Beautiful Tents for Hire

We're really excited to welcome Hooes Yurts to GreenUnion to swell our growing number of fantastic mobile eco wedding venues country wide.

The tents are based on the Mongolian Yurt (or Ger) and are constructed from timber and canvas. They look gorgeous form the outside and, once inside, they feel solid, sumptuous and welcoming, creating a perfect space for a green wedding. Yurts are wonderfully versatile with no central poles or guy ropes to trip up the unsuspecting wedding guest and they can be used individually or linked together for bigger events. Hooes offer 24ft, 18ft and 14ft yurts that can be connected together to create different shaped venues for up to 200 people like this eco chic wedding palace pictured above.

And it doesn't stop there either. Not only do they supply you with the yurts, but their offer is second to none with a choice of other services. Amy is passionate about decorating the yurts with beautiful textiles and furniture and she personally selects all her furnishings with care and love from around the world. Often the pieces are vintage and they have always been purchased fairly. Each yurt has its own individual design and colour theme but all have a uniting style with sumptuous interiors which are exotic and vibrant.

Posted in Green Wedding Decorations & Details , Inspiration , Marquees & Tents

Eco friendly trees

The Christmas tree is synonymous with the festive season and a Christmas wedding wouldn't be the same without at least one tree. Unsure whether to go artificial or real? Here are the facts:

Although artificial trees last longer, they are not biodegradable and, as such, they will languish in landfill sites long after you have discarded them. Most artificial trees sold in the UK come from Taiwan and China so also incur additional CO2 emissions associated with transportation, never mind the possible question of labour relations and fair trade.

Real Christmas trees not only smell divine - they are carbon neutral too - absorbing as much carbon dioxide as they will give off when they are burned or left to decompose. Even better, if you choose trees with roots, they can be planted in your garden or a suitable site afterwards and used year after year. The British Christmas Tree Growers Association has a list of producers nationwide so you can source your green trees locally for your earth friendly Christmas wedding.

And if you're using cut trees don't forget to arrange to have them taken to a green waste centre after the wedding, where they can be composted and used to plant more trees for the next season. If you're in London you can get this done by Pines & Needles.

Posted in Green Wedding Decorations & Details

Today is Diwali

If you ever needed an excuse to have a wedding theme based on lights, then this is it. Diwali is the Hindu festival of lights, the most popular of all the festivals from South Asia which is also celebrated by Jains and Sikhs.

Traditionally the festival celebrates the victory of good over evil, light over darkness and knowledge over ignorance but The Times of India sums up the modern meaning of Diwali:

'Regardless of the mythological explanation one prefers, what the festival of lights really stands for today is a reaffirmation of hope, a renewed commitment to friendship and goodwill, and a religiously sanctioned celebration of the simple - and some not so simple - joys of life.' Times of India editorial

Could you think of a better package for a wedding celebration?

For a truly green wedding, seek out the little earthenware oil lamps called diyas and line the windowsills of your venue with them (after your big day you can recycle them or add them to the compost heap), soya candles and tealights are the next best thing or, if you can't use a naked flame then invest in strings of LED lights which burn only a miniscule amount of electricity. If there's a pond, lake or little stream at your venue, push floating candles out onto the water and make a wish.

Draw a Rangoli pattern on the floor at the entrance to your ceremony to welcome your new life and your guests to the wedding.

Here's a simple and easy idea for making your own decorative eco friendly safe candles for your wedding using recycled glassware and soya wax:

Posted in Green Wedding Decorations & Details , Inspiration

Fireworks - can they be ethical?

With November 5th just round the corner, what better time to discuss the ethics of fireworks which now seem to be used so extensively to set modern weddings off with a bang.

Apart from the shear waste of money which goes up in smoke at the touch of a fuse, one has to wonder at the cost to the health and safety of the people who make these often amazing and extraordinarily entertaining explosives, almost exclusively in China.

Much of the fireworks industry in China involves illegal child labour and, in 2001, the Chinese government blamed a horrific explosion which killed at least 41 children on the imaginary attack of a "madman". It was only after villagers pressed the government to acknowledge that local school officials had been forcing students to produce fireworks illegally to pay for their tuition that the government changed their story. Accidents had largely been ignored by the Chinese government or blamed on other circumstances, but since a further series of explosions plagued fireworks factories in the summer of 2003, these safety issues have not gone unnoticed by the rest of the world. Since then the Chinese fireworks industry has been the subject of intense scrutiny and the China Labour Bulletin has now set forth several excellent recommendations to help push the Chinese Fireworks industry toward creating a safer work environment, but there is a long way to go with much of the industry going underground to avoid complying with the new laws.

I expect the most ethical part of the whole Chinese fireworks industry would be the shipping which is generally done by sea (could this be because flying them about the world could be rather an explosive issue...)

So what's the alternative?

Posted in Green Wedding Decorations & Details , Music & Entertainment