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Most earth-friendly guru's will agree that when it comes to green living one of the very best ways to do it is to recycle, recycle and recycle. You wouldn't think this could be applicable to a wedding dress, no matter how special an old gown might be. All the best will in the world might not be able to do something with your mother's 1960's wedding dress, or even the Flapper gown your great-grandmother wore.

Time can ravage fabrics and render them absolutely useless. But, rather than sighing regretfully and then putting that special family dress aside, take it to someone who specialises in restoring old gowns. In England, that someone is Heirloom Couture.

Even if the dress seems to be beyond repair, Heirloom Couture will take key components and details from the gown you bring them and make something new from them. It doesn't, of course, have to be a family heirloom. Any vintage dress you take to them can have new life breathed into it.

In this age of cheap mass production, it's wonderful to find ways to hold onto, and use, precious things from our past.

A beautiful and practical way to wrap a gift within a gift! Furoshiki are simply pieces of fabric, slightly more rectangle than square, generally with a pattern on each side. They come in any number of sizes, depending on their use -- which can be anything from carrying home some groceries to elegant wrapping for a wedding gift. In fact, we've written about the idea of wrapping gifts in fabric before, but we didn't know we were tapping into an old Japanese tradition that's coming to life again in these waste-conscious days.

When you pick out your wedding china, are you looking for something classic? Something elegant and fancy, or something funky and different? If you tend toward the funky, you'll love Orion Glassware Collection's handblown Mexican glassware.
Whether you're looking for glasses for your wedding registry, or to use for your rehearsal, reception, or bridal showers, you should definitely have a look at these glasses. They are made from recycled soda bottles, so they're eco-friendly as well as beautiful.

Each glass is handblown, so no two are exactly alike, and they come in several colors, so you can select the color that best matches your wedding or home decor. Flip through the gallery below for some examples of these artistic pieces. To order, visit this page.

With 'going green' becoming more and more important in all areas of life, including weddings, here's a gift that ticks all the right boxes: practical, earth-friendly, stylish, unique and affordable. It's called the Wedding Plantabox and it's available from Not On The High Street. com for £40.00. The box is stencilled with the names of the bridal couple, as well as their wedding date, and is planted with seasonal flowers.

Also, the smaller plantaboxes, planted with lavender, herbs or a mini cone, would make wonderful rustic table centrepieces and venue decorations. The boxes can be stencilled with table numbers or any other short message and, best of all, can be kept long after the wedding is over. Fantastic keepsakes of a fabulous day.

Apparently, there is someone who can have-a de Mango -- Chris Kattan married model Sunshine Tutt last Saturday in an environmentally friendly wedding set at California's Yosemite Valley.

The couple has been engaged for a year and a half -- Chris proposed to Sunshine on Christmas Eve, 2006, at her grandmother's home. Their wedding was green right from the get-go, with invitations made of flower seed paper that the guests could plant in their gardens.



Some of Chris' former Saturday Night Live castmates were on hand to witness the nature-inspired nuptials, including Will Farrell, Tina Fey, Jimmy Fallon, and Amy Poehler. The affair has been described as environmentally friendly, but what we really want to know is what went down on the dance floor!

They didn't really "do" wedding favors at Renaissance weddings. Any gift-giving was to the happy couple, and, though common. even that wasn't universal. So when you're looking for favors for your Renaissance (or historical) themed wedding, you'll need to get a little creative.

Here's one idea. Every household worth the name, in just about every era of time (until our own) would have had a kitchen garden. There, the busy housewife would pluck the vegetables for that evening's meal, and the herbs to flavor it. Every housewife would also know the medicinal and mystical uses of her fresh-picked herbs.

Greenzer is a brand new website designed to make shopping for environmentally friendly products easier. The site rates products of all kinds, listing only those that meet its tough green standards. The selection is still small on this new site, but there are some products on the site that would make great green wedding or shower gifts.

One featured wedding gift on the site is the Ceago Vintner's Wine Collection, which comes with two wines (red and white, for either taste), assorted roasted nuts, fresh fruits and chocolate caramel pecan clusters -- all of which are organic. The set also comes with a bottle biodynamic, cold-pressed olive oil.

In addition to some really nice green gift sets, Greenzer lists hundreds of cosmetics products, which would be great for the bride and her bridesmaids at the wedding. They also make good shower gifts or gifts for the bridesmaids.

My family is from Virginia. His is from Oregon. Both of our families are huge. Getting everyone together for a wedding would have been a huge expense for everyone involved. At least half of our potential guest list would be facing a cross country trip, and then we'd be facing the bill to host them all. Oof.

So we eloped.

