Peas and Carrots: Our Eco-Thrifty Wedding

Way way back, at the beginning of this whole process, over nine months ago, I wrote about how our goal was to have an amazing wedding that celebrated us. By celebrating us, I mean celebrating who we are, what we stand for, how we live. Our lifestyle. A lifestyle of living simply and lightly on the planet.

The Veggies on 350 day last year (personal photo).

I’d like to pretend that this was easy, but the pull of the wedding industry is strong. Actually, maybe that’s unfair, because it’s not just the wedding industry. I am a girl who grew up in a state known for its highways and malls, in the highest consuming nation on the planet, during an economic boom. I was given Barbie dolls, and movies starring Disney princesses, and cassette tapes of Debbie Gibson and told by society, that like them, I too could have it all, especially on the biggest day of my life, my wedding day.

A princess bride? (Oh Darling Photography)

So, yes, even though my heart and my head knew the boundaries that I wanted to play within when planning our wedding. And even though I created those boundaries, not anyone else. Even though deep deep down I wanted simple, and thrifty, and eco. Somewhere even deeper, laid a girl ready and waiting to buy into all of the hoopla.

Beautiful hoopla. (Personal Photo)

So, if my recaps seem a bit schizophrenic… If you wonder why we were so staunch about non-paper invitations, and then printed out eight page programs… If you wonder why my dress is re-used but my flowergirls are wearing new Chucks, all I can say is it was a struggle. It was a struggle between us and what we thought our families wanted, between us as a couple, and between myself and my inner diva.

The Veggies de-stress the day before the wedding. That's some good teamwork. (Photo by Mamma Veggie)

And as I sit here in my gumboots, wiping the baby duck pooh off my workpants, sorting through wedding pictures to put with this post, I am happy with the balance we struck. In the end, I think we came out on top. We didn’t end up with the thriftiest or eco-iest of weddings ever on the whole planet, but we sure gave it a go. And we did end up with a very eco-thrifty wedding, one that was also very us, and made us very happy.

Happy Veggies. (Oh Darling Photography)

I will try to give out any eco and thrifty tips that we picked up along the way as I go through my recaps, and I will definitely give you both and environmental and financial tally of the event at the end.

P.S.- Wanna see a picture of our new baby ducklings?

I thought you might! (Personal Photo)

Did you have battles with yourself or your SO while wedding planning? What were some of the things you got pulled into that you wish you hadn’t? What are some things you were happily able to resist?

Grow With Love

Update on my life: Mr. Veg and I had a romantic reunion at our friends' Dave and Heather's lakeside wedding, I passed my written test at the RMV and am now allowed to drive in the USA (with a licensed adult), I have scoured FMIL Veg's house and barn for wedding items, and thanks to the Salvation Army Mr. Veg finally has something to wear to the wedding.

And now I find myself with a few minutes of down time so I thought I'd keep good on my promise to delve into more detail about our seed packet favors. I'll let you read the story behind them for yourselves, but I'll give you a little background on the steps involved.

We bought all seeds in bulk from The Territorial Seed Company. They were very friendly and helpful on the phone. The seed packets from Territorial are so cute that I contemplated using theirs, but buying the seeds in packets is substantially more expensive than buying them in bulk. Like 10x more expensive. So, of course, we went the DIY route.


I designed the packets on good old trusty MS Word with fonts downloaded from DaFont.I then went on an odyssey to find the right paper. It was important to me that the paper was 100% recycled and bleach free, but also that it was thin enough to fold and glue easily. Trust me, if you're thinking about folding and glueing 160 envelopes, find the thinnest paper available. So I looked in every office supply and craft store I could think of, but kept coming up empty handed. The best I could find was Paper source paper for about 30 cents per sheet. That seemed awfully expensive.

