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Mrs. Pinot Noir, New York/Napa Valley Age and Occupation: 24, Health Educator Fiance's Age and Occupation: 31, Market Researcher Engagement Date: November 10, 2007 Wedding Date: October, 2008 Blogging Since: June 25, 2008 Venue: Auberge du Soleil About Me: I am a Minnesota raised, NYC transplant planning a destination wedding in Napa. I'm balancing my love for the environment and my hubby-to-be's love for tradition to create our "green wedding in disguise." Our wedding will include local food and wine, antique touches and lots of love and laughter. When wedding planning isn't taking up my free time (and money) I love to read, cook, workout, watch baseball and travel! Follow along in my adventure as I attempt to plan an eco-friendly and socially responsible wedding (with eco-oblivious Mr. Pinot Noir).
About Mrs. Pinot Noir

Choosing our wedding invitations was a really difficult task. I wanted something that was eco-friendly, simple and affordable. To me, eco-friendly meant finding an invitation that was made of recycled or tree-free paper, used soy ink and was produced by a small business (or some combination of the three).

Here are some beautiful, earth friendly invites:

Sylvan by Bella Figura

Invitation + Envelope = $570 for 50
Reply Postcard = $330 for 50
Total: $900 ($18 each)

From their website:

“Bella Figura is a passionate artisan letterpress shop based in Central New York. We print the old-fashioned way, using antique cast-iron letterpresses, the best paper, time, patience, perfection, and a whole lot of love. Because we want to make the world a better place, we’re a wind-powered, carbon neutral print shop, and we donate 1% of sales to environmental causes. We print only on 100% cotton (tree-free) paper that’s made exclusively for us in a historic European paper mill.”

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Alcazar by Earthly Affairs
Invite w/envelope: $2.48
Response Card w/envelope: $1.78
$213 for 50 ($4.26 each)

Click here to read more about Earthly Affairs’ environmental commitment.

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Botanical Paperworks

Monogram Seed Wedding Invitations: $4.65 each each
Monogram Reply Cards: $1.45 each
Total: $305 for 50 ($6.10 each)

“The base fiber is cotton or 100% post-consumer waste. And the paper is made with pure North American wildflower seeds by skilled papermakers paid a living wage in Winnipeg, Manitoba.”

I found many beautiful eco-friendly invitations and I found a lot of affordable invitations but it was more difficult to find both eco-friendly and affordable invites.

I had designated a very small portion of our budget to invitations and stationery because I wanted to spend more money on day-of elements like food and flowers. Our solution? DIY! Neither I nor Mr. Pinot Noir are very creative or artsy so we needed to stick to something simple.

Then I discovered Invitesite! This California-based company makes invites with tree-free paper or 100% post consumer papers. They have a large selection of save-the-dates, invitations, programs and thank you cards. The best part about Invitesite is that you can print and assemble your own invitations (thus saving money) or they will do the work for you!

I learned a lot about paper while reading their site. They include an interesting segment on ‘A Very Brief History of Paper.’ Did you know that paper wasn’t made out of wood pulp until 1872? Before then, paper was made of pulp from products like cotton rags & agricultural waste. They also have a great explanation of what makes their paper ‘eco’ paper:

“The more we can all use 100% post consumer recycled paper, the more giant paper mills will make it. Right now, about 55% of paper still goes to landfill. Much of the remaining reclaimed fiber gets shipped to other countries. One of the tasks at hand is to make markets for post consumer recycled paper. Right now, it is an extremely tiny market segment.”

Okay, after that brief history lesson, let’s get back to the invitations. We narrowed down the choices to two options from Invitesite:


Orla

50 - 99 invitation sets: $3 each
Add $0.50 for RSVP set

- OR -


Angelica

50 - 99 invitation sets: $2.25 each
Add $0.50 for RSVP set

I will reveal which invitation we picked in the next post!

What’s your favorite source for eco-friendly wedding related products?

15 Responses to “In Search of a “Green” Invitation”

1.
Erin says:

Eeek! Those are such fantastic invites for a vineyard wedding!

I also struggled with the eco/affordable invites. We ended up going the “reduce” track and used as little paper as possible - just an invite and reply postcard. We also won’t have programs or menus. (Instead, we’ll recognize VIPs during the toasts, and I might make a single menu for the buffet table)

2.
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Miss Gingerbread says:

I really like the one by Earthly Affairs. Thanks for showing us that eco-friendly can be affordable :)

3.
Jess says:

I love http://www.baroncards.com for that. We really wanted to use one of their designs for our invitation, but wound up making our own.

