The Couple: Daniela Gesundheit & Dan Goldman
The Challenge: Big Family, Little Footprints
The Location: Daniela’s Grandparents’ Home on the Beach
The Wedding Planner: Angelica Weihs
Daniela Gesundheit, singer/songwriter for the Toronto-based band
Snowblink, has never understood cut flowers. “I find them kind of depressing,” she says. “They’re cut and they’re dying… the vital beauty of them only lasts a few hours.” So at Daniela’s wedding to fellow musician Dan last April, the reception tables where bouquets usually sit had potted succulents instead.
“Plants living and growing are much more exciting to me — I feel more connected to that,” she says. “People will take them home, and they’ll be around for years — it seems like to have the right metaphor.”
Another wedding staple that doesn’t resonate with the couple is the cake, so they went with pies instead, minus any refined sugar. “Who doesn’t like pies?” asks Daniela. Unlike some of the sugary vegan cakes they tried, pies “will probably just need a little maple syrup or agave, and then the actual fruit.”
Dan and Daniela have been similarly thoughtful about the main course at the reception — they wanted it to be as
organic, local and seasonal as possible. The caterer they used —
21 West — doesn’t identify itself as “green,” but was flexible and accommodating of the couple’s requests. “Food is a big part of our life together,” Daniela says. “Food makes you feel a certain way when you eat it, so if we’re having all these people together, we might as well have them feel good with the food we’re feeding them. And then there’s the impact it makes on that scale.”
With a total of about 250 guests, the other major impact of the event was all that travel required to get everyone to wedding site, Daniela’s grandparents’ home on the beach in LA. When Dan and Daniela’s relationship was long-distance — with him in Toronto and her in the Bay Area — they contributed to a carbon fund to offset their frequent travel. For the wedding, they plan to donate money to an environmental organization whose work they admire: the
David Suzuki Foundation. They’ll also offer a shuttle from a nearby motel to the site, eliminating as much auto travel as possible.
To help them with the design and planning of their wedding and coordinate with local vendors, since Dan and Daniela now both live in Toronto, the pair had signed on with Angelica Weihs, of
Angelica Weihs Events, a well known green wedding planner in LA with lots of experience in beautiful eco weddings. Daniela says Angelica’s been particularly helpful in communicating their
sustainability-first vision to the various vendors. “We’ve been in the middle of a vendor meeting, and starting to feel overwhelmed, and she’ll just sweep in and say, here’s the vision. Maybe you can show us something more like that.”
(Story: Andi McDaniel)
