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Eco-Chic Weddings: Simple Tips to Plan an Earth-Friendly, Socially Responsible, Affordable Green Wedding - Softcover

Anderson, Emily Elizabeth

 
9781578262403: Eco-Chic Weddings: Simple Tips to Plan an Earth-Friendly, Socially Responsible, Affordable Green Wedding
Softcover
ISBN 10: 1578262402 ISBN 13: 9781578262403
Verlag: Hatherleigh Press, 2007

Inhaltsangabe

Add Style to Your Wedding and Stay True to Your Beliefs

Planning your wedding can be the best time to be eco-friendly. The wedding industry has a huge impact on the global economy and the environment, as wedding parties spend over $125 billion a year in the U.S. alone. Eco-Chic Weddings presents the quick, simple, and easy-to-follow tips you need to make your wedding socially responsible. This indispensable guide gives you the choice, comfort, and chance to share your own unique style for a truly memorable wedding.

Going green doesn’t mean you need to spend the green. Eco-Chic Weddings provides all the resources you need to create your environmentally friendly and fun celebration on a budget, such as:

* Use in-season flowers to save on price and reduce the environmental cost of shipping in non-local flowers.
* Skip the save-the-date card and save some trees–and a lot of hassle.
* Don’t purchase items you will only use at the wedding; instead, invest in dresses, shoes, or glassware you will alter and reuse.

From the location to the dress to the menu, there are dozens of easy ways to make your wedding beautiful and still reflect your personal beliefs in sustainable living. Eco-Chic Weddings will show you how to craft your perfect day.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Emily Elizabeth Anderson is a freelance writer, certified yoga instructor, and an advocate of sustainable style. She has worked for Vanity Fair, Donna Karan New York, and Martha Stewart Living, where she was the Event Director. Emily also studied interior design at the Parsons School of Design. Eco-Chic Weddings is the result of Emily’s background in fashion, beauty, and design, and her passion for conscious consumerism. She lives in New York City with her husband David.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

INTRODUCTION:

Your wedding, Your world

Welcome to Eco-Chic Weddings. I’m glad you’re here. Eco-chic is the belief that you can have a beautiful, stylish, well-designed life, and also make good consumer choices. Choices that will benefit the environment and society, as opposed to purchasing items that are produced at the expense of under-paid or mistreated workers, or were made using a toxic or damaging production process. Eco-Chic Weddings is the first comprehensive guide for the soon-to-be-married set interested in making chic, stylish buying decisions that are also eco-minded and socially responsible. Eco-chic buying decisions, to be specific. And as the amount of money spent on weddings increases year by year, more and more products and services are available for these couples. And the growth in weddings each year is indeed dramatic–there have been 200 million more weddings in the past year than there were in the year 2000. According to a recent survey by The Condé Nast Bridal Group, the amount of money we spend on weddings has increased by 100% since 1990.

There are many possible reasons for this increase in wedding spending. Books and magazines encourage us to create special, unique events for our families and friends. Indeed, for many people, planning a wedding can be one of the most creative, exciting projects in their lives. Choosing the colors, the dress, the flowers–this is a lot of fun, and it isn’t something most of us get to do on a regular basis.

While the wedding business has become such a prevalent part of today’s marketplace, there has also been another consumer-trend taking place–the eco-friendly, sustainable movement. With the popularity of the “green” movement, every day we see more and more options and ideas that are environmentally and socially conscious, ideas with style and integrity. And yes, many of the ideas are perfectly suited for your wedding. Eco-Chic Weddings has gathered these ideas, products, and resources to make it easy for you to make your wedding as environmentally responsible, socially aware, and eco-chic as possible. Because I believe that you can have it all–the look and the style that you want, and better choices about where you spend your money that help you feel good about how you impact the global community. Planning your wedding is a great time to make the decision to be more sustainable–the decisions you make now can continue into your married life, when and if you become parents, and so on. Eco-Chic Weddings sees this moment in your life as the ideal time to take a critical look at your purchasing choices, where your dollars are going, and your impact on the world. The goal of this book is to help you lay a solid groundwork for your future by guiding you through the wedding planning process. This book will answer two very important questions: WHY should you have an eco-chic wedding, and HOW can you be eco-chic?

