Miss 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).

Mr. Pinot Noir and I first set foot in our event space in July 2006. We had gone to San Francisco to visit his father, and we spent a day doing wine tastings and lunch in Napa. We had lunch on the deck at Auberge du Soleil overlooking the gorgeous vineyards below. There was a wedding rehearsal going on during our lunch, and we talked about how wonderful it would be to marry there. I was hooked. From this day on it was always the place I pictured whenever I thought about our wedding.
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Miss 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).
One of the biggest pieces of green wedding advice that I have read, is to reduce the amount of travel (especially air travel) due to its impact on the environment.

No Planes!
As you have probably figured out, this is a piece of green advice that we did not follow. We are having a destination wedding and 55 of the 60 guests will need to fly to San Francisco. I wish that we could have had a local wedding, but this just wasn’t an option for us. My family lives in Minnesota, Mr. PN’s family lives on the East coast and our friends are all over the country. We decided early on that the only way to make everyone happy was for everyone to travel. We had dreamed about getting married in Napa Valley and we knew the perfect venue to bring together our family and friends.
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Mrs. Radish, Chicago/Syracuse
Age and Occupation: 27, Executive Assistant/Journalism Student/Musician
Fiance's Age and Occupation: 28, Anthropologist/Musician
Engagement Date: December 20, 2005
Wedding Date: August 18, 2007
Blogging Since: June 26, 2007
Venue: The Wellington House in Fayetteville, NY
About Me: Mr. Radish and I are both from upstate New York, so we are planning a wedding in Syracuse from about 700 miles away. When I’m not obsessing about our wedding I play the cello in my band (which Mr. Radish is in too), read as much as I can, sleep even more, travel whenever possible, and try to find time to have fun with my friends. I’m also working on finishing up my journalism degree with a concentration in environmental reporting and I’m the VP of my campus Amnesty International chapter… so I’m a pretty busy bee.
Happy Earth Day!

(image from Treehugger.com)
There has been a lot of talk about green weddings lately and it can almost start to sound like just another passing wedding fad. But unlike powder blue tuxedos, this is a wedding trend worth keeping around!
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Miss Cherry Pie, Seattle/Polebridge, Montana
Age and Occupation: 25, Marketing Communications Specialist
Fiance's Age and Occupation: 28, Nurse Practitioner
Engagement Date: August 26, 2006
Wedding Date: September 2008
Blogging Since: April 1, 2008
Venue: A tiny town just outside of Glacier National Park
About Me: I think of life as a journey and I love the places it's taking me! I went to school to study Magazine Journalism, ended up with a second major in Japanese language, and now work at a company that makes software for libraries. I love writing, computers, photography, and the great outdoors. I spend most of my time playing Guitar Hero and Rock Band or geeking out online with Mr. Cherry Pie. I'm happiest when I'm on the road, especially traveling abroad, or just nesting quietly at home with my sweetie, who is a fabulous cook and bakes a delicious rendition of a certain cherry-filled dessert!
Happy Earth Day, everyone!
( Go hug a tree like I did during our e-pics! )
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Guest Blogger
About: Guest authors blogging on weddingbee
July 6th, 2007 @ 4:43 pm by Guest
Hi everyone, I’m Rhonda from Our Wedding Plus Blog. I’m honored to have this opportunity to guest blog on Weddingbee on such an important topic!
Having a “Green Wedding” may seem like the latest fad but in fact it is quickly becoming a necessity. Global warming is expected to give us some major problems in the next 40 years and weddings can be a big drain on the environment. But there are some simple things you can do to minimize that impact without taking away from the elegance of your event. Here are my five favorite ideas to green up your wedding.
1. The Invitations – look for post-consumer or recycled paper for your wedding invitations. Weddings generate a lot of paper…save the dates, invitations, response cards, reception cards, envelopes, etc. There are many elegant recycled paper and tree-free invitation options out there such as recycled cotton invitations. Harvesting tree-free fibers does not disrupt natural eco-systems. Also, processing tree-free fibers requires a lot less energy and chemicals than processing wood-based fibers. One of my favorites sources, Cast Paper Art has some great hand-made recycled cotton invitations.
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Mrs. Radish, Chicago/Syracuse
Age and Occupation: 27, Executive Assistant/Journalism Student/Musician
Fiance's Age and Occupation: 28, Anthropologist/Musician
Engagement Date: December 20, 2005
Wedding Date: August 18, 2007
Blogging Since: June 26, 2007
Venue: The Wellington House in Fayetteville, NY
About Me: Mr. Radish and I are both from upstate New York, so we are planning a wedding in Syracuse from about 700 miles away. When I’m not obsessing about our wedding I play the cello in my band (which Mr. Radish is in too), read as much as I can, sleep even more, travel whenever possible, and try to find time to have fun with my friends. I’m also working on finishing up my journalism degree with a concentration in environmental reporting and I’m the VP of my campus Amnesty International chapter… so I’m a pretty busy bee.
One of the first things that Mr. Radish and I decided after our engagement is that we would do our very best to have an environmentally sustainable wedding. Weddings are such a big business now. With wedding industry pulling in a whopping over $125-billion per year, and with the average American wedding costing nearly $30,000, we figure that this is a great opportunity for us to “put our money where our mouth is.”
We strive to live a low-impact life on a regular basis, so doesn’t it make sense that we should do this with our wedding, too? It’s probably even more important, in some ways, because it’s probably the only time we will ever be spending this kind of money at one time on consumer good/services.
We really want to see as much of our money as possible go towards environmentally and socially conscious products. This has proved somewhat more difficult than we first thought, at least within the confines of our below-average budget, but we are sticking to it and trying to do as much as we can.
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Mrs. Lovebug, Tucson
Age and Occupation in 06: 31, Writer
Fiance's Age and Occupation: 27, Professional Game Show Contestant
Engagement Date: February 18, 2007
Wedding Date: April 19, 2008
Venue: Historic Inn
About Me: Likes: blogging, wikis, semi-colons, cuddling, fragrant flowers, syntax, and spooning. Dislikes: typos, dangling modifiers, flypaper, citronella candles, and run-ons. If I had my druthers, I'd exchange simple vows in a candlelit library. But I lost my druthers long ago...anyone seen them?
If someone used the phrase “eco-friendly honeymoon”, what would you picture? Would it be this?:

