green bridal

GP: How green is your business - what green business practices do you embrace?

GBG: Here are some of that ways we are green:

- We recycled everything that can be recycled

- Our web hosting company uses 100% wind power

- All of our packaging, shipping, and printed materials are made from PWC recycled paper and soy inks

- The book, The Green Bride Guide: How to Plan an Earth-friendly Wedding on Any Budget, was printed on FSC certified recycled paper. This saved 142 trees, 99 million BTUs, 51,862 gallons of water, 12,495 lbs of greenhouse gases and 6,660 pounds of solid waste.

- We use all-natural, biodegradable cleaners in our office

- We only brew organic, Fair Trade Coffee

- All of our office furniture is reclaimed or repurposed

- We have installed recycled carpeting

- We use carbon neutral shipping to offset our emissions

GP: How green are your products - what green products/components do you offer?

GBG: The Green Bride Guide is built around the idea that we can make a real, meaningful dent in the waste and pollution created by the wedding industry if we educate people on how to go green without sacrificing style or tradition.

To do this we offer the following tools and resources:

- Our Green Wedding Directory allows couples to find local eco-friendly vendors for every step of the wedding planning process. Each listed vendor has a green leaf rating of 1-5 that is generated when they apply, based on that company's environmental standards. A business must earn at least one green leaf to qualify to be listed in the directory. We try to help businesses that don't qualify or would like to earn a higher rating increase their green practices.

- Our Shop and Registry include only items that have been hand selected based on how and where they are made, materials used, the social responsibility of the company, and the environmental impact of their production. Each product has its eco-strategies on its listing that explain exactly why that product was chosen for our shop.

- We offer a carbon calculator to help couples determine what the impact of their wedding will be, as well as how they can offset that impact.

- Our Seasonal Décor and Eco-Chic Style blogs are continually updated with fresh ways to keep things as local and seasonal as possible.

- New Real Green Wedding stories are posted weekly, featuring a broad range of celebrations. Whether a wedding has a few green elements, or is totally organic from the food to the silk of the bride's gown, these stories show couples that there are lots of ways to go green. More importantly, they show that it is not all or nothing proposition and you don't have to feel bad if everything isn't 100% green.

GP: Why did you choose to offer green products and implement green business practices?

GBG: When our founder Kate L. Harrison was planning her wedding in 2006, she was surprised at how difficult it was to find the eco-friendly resources her and her fiancé were looking for. In the process of planning and compiling information she began what eventually become The Green Bride Guide: How to Plan an Earth Friendly Wedding on Any Budget. Our website, TheGreenBrideGuide.com followed.

Because the wedding industry is a $70-billion-dollar-a-year-industry, Kate saw what a potential boost it would be to sustainable business if even part of this revenue were going to green businesses.

Not only that, but the average wedding produces 400-600 lbs of garbage and 63 tons of CO2. Green weddings save energy, conserve resources and decrease pollution.

GP: How has offering green products and implementing green business practices affected your company?

GBG: As a young company, we rely a lot on word-of-mouth to get our name out. We have tried to build a community based on providing comprehensive, credible resources that are also inclusive enough to serve the general public. So far, we have received wonderful feedback from couples and businesses about what we are providing, and the word seems to be spreading. The green wedding business is small, but growing and gaining support everyday. People are responding positively to this resources that was, as little as four years ago, virtually non-existent. We hope to continue to provide reliable information for those who seek it.

GP: What are your hopes for a greener photographic industry?

GBG: One of the questions we ask vendors when they sign up for the directory is "Do you exclusively offer eco-friendly products/services?"

We get a lot of feedback from photographers that they will never be able to reach our highest green leaf rating because photography is a high-tech field and will never be 100% green.

It is true that there will always be components that are not totally eco-friendly. Weddings are the same way. But we feel that if you are doing pretty much everything you can to offer green photography services, then it is fair to say that you are offering all the eco-friendly services that photography allows for. Couples are always going to have photographers at their wedding. It's an important art form that allows people to remember their celebration in a very specific and special way. If you are cutting the impact of that choice down as much as you can, then that is really what it is all about.

We hope to see more and more photographers committed to limiting their personal impact on the planet, and getting certified so that the criteria for what makes a green (er) photographer continue to spread and become standard.

GP: What is your favorite eco website or eco-product that we may not have heard of?

GBG: http://www.idofoundation.org

The I Do foundation allows couples to set up wedding registries where a portion of guests' gift purchases are donated to a selected charity. There is also an option to create a charity registry, where your purchase directly supports that charity. We love the I Do Foundation because it provides a way to make all wedding registries green in some way.

Thanks so much to Samantha Grasso of The Green Bride Guide for taking the time to answer our questions!

If you have an idea for a spotlight feature or interview, let us know!