Well, we all know that planning a wedding means spending money. The average cost of the American wedding is now $27,825 (in 1990, it was $15,208). So let’s take a quick look at where you might be spending your cash:

Reception42%
Engagement/Wedding Rings20%
Honeymoon12%
Photo/Video8%
Bride and Groom’s Apparel7%
Flowers7%
Invitations5%
Cake3%
Music (Ceremony/Reception)3%
Ceremony1%
Transportation1%

Based on this breakdown, most couples spend the largest portion of their dollars on the Reception, but a hefty sum is also spent on just the engagement ring. In the three categories–Reception, Rings, and the Honeymoon–the total amount spent on weddings in the U.S. are:
Honeymoons$8 billion
Diamond Engagement Rings$7 billion
Wedding Registries$19 billion
[Source: Condé Nast Bridal Group–American Wedding Study 2006]

You might be shocked to learn that, according to a recent survey by the Fairchild Bridal Group, wedding spending in the U.S. has gone from $5 billion in 2002 to $125 billion in 2005, with 295 million wedding guests attending the nation’s 2.1 million weddings this year. It stands to reason that weddings have a unique impact on the environment and the global economy. So while you may think that this is a really bad time for you to be a responsible global citizen, it actually is the perfect time. Perfect because you are planning your wedding, but you’re also planning your future–so many decisions are being made, such as where you will live, how you will live, what sort of things you will have in your new married life.

This is the deal–as we, the consumer, demonstrate a demand for more sustainable products in the marketplace, businesses will pay attention, and wanting to get our business, they will be encouraged to adopt better, healthier ways of producing and selling goods. Some people refer to this as “voting with your pocketbook,” which is exactly what it is. You, bride- or groom-to-be, can start by choosing products for your wedding made by companies and countries that practice conscious commerce, that participate in fair trade, and who are making a difference in the world–whether through making contributions to environmental efforts or supporting emerging economies. And selfishly, this will be a better, healthier path for you to take, because your unique, non-typical choices will result in a wedding that truly is a reflection of who you are, what your values are, and what you believe in. It is my hope that this book will help you see that there really isn’t a right or a wrong way to have a wedding–what it all comes down to is personal choice. With Eco-Chic Weddings, I offer to you the simplest ideas that you can incorporate into your wedding, so that you, busy bride or groom, don’t have to do a lot of work to make a difference.

To help you make eco-chic decisions as you plan the wedding of your dreams, this book is organized into 3 key areas: ways to reduce, ways to reuse, and ways to recycle. Thus, each chapter includes simple ways to reduce your impact on the environment, such as not wasting food or simplifying the amount of flower arrangements you have; how to select items that can be reused after the wedding, such as selecting shoes you can wear for other occasions after the wedding (go ahead, get those Manolos if you will wear them for years to come); and finally, ways to recycle items you use at the wedding or how you can purchase items that have been recycled, such as using recycled paper for your invitations or purchasing a vintage dress you have a seamstress refashion to suit your style.

Each person on the planet has their own “footprint” that represents the amount of energy they consume, waste they produce, and impact their buying decisions make on the global community. By choosing sustainable products, fair-trade items, or locally produced goods, you can reduce your individual “footprint.” You can reduce the amount you consume by simplifying your choices, staying within your budget, avoiding going into debt, and reusing items you purchase for your wedding rather than buying one-time-use things. An example of a one-time-use item would be wedding shoes you will only wear once and then throw away. You can also ensure that items used for your wedding are recycled, rather than thrown away. Let’s talk about specific ways you can Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle for your wedding.

Reduce
According to the EPA (Environmental Protection Agency), the U.S. is producing more landfill waste now than ever before. One estimate shows that between the years 1960 and 1997, total U.S. Municiple trash, or landfill waste, increased an astounding 146.5%. What are some basic ways you can reduce the amount of trash you produce?
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Verlag
Hatherleigh Press
Erscheinungsdatum
2007
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
1578262402
ISBN 13 
9781578262403
Einband
Taschenbuch
Anzahl der Seiten
168
Kontakt zum Hersteller
Nicht verfügbar
Verantwortliche Person
Nicht verfügbar