Wedding Blog

As I mentioned a few months ago, we did our best to make our wedding as as environmentally (and socially) responsible as possible. Now that the wedding is over, I will post a “report card” on how we did later on, but for now I wanted to share a few of my favorite green planning books with you.

My top two favorite books in this category are Eco Chic Weddings by Emily Anderson and Simply Green Parties by Danny Seo.

Eco Chic Weddings lives up to its title in providing eco-friendly planning advice that doesn’t sacrifice style. I found a lot of inspiration from this book along with very practical advice that is not only eco-conscious, but also great for saving money. Less is more in the world of green weddings. I think that Emily Anderson also did a great job in not making this book too preachy or unrealistic. Some similar books that I saw were full of great eco-friendly ideas but were, in my opinion, much less realistic. There is also a very useful appendix in the back of this book that lists dozens of eco-chic resources.

Simply Green Parties isn’t specifically about weddings, but it was probably a bigger source of inspiration to me than many actual wedding books/magazines. It’s also helpful for smaller wedding events such as bridesmaids luncheons, showers, engagement parties, and rehearsal dinners. Danny Seo is basically the green Martha Stewart and his books are actually printed on recycled content paper. He has a million tips and ideas for living a low-impact life, and in this book he will show you how to make some stylish and creative DIY projects out of recycled/reused stuff.

Here are two examples of the projects in this book. Recycled tea tins with old drawer knobs screwed into the base to create stylish and unique centerpieces (very similar to the idea we used), and name-stamped rocks instead of place cards.

pictures courtesy of Danny Seo

Oh and important note — don’t buy these books if you aren’t sure you will actually use it, otherwise it kind of defeats the purpose, right? Try to look through books very closely in the bookstore before buying them or see if your local library has a copy. Also, when you are done with them pass them along to someone else.

Next time I’ll post some of my favorite green wedding websites and blogs!