Finally, I stopped in an art supply store near where my sister lived and found handmade paper that was 100% recycled for only $8 per pack. I bought two packs and the lady gave me a 40% discount with a coupon she had behind the counter. Woo hoo! And the best part was that it was already cut in half vertically (hot dog style, not hamburger), so it saved me a bit of time. When do you ever find 4 x 11 paper? Perfect. I love when things like that happen.

So anyway, I know you've already seen this picture, but here is the end result.


10 days out now. Yee haw!

I get by with a little help from my...

...newly-found-internet-acquaintances. Such a catchy tune.

Last week I was the recipient of some major bee love.

There once was a girl so nice that she volunteered to help with cutting and glueing, the two most evil most dreaded wedding crafting jobs. Who is this saint? This happy little crafting elf? This magical crafting fairy-godmother? Why she's EAQ219, (A.K.A. Em) wedding bee afficionado. We met at the D.C. Bee meetup two weeks ago and she volunteered to help me finish up some projects. You know I wasn't going to let an opportunity like that slip by. So I invited her over for an afternoon crafting session while my nieces were supposed to be napping.

Still smiling even though her fingers are blistering.

Let me tell you something about Em. She is hardcore. Some people might head for the door when greeted with a pile of 160 envelopes to fold, glue, and stuff. A lesser woman might have balked at cutting corrugated cardboard when the only scissors I could find were hot pink kiddie safety scissors. Not this girl. She is epic. And, not only did she show some mad crafting skills, she also passed on some good words of advice, as only a recent DIY bride could.

Trace. Cut. Glue. Repeat.

Also, on the way back to DC from my bridal shower I swung by Mrs. Trail Mix's house. While my nieces fought over who would get to walk her ah-dor-a-ble little puppy, her and I loaded my trunk with boxes of café lights. 500 feet of gorgeous little beauties, all in two nice nest-like bundles. If you enjoy rubix cubes, do I have a good job for you. Then, because she really is so super sweet, and was about to move into a new apartment in 3 days, she threw in some paper lanterns too. Nice! Gotta love the leftover wedding goodies. After a mere two nights of So You Think You Can Dance, I had those babies untangled and ready to hang. I am so excited about them. Like really really jazzed. Pumped, even.

Three weeks to go and I am loving the bee love. Thanks Trail Mix, thanks Em, I will be sure to pay these favors forward.

Why My Sister is Awesome

After a hard day's work she's not too tired to come home from her very professional job and walk through her super nice neighborhood with me and rummage through her neighbor's recycling for tins cans for the centerpieces. Sure it might be embarrassing, but what are sisters for? She's great!

Archaeologie

On my recent travels up and down the east coast I stopped in Baltimore to hang out with Veggie Sister Carrot. During my visit we went to a nice big Anthropologie store, a special treat for me since they have yet to expand to New Zealand. (Anthro- If you're looking for a kiwi store manager, I could be convinced to take on the job). I wasn't really looking for anything particular, but if a dress happened to fall into my arms that could work for one of two upcoming friends' weddings, my bridal shower, or our rehearsal dinner, I wouldn't turn it down.

Going into that store is a huge excercise in self-restraint. So, before going in I had to give myself a little motivational speech. I reminded myself that between my four sisters and the superbly fashionable Momma Veggie, I have five closets worth of dresses that could work for these events. I reminded myself of the US-Kiwi exchange rate, which is not that favorable for purchasing yummy frocks on my meager NZ salary. I reminded myself of the things in my life that make me truly happy, and make me feel beautiful. And then I tried on about a dozen dresses. :)

I ended up with two contenders:

The Compeer Dress

and The Two-Wheeler Dress (which has very little arm holes that would have needed some tailoring to fit these Veggie guns).

Sorry if these are old news for you, but they were brand new for me. Turns out that Anthro doesn't put everything on their international site that they have on the US site. So you lucky ducks have access to some exclusive items that us Anthro-philes abroad never even get to see. I liked both of these dresses, and could see either of them working for at least two of my upcoming wedding events, but I walked out of the store empty handed. I thought I would just think it over a bit first. Good Veggie.

