Choices

One of our goals in planning our wedding is to make better choices when it comes to the environment and our community. This is not always easy because it sometimes means choosing to spend more money. For example, we plan to use recycled and/or tree-free paper for all the wedding paper-goods.

Now, we have been planning to DIY all this stuff but even so it still costs more to use recycled and tree-free products than to use standard products. And sometimes it is hard to resist a "bargain" ... just a few days ago we were at Michaels (buying more vases with our 50% off coupons! take that W.I.C.!) and I saw these really great invitation kits on clearance for, like, $17 for 30 invites. I am almost ashamed to admit that I loved any kit that is endorsed and produced by "Brides" magazine (oh, I am such a DIY snob) but they were super cute! Luckily I had FH along to persuade me that perhaps 9 months out was a little early to make an instant decision and hadn't we decided to use earth-friendly papers anyway?

Fast forward to this morning when I start thinking about what we've budgeted for paper-products vs the actual cost of recycled paper and ink cartridges and you'll find a brief moment of panic in which I start to think our pre-planned numbers may be unrealistic. (It's just amazing what little details can seem overwhelming, really.) Not incredibly unrealistic, just a little bit.

In the end, FH and I decided that postcard Save-The-Date cards are something we could do without and that e-STDs (sounds like a new computer virus, right?) will do just fine. And for the less e-friendly, shouldn't we just call or include a nice note in their Christmas card anyway? This decision will free up the additional $50 or so we want to put towards earth-friendly materials (plus the e-cards mean that many less pieces of paper and gallons of gas to deliver printed Save the Date cards.)

A little invite preview ... yes, I have already started ... geez, I thought we were going to do STD postcards, alright?? :P

Anyway, a few weeks ago I went around our venue (also my workplace) and took some close-up photos of art-deco decorative details (think tiles, capitols, corner details, etc.) I put the photos into photoshop and experimented with various filters. Hopefully I'll be able to use the images to create some interesting and unique invitations, programs, and place cards that really tie in to our venue!

Have you ever felt torn about making environmentally friendly choices? What did you choose?