4.
Ley says:

Those are pretty!! Good luck with the decision…both are beautiful choices!

I had a hard time figuring out how to do a “green” invitation that wouldn’t cost us over 3/4 of our wedding budget, lol. I ended up going the “support small, independent vendors” route (instead of giving money to a huge manufacturing corporation) and ordered my invitations from a charming little Etsy shop. True, I didn’t save any trees by doing that, but at least I felt good about supporting an independent artist!

5.
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Mrs. Penguin says:

So informative! I learned so much reading this post! Cant wait to see what you picked!

6.
Lee says:

we were struggling with the same issue, except I had a even a smaller budget. We ended up getting paper & envelopes from crane (the smallest printable ones), and printing them out, tying a ribbon around the middle, and rounding the corners. Not too bad, and they turned out to be around $1 each!

7.
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Miss Pinot Noir says:

I’m so glad to hear that many of you are thinking about the environment for your invitations! Most of us can’t afford super-green, organic, handmade, soy-ink, tree-free paper, etc. etc. but doing what you can by reducing the amount of paper or supporting local businesses is really important! Keep up the good-green work!

8.
beanchar says:

I love Invitesite! I looked at the “Deirdre” for our invites, but since we ended up deciding to have a TINY wedding (16 people), we went with no paper invitation at all and made personal phone calls instead– VERY green, but I still am a little wistful about that lovely invite-that-wasn’t.

FYI for anyone considering Invitesite, they were great about sending samples– one whole invite and paper samples for other invites and/or coordinating items.

Can’t wait to see what you picked!

9.
missm says:

what a great resource! we’re struggling to stick to the budget while keeping as green as possible. we had to compromise on the invites, so we supported local small business, reduced the number of invitation elements and are doing our RSVPs online, via email or phone - no response cards (i’ll miss the fun of snail mail, but am pretty sure i’ll become a crack online RSVP stalker!). for the rest, we’re trying to be as sustainable as possible and incorporate things that we have, will be reusable or are green in some way.

keep the green suggestions coming!

10.
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Miss Avocado says:

The invitations you decided to go with are my favorites by far. I hope you chose the first one, it’s lovely!

11.
Nicole R. says:

I also love the first one… so pretty.

12.
GorgesViola says:

Your choices are beautiful! You can’t go wrong. :-)

We’re using Stelie Designs on Etsy, who is using a beautiful recycled paper and is also a small business, which I like. I’m a total Etsy whore (sorry), but I’ll keep preaching to the choir! I love that you can find local businesses so shipping is much greener, and so many sellers will work with you to meet your requests, including environmental ones. As for non-invitation greenness, I’m buying Mr.GV’s ring from Etsy’s Frivolous Ferret, who’s using recycled gold. It’s so hard to stay green during wedding planning, but my feeling is that you do as much as you can within your means.

13.
Jona says:

I was lucky enough to find a great invite maker, Airees, in the Philippines (where I’m from) who makes 100% tree-free invites. Even more impressive is she gets her handmade paper from small livelihood projects in poor former fishing villages in the Philippines whose livelihood has been taken away by over-fishing.

Here’s my invite at her website
http://www.handcraftedexpressions.com/07-gallery-invite-jona.htm

They were actually pretty inexpensive (I got away paying a little over $2/invite including rsvp cards, envelopes, mailing envelopes and complimentary thank you cards). As I said, she’s based in the Philippines but works with a lot of clients here in the US. She was a dream to work with!

14.
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Miss Pomegranate says:

Those are all amazingly cute!

15.
The Winner Is… » Weddingbee » The Wedding Blog says:

[...] a recap of yesterday’s green wedding invitation post, the finalists from [...]


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Mrs. Pinot Noir Mrs. Pinot Noir, New York/Napa Valley Age and Occupation: 24, Health Educator Fiance's Age and Occupation: 31, Market Researcher Engagement Date: November 10, 2007 Wedding Date: October, 2008 Blogging Since: June 25, 2008 Venue: Auberge du Soleil About Me: I am a Minnesota raised, NYC transplant planning a destination wedding in Napa. I'm balancing my love for the environment and my hubby-to-be's love for tradition to create our "green wedding in disguise." Our wedding will include local food and wine, antique touches and lots of love and laughter. When wedding planning isn't taking up my free time (and money) I love to read, cook, workout, watch baseball and travel! Follow along in my adventure as I attempt to plan an eco-friendly and socially responsible wedding (with eco-oblivious Mr. Pinot Noir).