Instead of buying recycled wrapping paper it might be a fun project for  guests to come up with their own creative ways to wrap gifts in posters, newspapers, wall paper etc and use interesting "ribbons" from rope to wire or recycle ribbon left overs.
And here is the registry list I put together for Robin and thought is nice to share:
Vivaterra
Branch Home
Green Depot
Gaiam
Re:Modern
3r Living
For couples who are packed with stuff, there is an elegant way to ask for money (mucho verde)
Wishing well
Go Gift
or to ask for a pitch in for the Honeymoon:
Honeymoon Wishes
Honey Fund
Philantropists: Just give...

Green Engagement rings

Time flies, I can't believe that Leonardo's Blood Diamond came out in 2003. How's the situation in Africa? Are the clunkers on many brides beautifully manicured fingers still mined and produced in a river of blood and tears? It seem so but then there are also articles out there that contribute the bloody media hype to the monopolists in the diamond corner like De Beers, arguing that the Kimberley process, implemented to "protect" the miners, really is a trick to keep Africa from independence and finally becoming the ones who profit from their sparkling wealth.
How to get away from all the craziness?

Check into an cornucopia of vintage engagement rings (oh my gosh how amazing are they?) if you can't rely on his or her grandma's sassy sparkler or because it's style is really "oma" and not your taste.
There's is the out-there alternative of (actually rather fancy) wooden rings.

Or go sci-fi, techno cool:
"Gemesis cultured diamonds are at the forefront of a revolution in the diamond jewelry industry. A Gemesis cultured diamond is a diamond, grown under the same conditions as diamonds grow beneath the earth's surface. By applying tremendous heat and pressure, a diamond begins to grow, atom by atom, layer by layer, just as it does in nature. A Gemesis cultured diamond possess the same physical, optical and chemical properties as earth-grown diamonds."
There are also Apollo and Mia Donna to name a few masters in this field.
A jeweler friend of mine mentions amazing gem stones he created engagement rings with : "Tsavorite garnets are one of the most beautiful stones ever and have a similar refractive index to diamonds.  If someone loves ruby or sapphire colors then they should not look at tradition, they should look for something that makes them happy."
And that's what we women really want, a reminder of our love and happiness, not just a status symbol on our finger.

The modern Groom: creative, cool, playful...

Girls naturally savor beauty, design, fashion. It is a pleasure to see guys stepping up to the cool'n cute and playing with handsomeness.

From smart and sexy to country cool and expressing your life style and lineage in organic cotton or kilts, it's just fun to be a guy and love what you see in the mirror.

This jacket from Manuel is certainly unique. When the bride fulfills her princess dreams, why not follow your heart to manly handsomeness...

 

 Don't forget: Shoes can tell a whole story...

Cool accessories anybody?

 More styles to check out:

 

 

 

It's your stage to love who you are...

 Photos: Tec Petaja, Nashville, Josh Goleman, Brooklyn, Amy Caroll, Erin Hearts Court, Los Angeles, Megan Beth, Maryland, Austin Gros, Nashville,  Jagger