And good thing I did, because when I got up to Momma Veggie's house in NJ she took a look at the pictures and said, "Oh I have something like that in my closet". My rehearsal dinner dress hunt went from an anthropologic expedition to an archaeological dig through the depths of Momma Veggie's closet. Turns out that "something" was a vintage dress that belonged to my Great Grandma Veggie. Doesn't it look weirdly similar to the orange anthro one? Sweet!


Add a black grosgrain ribbon around the waist and pin the lapels open and I am all set. Woo hoo! One more family treasure that is making its way into our wedding. Hooray for free recycled beautiful things.

Have you been on any archaeological expeditions into your parents' attics or basements for wedding goodies? Were you pleasantly surprised or did you find some things that are better off staying in the past?

Map Maker, Map Maker, Make Me...

A map! Or two or three.

So on a 13 hour flight you have a few options. You can watch 7 movies, listen to one of 12 pre-programmed airline radio stations repeat the one hour playlist 13 times, play a few thousand rounds of video games, or make maps for your wedding guests.

What would you choose?

Before my NZ-LAX flight I went on mapquest and downloaded some maps that I thought would be useful to our guests. Then I did a little MS Word artistry at 30,000 feet and this is what I came up with.

A far far away map.

A bit more detailed map.

And a very detailed map.
The process was fairly simple, if a bit time consuming. But like I said, I had some time to kill. First I took a screenshot of the mapquest map (on a PC you could use the "print screen" button) and then inserted the image as a picture into a word document. I then traced the roads that I wanted with the line drawing tool, labeled them with text boxes, and labeled important points of interest. I then deleted the original map and added a rectangle behind the lines and filled it with a texture I liked.

And now I have three maps to put on our wedding website. I don't know that they're the absolute most useful maps, but they sure are pretty.

Since You Asked

When I first wrote about our decision to do e-vites and then posted the final product many of you asked what we would do for relatives that didn't have email. It's not super glamorous, but I thought I'd take a minute to show you the seven snail mail invitations that went out.


Yep, that's right. Seven. Out of 200 invited guests. Turns out our families are all pretty email savvy. The five paper invites I absolutely needed to send out went to my paternal grandparents, a great aunt on my mom's side, my maternal great grandmother, long-time family friends of Mr. Veggie, and my dad (he has email, but doesn't really have a good handle on the internet yet). Then once I got going I thought that Mr. Veggie's parents and my mom and stepdad would probably like to have a paper invite too, so I made each of them a set to keep.

A warning: we spent lots of time and energy on our e-vites so, I have to admit that I didn't have much remaining enthusiasm for the paper invitations. These are definitely low-quality, low effort paper invites (but grandmas and grandpas wont care, right?). And really, in the end I think they turned out kind of pretty, considering I didn't actually buy any supplies and just used what was laying around Veggie Sister Kale's house (my U.S. home for the summer).

Here's a step by step tutorial on how I made these fabulous-impromptu-home made paper invites:

Step 1: Print out e-vite onto cardstock.
Step 2: Try to use Veggie Sister Kale's rotary cutter.
Step 3: Fail at rotary cutting.
Step 4: Allow Veggie Sister Kale to take over rotary cutting and watch her complete the task about 100 times faster and better than I could.

Veggie Sister Kale workin' the rotary cutter in her PJ's. Aww yeah.

Step 5: Ponder why the craft gene seems to be absent from my DNA.
Step 6: Print out engagement photos to add in the envelope. Grammies do love photos. Cardstock + home printer= bad quality pictures. Grammies wont mind, right?
Step 7: Dig through Veggie Sister Kale's craft room to find envelopes. Hmm... red or green?
Step 8: Green.

Step 9: Tie with grosgrain and stuff into green envelopes. Lick and Seal.
Step 10: Call Veggie Mamma for addresses.
Step 11: Realize it would have been much easier to address the envelopes before they were stuffed.
Step 12: Have your hopes dashed when you find an empty packet of beautiful king and queen stamps in the junk drawer, and hope no one notices the Christmas stamps you are forced to use by your strong desire not to have to bring a two and three year old to the post office.

