The Essential Guide to Gay and Lesbian Weddings by Tess Ayers, Paul Brown
Book: The Essential Guide to Gay and Lesbian Weddings by Tess Ayers, Paul Brown
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Authors: Tess Ayers, Paul Brown
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vendors, who will soon invade your life.
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Gay and Green: Tips for Environmentally Correct Weddings
It doesnât matter what your sexual orientation is when it comes to planning a wedding that doesnât put too much strain on olâ Mother Earth. Here are some of our favorite wedding eco-tips:
1. The best present you can give the earth on your wedding day is to use washable plates, glasses, and silverware. Second best, and less expensive, is to purchase plastic dishes, glasses, and utensilsthat are biodegradable and technically âdisposable,â yet can also be washed and used again and again.
2. At the very least, use recycled paper for your wedding invitations, programs, thank-you notes, and all paper goods. Skip the tissue paper and internal envelopes on the invitations. Greenest of all is handling your correspondence electronically, with a site such as evite.com or your own wedding website.
3. While destination weddings are a wonderful way to celebrate, think of the fuel being used for transportation for everyone attending. If you do fly, compensate by buying carbon offsets. The greenest way to go is to commit to keeping your wedding as local as possible, with the wedding and reception in the same venue to cut down on driving.
4. At the reception, instead of using cut flowers for centerpieces, substitute living tree seedlings or flowers and shrubs in pots. Encourage your guests to take the trees home; planting them is a great way to contribute to the betterment of the air quality in your city, and it also plays a part in the slowing of global warming. If you do use cut flowers, make sure to compost them or dry them for use as decoration.
5. If you register for wedding gifts, register with environmentally friendly companies such as Seventh Generation and Sundance, or suggest donations to an environmental group, such as National Resources Defense Council.
6. Insist that whatever stores you register with pack your wedding gifts in minimal, biodegradable packaging. Suggest they not use gift boxes or bubble wrap; encourage the use of wood shavings, raffia ribbon, and recycled natural wrapping paper. When gifts do come in boxes with lots of excess packing materials like those annoying Styrofoam peanuts, donât just toss these materials out. Save and reuse them, or take them down to your recycling center.
7. Choose a caterer or restaurant that serves local, seasonal ingredients. If you can afford it, free-range, grass-fed meat is ideal; offering at least one plant-based entrée is also good for the planet in so many ways. And donât forget the organic beer and wine, as well as fair-trade coffee and tea.
8. If you want to be an environmental trendsetter, use organic cotton fabric for wedding and bridesmaids gowns (and why not the groomsâ suits too?). Let bridesmaids choose dresses that they can wear again, and give your bridal gown a second life by donating it to a thrift shop.
9. Encourage guests to carpool to the ceremony and/or reception. After all, since lots of people will know one another, why canât they ride four (or more) to a car? It will help reduce the smog emission levels, and if youâre having valet parking, it might even save you a little money. If the celebration is some distance from where most of the people live, consider arranging for a bus to take everyone together.
10. If youâre having helium balloons as part of the decorations, please do not under any circumstances release them; just pop them. There are horror stories of balloons traveling unbelievable distances and ending up in oceans or lakes, where they become a hazard to marine life.
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Legal, Shmegal
The best legal advice we can give you is this: see a lawyer. (You can always start at lgbtbar.org ).
Ironically, itâs not as easy for same-sex couples to get hitched as it used to be. In âthe old days,â gays and lesbians had few ways of securing legal protection for their
----
Gay and Green: Tips for Environmentally Correct Weddings
It doesnât matter what your sexual orientation is when it comes to planning a wedding that doesnât put too much strain on olâ Mother Earth. Here are some of our favorite wedding eco-tips:
1. The best present you can give the earth on your wedding day is to use washable plates, glasses, and silverware. Second best, and less expensive, is to purchase plastic dishes, glasses, and utensilsthat are biodegradable and technically âdisposable,â yet can also be washed and used again and again.
2. At the very least, use recycled paper for your wedding invitations, programs, thank-you notes, and all paper goods. Skip the tissue paper and internal envelopes on the invitations. Greenest of all is handling your correspondence electronically, with a site such as evite.com or your own wedding website.
3. While destination weddings are a wonderful way to celebrate, think of the fuel being used for transportation for everyone attending. If you do fly, compensate by buying carbon offsets. The greenest way to go is to commit to keeping your wedding as local as possible, with the wedding and reception in the same venue to cut down on driving.
4. At the reception, instead of using cut flowers for centerpieces, substitute living tree seedlings or flowers and shrubs in pots. Encourage your guests to take the trees home; planting them is a great way to contribute to the betterment of the air quality in your city, and it also plays a part in the slowing of global warming. If you do use cut flowers, make sure to compost them or dry them for use as decoration.
5. If you register for wedding gifts, register with environmentally friendly companies such as Seventh Generation and Sundance, or suggest donations to an environmental group, such as National Resources Defense Council.
6. Insist that whatever stores you register with pack your wedding gifts in minimal, biodegradable packaging. Suggest they not use gift boxes or bubble wrap; encourage the use of wood shavings, raffia ribbon, and recycled natural wrapping paper. When gifts do come in boxes with lots of excess packing materials like those annoying Styrofoam peanuts, donât just toss these materials out. Save and reuse them, or take them down to your recycling center.
7. Choose a caterer or restaurant that serves local, seasonal ingredients. If you can afford it, free-range, grass-fed meat is ideal; offering at least one plant-based entrée is also good for the planet in so many ways. And donât forget the organic beer and wine, as well as fair-trade coffee and tea.
8. If you want to be an environmental trendsetter, use organic cotton fabric for wedding and bridesmaids gowns (and why not the groomsâ suits too?). Let bridesmaids choose dresses that they can wear again, and give your bridal gown a second life by donating it to a thrift shop.
9. Encourage guests to carpool to the ceremony and/or reception. After all, since lots of people will know one another, why canât they ride four (or more) to a car? It will help reduce the smog emission levels, and if youâre having valet parking, it might even save you a little money. If the celebration is some distance from where most of the people live, consider arranging for a bus to take everyone together.
10. If youâre having helium balloons as part of the decorations, please do not under any circumstances release them; just pop them. There are horror stories of balloons traveling unbelievable distances and ending up in oceans or lakes, where they become a hazard to marine life.
----
Legal, Shmegal
The best legal advice we can give you is this: see a lawyer. (You can always start at lgbtbar.org ).
Ironically, itâs not as easy for same-sex couples to get hitched as it used to be. In âthe old days,â gays and lesbians had few ways of securing legal protection for their
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