The cost of traveling is a huge concern these days, and you should consider how much you're asking of people when you invite them to a wedding hundreds of miles from home. If your guests share my family's mentality that weddings are mandatory, then you might actually be doing them a favor by trimming the guest list. You don't have to elope, but keeping a wedding small and intimate will save money across the board, not to mention the environmental impact of all that travel.

A romantic and eco-friendly way to add some ambiance to your outdoor event. These glass balls have phosphorescent dust inside. If at all possible, hang them outside the day before. That will be one task completed a little early, they'll look pretty all day, and they'll also be charging in the sun, getting ready for the evening!

When the sun sets, they'll start to glow, and they'll keep glowing for 2 to 4 hours, depending on how sunny the day has been. Remember, these will glow softly rather than beam brightly. You won't want to make them your sole source of light, but they'll definitely add to the mood.

If you're interested in purchasing these items, check out this link to Fairydust Balls. (Yes, that's what they're called. We didn't name them ...)

If you order a gift from VivaTerra, you have the choice of having it gift wrapped either in recycled paper or re-usable fabric. But why leave such a great idea to VivaTerra? Even if you don't want any of their (fabulous) gift items, you can still use the fabric-as-wrapping idea.

If your gift is kitchen ware, wrap it in a couple of nice tea towels held together with ... kitchen string? Twist ties? If you're giving something for the bathroom, wrap it in a lush towel of the appropriate size. Something for the dining room? How about a beautifully embroidered table cloth? For the bedroom? Drop it in a pillow case!

Seems to us this idea is limited only by your imagination. An easy way to be green and generous!

Very often tree-free and/or recycled invitations are more expensive than the less eco-friendly sorts. Given the cost of the average wedding, it's no surprise that many couples opt to put budget concerns over environmental ones, and buy the regular invitations.

However, there are more options than green-and-pricey and wasteful-and-cheap(er). What if you could get recycled invitations for about a dollar apiece? Would that be attractive enough? You'd have to print them yourself, mind you, but as long as you have a decent printer, that shouldn't be too difficult. You won't get letterpress at home, but if you're thinking letterpress, saving money probably isn't a primary concern, anyway...

Rather than purchase an entire kit, complete with card, overlay, envelope and reply card, you purchase the items you require. Maybe you won't require their overlay, opting to save even more money by cutting your own. You can search the site by style, color, motif. The styles are classic, but with enough variety to please most. If you're curious about inexpensive, eco-friendly invitations, check out this link to Formal Invitations.

Want to do the environment a favor and still look stunning and stylish on your wedding day? Well look no further than the fabulous designs from Deborah Lindquist.

Made from hemp, silk and recycled fabrics ,such as cashmere, leather, wool, silk, cotton and lace (which is absolutely the best way to go green), these are dresses that even a dedicated fashionista would be happy to wear. Forget about the bland and creased look that eco-friendly clothes often have, this is spot on trendy. There's nothing even vaguely 'flower power' about this sophisticated range.

With prices from around $875 to about $3000, they're not the cheapest wedding gowns around but neither are they ridiculously unaffordable. Apart from the Green Wedding Collection, Deborah Lindquist also has a very funky eco-fashion range.

We love it. All of it.

Whether purchased as a gift for the happy couple or used in pre-wedding partying, or set on the hors-oeuvres table at the reception, this seven-piece appetizer tray will add a little pizazz to the table. The larger tray holds three small trays, each with its matching spoon. The whole thing is made in India of post-consumer aluminum -- tin cans, foil, etc. Each tray is finished with a brightly colored enamel, in pink, purple and blue.

The company which makes it uses fair-trade principles, meaning its workers are local and get fair wages. A portion of the company's profits also go to supporting local charities, like tsunami relief and building schools.

Pretty, practical and pro-active. Not bad for a kitchen accessory!

For more information on this appetizer tray, follow this link.

Finding new love and getting remarried is wonderful, but many brides going through a second or even third wedding may be concerned about etiquette and what's proper. Specifically, the bride-to-be may wonder about the dress.

Does she go out and buy a new dress? Can she tastefully reuse her old wedding dress, a dress she spent forever researching to get the perfect design and fit? The answers are yes and yes.

South African designers Julian and Franz Grabe have a way with flowers. And leaves. Plants in general, really. At a show in Johannesburg, they stole the show with their designs, most particularly their "floral couture."

We can't deny that it looks pretty, but this is one of those ideas that's better in fantasy than reality. With about a two-day shelf life before the whole thing starts to wilt and go brown, any alterations had better be done on the spot! And, though the gown reportedly smelled divine, for the bride's sake we hope that bees prefer to steer clear of walking, talking flowers.

Oh, well: for all its practical failings, you can't argue its environmental virtue. After you slip the dress off, just lie it somewhere in your garden. A month after the honeymoon, there'll be nothing left but a few petals in the wind ...

via: The Human Flower Project