Happy Earth Day!! First green wedding of the year – Kendall and Chris!

Happy Earth Day to all my wonderful blog readers!  I am so glad to feature Kendall and Chris’s wedding on this day as it is our first green wedding of the year and it’s Earth Day!  Although this is Aaron’s wedding, I just couldn’t pass up an opportunity to come and meet Kendall and Chris after they worked hard to make their wedding uniquely theirs and as eco-friendly as possible given the normal compromises we make to make the parents happy too  So I went for the ceremony and portrait time and Aaron and Eva covered the rest of the wedding beautifully!!

Here are Kendall and Chris’s green tips for any bride looking to make an impact:

• Florist- Lynn at Pollen http://greenfloristchicago.com/ Our original plan was to get locally grown flowers from our farmers market.  But choosing a mid April event no one felt comfortable promising us local flowers!  We’re doing simple wildflowers and Lynn totally got our style and values.  She’s using sustainably grown flowers and helping us re-use as much as we can.  The girls bouquets become centerpieces throughout the reception hall.  She’s been a dream to work with!  I would highly recommend her!

• We also aren’t getting any flowers for the church.  It’s 2 weeks after Easter, and still in Easter season.  So the church is already loaded with plantable flowers; Easter lillies, mums, etc.  So we’re just using what’s already there and will be there for the next few weeks of the Easter season.

• Our centerpieces are mason jars.  We have 3 friends taking them after the ceremony to re-use them or canning fruits and vegetables, they do this every year anyways so it was a great way to have another use for the jars.

• We got conflict free and recycled metal rings.  This place was fantastic: http://www.leberjeweler.com/ Leber Jewelers has been doing conflict free rings long before it was on most peoples radars.  He travels to DC throughout the year working on legislation.

• We have some recycled wooden wedding signs for the church.  Like I mentioned our church is now in the hall so we needed to get some signs to direct people to the right spot to go, instead of the church.  We got these on www.etsy.com

• Favors- are seed paper, you plant them in the yard and grow wildflowers

• We asked the bridesmaids to pick any dress they wanted in green.  Everyone got a dress they wanted and could wear again, that was in their price range.  So none match but they’re all affordable and able to be worn again.

• Chris took a poll of all the guys in the wedding to see what color suits they had and most had gray.  So he just asked everyone to wear a gray suit that they already owned.

• My dress is a simple cotton dress with pockets from JCrew- the Erica dress.  I was intentionally looking for a dress that I could also wear again.  After the wedding, it’ll get shortened to a t-length dress (which they sell a bridesmaids version of anyways).  I just plan on getting a ribbon on it and wearing it as a summer dress.  I also just bought flats from payless, $12 that I’ve already been wearing everywhere and will continue to be doing after the wedding!

• We did email save the dates, offered an email RSVP option or the postcard option to save on paper/envelopes/stamps.

• We asked friends and family to make desserts for the reception which will be donated after wards.  For 2 years I lived and worked at a Catholic Worker house in Kansas City which is a soup kitchen and homeless shelter.  Our friends from there will be taking the candles home with them for the guests.  Candles are a popular request for guests who are on the street or living without electricity.  So people can consider donated half used candles to shelters for people who are homeless.

• Instead of doing a guest book we bought some old greeting cards from a thrift store.  We’re asking guests at the reception to write their well wishes to us in the card and throughout the first year that we’re married my sister (maid of honor) will send them to us.

• Registry- we did one of our registry’s at Ten Thousand Villages which is a fair trade store with handmade goods from around the world.  The best part, which we didn’t realize when we made this decision, was what an educational moment this was.  People who attended our showers and got us gifts from there had mostly never even known the place existed.  It was great to be able to share more about the store and why we chose it.  We also got the necklaces for our bridesmaids from there so that they were fair trade. http://www.tenthousandvillages.com/home.php

• Another registry/Honeymoon: Another registry we did was a honeyfund.  http://www.honeyfund.com/wedding/kendallandchris We found our honeymoon site in an Eco-Friendly Travel book at the library!  We’re going to Jungle Bay in Dominica which is in the Caribbean.  They have a great philosophy and all their cottages are made of recycled wood, they serve local, organically grown food, we’re so excited!  If you scroll down to the bottom of this page their mission statement is there:   http://www.junglebaydominica.com/aboutus.cfm

And now for some photos:

First the dress and shoes: Aaron’s shots

And the rest of the details that were mentioned above:

First meeting outside the church

Here is the sign they got from etsy!

Ceremony!

Aaron’s shot of the washing of the feet.  I thought this was a nice touch, they both did this for each other

I love this shot Aaron got right when they got out of the church!

This is a great shot by Aaron to show how much fun this group was!

Another great shot by Aaron!

The rest of the shots are Aaron’s from the reception which looks like it was a blast!!!

And you have to love a slider toast at the end of the night!