A Thought: When I am married will I finally be grown up enough to have things like a craft room and a complete list of family addresses?
Probably not.

So there's the quick and dirty low down on the paper invites. We also assigned an internet savvy friend or relative to set up a lunch date with each of the paper invite recipients to show them the e-vite, video, and website. This way they wont miss out on the full experience and will get to have a lunch date with someone fun. I think this will all work out really well. Worst comes to worst, I can always give them a call to make sure that they received their snail mail.

By the way, apologies for not posting more for the past two weeks. I arrived in the U.S. one week ago today and have been quite busy making cupcakes, singing songs, tickling, and giving raspberries to bellies. Life is good.

Invitations: Check

When we decided to do e-vites I mourned the loss of pretty paper, the loss of receiving snail mail RSVP's, and the loss of dwelling on tiny details like ribbons and stamps. To be honest, the period of mourning lasted for a long time. To be really honest, it only finally ended yesterday when we sent out our slightly tardy invitations. I just simply cannot be sad about the above losses when I see our final product. It makes me so happy.

So without futher ado I present you with the Veggie Wedding Invitation Video. Thus far, it is the crowning achievement of our brief cinematic career:




And of course our Paperless Post invitations:

I really wanted to embed the video on the actual invitation that people received in their in-box, but wasn't able to find a company who could do that (definite business opportunity for some techno-savvy person out there). So we ended up embedding the video on the front page of our wedding website. Not ideal, but since people will need to go to the website to figure out their accommodations and to get directions, we figure everyone will see it at some point.

I am so happy with the way the video and e-vites turned out. I just couldn't contain myself. The first thing I did when I got to the US (after sleeping for approximatel 13 hours) was iron out the final few details with our venue so that I could confidently send these puppies out. And guess what? Only 15 minutes after we sent out our invitations we got our first RSVP. One day later we've received 24 responses out of about 200. Oh my gosh. People are coming to our wedding. Like definitely coming. It's all beginning to feel very real.

Eco-Thrifty Lamp

When I first decided to blog about our wedding I titled my blog Eco-Thrifty Bride. Lately I've been despairing about why it is so hard to find products, services, and vendors that can accomplish both. Just like "wedding"; "eco", "organic", and "green" are words that, once mentioned, throw up a red flag that signals a substantial price increase is impending, whether it is warranted or not. These price increases stem from a classist, elitist sentiment that "eco" products are desired by and produced for the wealthy. An assumption that self-perpetuates when such products are priced at a premium, thus denying a vast segment of the population access to products and services that healthy for both people and planet.

Well let me tell you a secret hive. You don't have to be rich to be green. You just need to be a little creative.

Case in point: lighting for our venue.

What I was after was unique and beautiful lighting option. I found Eco (at a cost of $379 NZD) and Thrifty (made of plastic and shipped many miles).

Eco v. Thrifty

And then I thought to myself. "Veggie. You have a lot of time. You know creative people. Let's see what you can come up with". And I gathered some amigos and got to work.

I looked at a picture of the David Truebridge design I most admired and made a template for one of the pieces. The trickiest part of this was knowing how big to make it. I guessed 16cm, about 6 inches. Why? I dont know. It just seemed to look pretty good. The next trickiest part was knowing how many to cut. We thought it looked like it was made up of two halves, each comprised of one central flower, surrounded by five other flowers. After careful deliberation we decided on 60, 12 flowers of 5 petals each.

Teresa looks happy, but really she is grinning in the sheer agony of the hand cramps that ensue after cutting 30 flower petals out of corrugated cardboard.

It was a lot of tracing and a lot of cutting. Which brings me to another point. The Truebridge lamps are made of wood, but not possessing the skills to cut wood, nor an eco-friendly supply, we chose to work with a slightly more availble and maleable material, cardboard.

