***THIS GIVEAWAY IS NOW CLOSED***
When Mr. Savvy and I started wedding planning, we sat down and had a talk about all the choices we could make that would allow our wedding to impact the earth less. We already implemented several strategies at home, and extending them to our wedding was a natural step. We knew where to start, and jumped right in.
At some point in our travels, I came across the book The Green Bride Guide by Kate L. Harrison. When I won the book in a Brighter Planet Twitter contest, I was excited — how could I not be: a whole book dedicated to eco-friendly weddings? Sweet!
Then I got it. Truthfully? I’m feeling rather “meh” about the whole thing. It’s a great resource…for a certain subset of people. Namely, if you’ve never planned an event before, and if you don’t know the first thing about going green, AND you’re planning a big white wedding.
Don’t be fooled: the venn diagram shows that it’s a small subset of people, but I’m guessing it’s a much larger population than I first thought (I’ve been deluded by hanging around all the greenies on Twitter, who talk about the environment all day, every day). The big white wedding is pretty standard these days, and this book makes it easy for people to find the resources they need so they can throw themselves a big white wedding with green tendencies. It sounds really great. Sort of.
The Issues
Kate Harrison put together the book in a pseudo-dictionary sort of way, which makes it easy to skip to any chapter you want.
- Pros: This makes it easy to search for anything you need.
- Cons: What makes it “pseudo” is that the pages are not easily scannable like a dictionary’s. Harrison anticipates that if you want to read about how to green up your catering, you’ll skip to the chapter on catering and read from the introduction onwards. If you use this is a reference manual instead and go directly to the relevant parts, you’ll miss that information. But the format makes it boring to read cover to cover. This book is not out to entertain you or convince you why you should hold a green wedding, or examine the culture that promotes big or over-the-top weddings; it’s just trying to be a reference manual.
- Another con: What’s missing from this reference guide is reinforcement of the idea that you could shop locally for a lot of your products. Harrison highlights big, online vendors. A lot of times, local vendors won’t have websites, or will have very small websites that are for informational purposes only. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t look for them! Harrison mentions once or twice that you should consider local places, but again, because this is designed as a reference manual, you’re likely to miss that information unless you read the book cover to cover.
There are a lot of references and websites included in the book.
- Pros: It’s great having everything in one place. Not only does Harrison intersperse relevant websites throughout the text, she includes an index of references in the back of the book, as well as a recommended reading and a set of vendor worksheets. These worksheets act as a standard page you can use to compare each vendor: does this venue do composting on site? does the fee cover chairs and tables? can I bring in my own caterer? That’s handy.
- Cons: Due to the nature of the internet, the websites included in the book will be outdated quickly. What was considered the greenest ring option a year ago may be replaced by something more innovative in six months. A website is a much better place to include lists of everything (which Kate Harrison already took into consideration: The Green Bride Guide, the website). It’s not very eco-friendly to write a book that’s going to be outdated in a year, because then that gets into printing new editions, and all those old copies will be tossed aside instead of shared between eco-friendly wedding planners.
- Another con: I’m one month away from getting married, and going through this book made me feel like I was doing something wrong because of the sheer number of green products included. I felt like I needed to buy Stuff, and then buy more Stuff to go with the first Stuff that I didn’t have in the first place. Harrison doesn’t give much lip service to the idea of reducing the size of the wedding, or the magnitude of Stuff you should buy. Reducing is the first R of going green for a reason: it’s the easiest and best way to lessen your impact on the earth. There are already lots of resources out there telling us that we should be buying, and our weddings should be big and extravagant; I was looking forward to reading a book that thought otherwise, and for that reason, I was disappointed in The Green Bride Guide.
More Thoughts and The Giveaway
Just because this book wasn’t right for me doesn’t mean it won’t be right for you! I would have loved to read The Green Bride Guide about eight months ago, when Mr. Savvy and I first got engaged. It would have been helpful in shaping our wedding and weeding out the green vendors from the conventional. We decided to go in a different direction from typical big white weddings, and so by the time I received a copy of the book, it didn’t have the information I needed.
The book wasn’t available when we first got engaged; it was just published in December 2008 — good news for you! This means that you can own this book when all of the resources are still up-to-date, and the information is new and fresh, because I’m giving away my copy of the book. And if that wasn’t enough, my version is signed by the author with the message, “Congratulations! Go green, Kate.”
To enter this giveaway, leave a comment on this post about a green wedding; it doesn’t have to be your green wedding, just a green wedding: any wedding that you can think of that had or will have green elements. Or tell me about a hypothetical green wedding! Anything will do — I like to hear your ideas.
Each person can enter once, but leave as many comments as he or she wants. This giveaway is open from today until Saturday, May 23, 12:00 p.m. EST. That’s two weeks to spread the word and see if you can win an autographed copy of The Green Bride Guide for yourself or your favorite eco-friendly wedding planner. At the end of the two weeks, I’ll use a random number generator to pick the winner from the commenters, and email that person and post the winner on my blog (so don’t forget to include a valid email address when you fill out the comment form).
***THIS GIVEAWAY IS NOW CLOSED***
In the meantime, check out Kate’s comprehensive website The Green Bride Guide for more wedding planning resources, real green weddings, and links to vendors. Well? What have you got to say for yourself?
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©2009 at Simple Savvy, the simple living blog where I think the Green Bride Guide website is just as good as (if not better than) the book itself! Image courtesy of The Green Bride Guide.
Tags: green bride guide, kate harrison
Welcome to Simple Savvy! Updated twice a week with posts about my quest to live a mindful, eco life.
My fiance’ and I just got engaged, and are planning on going as eco-[and budget] friendly as possible. We’re looking to get married outside, and to celebrate by daylight as much as we can, culminating with a group sunset-viewing. We’ve been searching for eco-friendly venues and vendors, so any new resource would help!
Ha ha, Kate. I love Venn Diagrams, and I think I might fit right in the middle of yours. It would be great to win the book and then pass it along to someone else. Congrats and good luck with everything!
We’re in the process of transforming our lives to local vendors and more eco-consciousness. We’d like to make our wedding reception as green as possible.
I have 2 years to plan and, while I think I live a pretty green existence, I’d love to have more ideas and information on how to make our big day a good day for the planet.
I am well into the wedding planning process, but still have 6 months to go. We won’t be reducing the guest list size, but are planning on printing invitations on tree-less paper, which I love. Also, no inner envelope or RSVP cards (online rsvp) to cut down paper. For programs, I am planning on printing them on plantable paper that have seeds in them. My dress is a sample dress, which isn’t the best, but at least it wasn’t made from scratch. But that’s where I run out of green ideas and having it written out like this doesn’t seem like all that much.
Katie — maybe it doesn’t seem like much right now, but I can guarantee that you are doing more to reduce your wedding’s footprint than 75% of every other couple out there. And even if you stop there, you’re still doing what you can. That’s a good thing!
I would love to have a green wedding with evites instead of invitations. I would also love to have a low key ceremony on the beach with clothes that we already own and a few family members there.
I went to the most wonderful green wedding last fall. It was at a farm in Southern Arizona in the middle of a field surrounded by mountains. We all sat on bales of hay with white cloths on top. Everything about it was green and fabulous.