Weddingbee Blog

When Mr. Wallaby and I began wedding planning and our families asked us where we wanted to register for gifts, we were unsure about how to proceed. Our first idea was to ask our guests to gifts us trees and plants for our garden—that would help offset some of the emissions from our out-of-town guests traveling to Houston for the wedding, it would help us grow our garden, and it would keep our home clutter free. However, Mr. W’s yard is pretty small, so I’m not sure we’d have enough free space to plant ~150 new trees and shrubs. We also thought about asking our guests to have trees planted in the Amazon rainforest preserve, again to off-set the carbon emissions from wedding travel, as well as to help preserve the incredible biodiversity in that region. But, many of our relatives and family friends still want to give us something to start our new home together. And although Mr. W and I are adamant about minimizing waste and clutter, we are pretty short on kitchenware and serving dishes for entertaining. We don’t have enough place settings to serve dinner for his whole family. We also don’t own a single wine glass—we keep it classy and drink our wine out of coffee mugs  So, we somewhat hesitantly agreed to register for a few things from “green living” companies. Our new standard was to find products that are made from renewable or recycled materials, and if possible, manufactured in the U.S.

From some pretty exhaustive research into green living stores that offer plenty of options for kitchenware and entertaining, I decided on two online stores: VivaTerra and AreNaturals. Mr. W and I browsed through the products listed on their websites and created online registries. We are still a little bit shy about the registry process, and we would be perfectly happy if everyone came to our wedding empty-handed—we are just excited to be surrounded by the people we love on our wedding day!

In case you’re curious, here are some of the items Mr. W and I picked out. We registered for a set of ceramic dinnerware:

Le Marais Dinnerware from VivaTerra

We also registered for a set of hand-blown glasses made from 100% recycled glass:

Recycled glass big bowl glasses from AreNaturals

Both stores offer bamboo towels, made from 70% bamboo viscose and 30% organic cotton.

Bamboo Dreams organic cotton ribbed towels  from AreNaturals

For our bedroom, we registered for fair trade certified bedding that is hand-printed by an artisan cooperative in India. The fabric is 100% pesticide-free cotton.

Taupe block print bedding from VivaTerra

Probably the item that I am most excited for is a set of glass containers made of recycled glass. These will help a lot with food storage—I am slowly transitioning to buying all of our food in bulk (more on that later!), and storing bulk food is a challenge without airtight containers. These glass containers will look beautiful in Mr. W’s kitchen pantry or displayed on the counter top.

Recycled glass containers  from AreNaturals

Mr. W and I are reluctant to register for something this expensive, but it would be incredibly cool to have a fern and moss wall in our living room:

Fern and moss wall art from VivaTerra

Did you set up a wedding registry? What is your favorite item that you registered for?