(Hotel Sacher, Strasbourg)
Well, now it could be. Leading Hotels of the World (LHW) has teamed with Sustainable Travel International to take the great green guilt out of globe-trotting. Leading Green Initiative helps the environmentally-conscious find luxury hotels participating in a “carbon-dioxide offset” program. Read more…
Mrs. Lime, Los Angeles
Age and Occupation in 06: 25, Design
Fiance's Age and Occupation: 25, IT
Engagement Date: July 7, 2006
Wedding Date: August 5, 2007
Venue: An historic estate
About Me: Between work and wedding planning, I try to squeeze in napping, drawing, random spurts of craftiness, tennis, and eating lots of Sprinkles cupcakes, dark chocolate, and noodles of all kinds. Mr. Lime and I have spent our adult lives growing up together, and we're very excited to finally be getting married!
he* Mr. Lime likes to call me a treehugger (by his standards, that is), so this tagline of Simply Wood Rings tickled me. These unique rings are good for people that have metal allergies (one of my bridesmaids can’t even wear platinum) and for the eco-conscious.

Simple designs
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Mrs. Lime, Los Angeles
Age and Occupation in 06: 25, Design
Fiance's Age and Occupation: 25, IT
Engagement Date: July 7, 2006
Wedding Date: August 5, 2007
Venue: An historic estate
About Me: Between work and wedding planning, I try to squeeze in napping, drawing, random spurts of craftiness, tennis, and eating lots of Sprinkles cupcakes, dark chocolate, and noodles of all kinds. Mr. Lime and I have spent our adult lives growing up together, and we're very excited to finally be getting married!
reen as in eco-friendly, that is. I know there’s been some mention of it around here, and LA-based vendor resource site Bridal Bar will be blogging about how to host a sustainable wedding. One entry regarding mineral-based makeup is already up, so add it to your RSS feeds!

Mrs. Beetle, New York/Palm Desert
About: Mrs. Beetle previously wrote our weekly advice column. She got married in October 2006, and is currently guest blogging.
“Green” weddings seem to be all the rage right now. Not literally green, of course, but environmentally green.
The New York Times recently published a story that discusses all of the “green” options for couples out there. It seems many brides and grooms are really embracing the idea of getting hitched responsibly. In fact, they highlighted a wedding planning website called Portovert for eco-conscious brides and grooms that offers all sorts of tips and resources for going green in style.

Have you considered going “green” at your wedding?