Dang. That was a lot of cutting. I hope 60 was enough.

After we had cut all of our pieces, we assembled them into 12 flowers, and sat and looked at the picture again.

Juan is an engineer. Even he was confused. Mr. Veggie is laughing because we got him to say "cinco". Don't know why that's funny? Ask a friend from Spain to tell you the rhyme they say when someone says "cinco".

We persisted and eventually the globe started to take shape.

Here we are celebrating the realization that 60 was in fact enough petals, and we don't have to cut any more. Mr. Veggie is not as excited as we were. He obviously was not involved in the cutting of the petals.

And then we were done.

Hooray! Que Guay!

Here is our final product in action:

From CFL to OMG.

I love how our prototype turned out. There are a few things that I might do differently in the next edition, but overall this project was a win! Total cost was $10 NZD for a package of brads (those gold little attachment thingies) and about 3 hours of our time. Eco thrifty success.

Taming the Train: Part Deux

When last we left off I had a train the size of a small vehicle prominently protruding from my derriere at precisely the level and location of my butt hole. It works for some I'm sure, but it wasn't working for me. I also happened to have a dress that was too big in the boobs. Honestly this has never happened before, and will probably never happen again. So I grabbed a good friend/neighbor/seamstress and we came up with a plan. Here is the end result:
Me working it with the newly "french bustled" back (train at maximum length here, approximately 6-10 inches from the end of the dress).

Much like Ms. Paisley (except without the rad hatchet-throwing resumé) when I see these pictures I am astounded at the sheer breadth of my shoulders. Go-go gadget surf paddling guns.

Me working it some more with the bustled "french-bustled" back.

Me trying to work it with a dress that fits in the waist and boobs, but getting upstaged by some very cute kids. Hey you. Yeah you, adorable polite kids with the incredibly cute kiwi accents. Get outta my shot. There's only room for one star here.

Sorry for the low quality pics. Mr. Veggie took them in said friendor's living room while trying to kid wrangle. Yeah, he saw the dress. I really can't keep anything a secret for too long. It was bound to happen some time, so at least I could make use of it by having him take some pictures.

I am thrilled with the way Dominique (mom of cute kids/seamstress/friend) altered my dress. Tucking the train under the layer of fabric was an easy fix (I'm taking her word for it) and made a huge difference in minimizing the length and pointy triangle-ness of the train. She did such a good job fitting me too. I loved my dress before, but now having it fit just right makes it perfect.

And what did she charge me for such expert crafts-womanship? An hour for hour exchange babysitting the above children. That means for getting all of my alterations done, I am paying with just 4 hours of my time that will be spent with some rad kids. I immediately told her that was crazy and that her skills as a seamstress were worth twice of what mine were as a babysitter. While this left her a little worried about leaving her children in my hands, I eventually got her to agree to this deal, plus a bottle of wine from me. Hooray!

Have you altered you dress in a significant (or insignificant way)? Are friends helping you make your day happen? Do you ever get upstaged by cute kids (or do you just lure them in the opposite direction with candy and soda)?

Let's Get Dressed Boys and Girls

I know I mentioned a while ago that Future Mamma-In-Law Veggie is taking care of our flower girl and ring bearer outfits (isn't she great?). This is no small task given the quantity and varying ages of the Veggie Sprouts. Seems like a good time to give you an update on how its going.

First off were vests and paper boy caps for the boys. In hopes of saving her sanity FMIL Veggie started keeping her eye out these months ago, thinking she would have her hands full with sewing three dresses. When these cute hats went on sale she snatched them up. Then she found these great pin striped vests. A set in size 6 and a set in size 12mos. Boys done.

