Days of our Lives- now with more GREEN!

so i haven't watched days in ages- ok, like a few months, but yesterday i was home and decided i should tune in to catch up with all the folks in salem (i was suffering from a severe case of i-don't-feel-like-getting-up-off-the-couch-itis).
sammy and lucas are finally getting married (again?, i'm not sure, it feels like sammy has been married about 13 times now) and had carley from theknot.com meet them to help discuss their green wedding. how convenient that she too lives in salem! which is located somewhere, ummmm, i'm not exactly sure where, but chicago seems to be the nearest major city....

anywho- they were planning a 'green' wedding, which was so exciting to me. when planning our wedding, i wanted to go as 'green' as we could. all of our paper goods (invites, seating chart, menus, etc) were made from recycled paper, including our programs and the paper we had our vows written on. no trees were killed so we could get married (well, except for toilet paper at the venue, but that i couldn't control). we used postcard rsvps, to eliminate envelopes and cut down on paper needed.

when choosing flowers, it was important to me to use locally grown, in season blooms. i knew organic would cost an arm and a leg, so we didn't go that far, but i took comfort in knowing that my flowers weren't shipped or flown in using a lot of fossil fuels and in season blooms usually require less effort and chemicals to grow.

we cut down on waste by eliminating favors- who wants those candy covered almonds anyway? instead we made a donation to the new york restoration project (go divine miss m!) which creates community gardens all over new york city. we also had a small wedding party- just immediate family- which cut down on the need for special dresses, flowers, gifts and all the waste associated with these things. my sister's dress was made in nyc by a friend, no shipping there. my dress was shipped in from overseas- so you can't win them all.

we had all of our family from the philadelphia area bused in- keeping around 50 cars off the road and keeping our families from stressing out trying to find brooklyn. most of our new york friends took public transportation to the garden or shared cars. our one friend walked from his apartment!

we stressed to the caterer that it was very important to us that no food go to waste, any leftovers should be donated to city harvest or a similar program. being the professionals that they are, they were able to prepare exactly enough food and nothing was leftover.

my ring is made with certified non conflict diamonds.

we had leftover flower containers which i advertised on craig's list and gave to a mom to use for her daughter's sweet sixteen party.

i wish:
we had used soy candles
we had more organic food offerings
my dress was made from local, sustainable materials

but other than that, i was pretty happy with the way things turned out and all of the above took minimal extra effort.

i'm glad that 'green' weddings are becoming more and more popular and happy that the knot and nbc are promoting this idea to the public at large. every little bit helps, right?