Onto the girls. FMIL Veggie (that's kind of a mouthful) has nearly finished one flower girl dress. Here it is in all its glory modeled by the oldest Veggie Sprout-ette (she has a bit of a Calvin Klein grunge waif look going, no? Look out Tyra).
The material is a very light organic cotton swiss dot in ivory. Supposedly this dress needs to be taken in on the sides, hemmed, and the straps need to be finished, but honestly I didn't notice any of that. I just can't believe that someone could actually make a dress, a beautiful dress, appear out of thin air. Don't even get me started about those crazy talented bees who make their own wedding dresses (eh-hem Sewing, Poodle). Unimaginable.

One down, two slightly smaller versions to go. I'm so psyched about how they look already, and now just have to figure out how I want to finish them off. I plan on coming up with an idea and then stepping back to allow FMIL Veggie and Veggie Sister Kale to turn that vision into a reality. Go Team Veggie! They're too good to me.

So hmmm… finishing touches for the dresses. The bridesmaids are wearing shades of gray and the men are wearing vests and gray pants. So I guess I'm thinking casual, cute, and I hate to say it, vintage-y.

Perhaps a nice wide sash at the empire waist (a la Mrs. Penguin).

Source

Maybe a simple ribbon instead?

Source

How about a flower?

Source

Or two?

Source: Mrs. Star's Etsy Shop!

Or a few?

Source

Or a dozen?

Source

So many choices.

Now that there are less than 100 days to go until the wedding it is both exhilarating and calming to see some projects starting to come together. I can't help but feel overwhelmed by all of the love our family and friends have already put into our wedding. It is amazing.

Are loved ones stepping up to make your day special? Any ideas on how to finish off the Veggie Sprout dresses?

We're Not Sending Invitations?!?! *gasp*

Too dramatic? OK let's try again.

We're not sending invitations.

We've been thinking along these lines for a while. But I haven't really discussed it with anyone fully besides Mr. Veggie. I guess I was a bit afraid of people's reactions.

Will they be shocked at our lack of decorum?

Source

Confused at why we would forgo such an important detail?

Source

Disapproving of our decision?

Source

Well, Willis, this is what we're talking about. Tough choices.

We have a strict budget, financially and ecologically. When we decided to splurge on a photographer we knew there would be other things that we would have to cut out. And, when we looked at all of the components of a wedding, invites just seemed to make the most sense to us, ecologically and financially.

Don't get me wrong. I love getting mail. I love the idea of people opening our invites all over the world and getting excited for our big day. I would love getting back RSVP cards. I love envelope liners. I love twine. I love wood block carvings. I love letterpress.
I love this set of invites:
And this one:

And this one:

And this one:


While I swooned over our Save The Dates design, I didn't like that they arrived in the form of an attachment on an email. Where's the fun in that? No one gets excited over receiving a mass email. Verdana font on a computer screen just can't compete with letterpress swirls and twirls. And the second it takes you to click on an attachment hardly holds the anticipation and glee of opening an envelope.

And that's why my heart broke a little the day I realized that paper invitations were not in our future.

But then I found Paperless Post and the skies began to clear. They have solved the excitement v. eco, pretty v. functional, paper v. e- dilemmas. When you send an invitation through them they send a personalized envelope to each recipient's email, which they can click on to "open" the invitation. The invitation they open is created by you using one of PP's gorgeous templates, which are designed to look like letterpress. They can click on the invitation to RSVP. Genius.

And then I saw this video… and I swear I heard a choir of angels.

I began to realize that there are some advantages that e-invites have over their paper counterparts. Not only could we do a rad video, but depending on what company we use, we can also link directly to our website and registry, manage our RSVP's, link to a mapquest or google map, and even allow people to add our wedding as an event to their blackberries.

So what I'm imagining now is a Paperless Post-type e-invite where the email guests receive will have a personalized envelope. But instead of opening up to a beautiful one-page invite, it will open to a multiple page invite. The first page will contain our video, the second will look like a traditional invite, and the third will link to our wedding website where guests can RSVP, check out maps, registries, etc.

Ok bees, so here's my question to you. How do I make this happen? Paperless Post says that their system is only set up to do one-page invites. Any ideas?