Seven green ways to personalise your wedding day - Day 6

EDIBLE FAVOURS
Will always be a hit, so give your guests a taste of the region. For instance make your own Devon clotted cream fudge and pack in little boxes with personalized labels. Or preserve your own jam in recycled jam jars with fruit from your family garden (or a pick your own farm nearby) and give everyone a little jar to take home. Buy local and regional tasty goodies like Scottish shortbread and repackage in recycled paper boxes to suit your own green wedding style.

The possibilities are endless so let your creative juices flow and produce a really personal and eco friendly thank you gift for all your wedding guests to take away. If you don't feel quite so creative you can find some charming ethical wedding gifts and favours here.

Posted in Green Wedding Gifts & Favours , Inspiration

Enter our prize draw to win Organic Places to Stay...

Sign up for our newsletter today and we will enter you into a prize draw to win one of these five Organic Places to Stay books which we have to give away.

Organic Places to Stay, by Linda Moss, lists hundreds of wonderful places which have their own restaurants or offer delicious home cooked meals to guests. A few are certified organic, and others may have a certified organic kitchen garden, orchard or vineyard. Quite a few of them grow their own produce, some use wild or natural foods, and most will aim to use fresh local produce rather than imported food. At these places you'll find information about the availability of organic food - for example whether you can buy the farm's own organic produce, have an organic vegetable box delivered, or find organic produce in the local area. Fresh produce, local specialities, slow food, home baking, homemade products such as jam, juice, ice cream, yogurt, cheese, pasta, pasta sauce, olive oil, wine - you'll find all these and more ......

The book is a 'must have' bible for anyone planning a green wedding and looking for places to stay in the UK on their eco friendly honeymoon.

Our newsletter - GreenUnion Gossip, is packed, every month, full of news and ideas for great green weddings, so don't delay sign up to our e-newsletter now!

Offer ends 30 April 2008. We will notify the lucky winner after this date.

Posted in Green Wedding Gifts & Favours , News

What were you doing when you were fifteen?

Can you remember what you were doing when you were 15? Testing the latest makeup, learning how to smoke, enjoying the odd binge drinking session, setting up a business...

It seems entrepreneurs get younger and younger with Charlie Artingsoll, self styled "green wedding connoisseur and plant label dynamo". He's churning out the most eco friendly labels for place names by collecting wood offcuts from local joineries and turning them into TimberTags. At only fifteen, Charlie started to make these green wedding labels when the gardening season was over and he had to think about turning his plant label business into an all season enterprise.

Having already won a Kent environmental business award for the 'most inspirational business', Charlie plans to donate a percentage of his profits to the Kent Wildlife Trust.

Charlie suggests that you commission him to create some custom tags for your wedding which will double up as a great little keepsake of your eco chic wedding day. Give him a call and find out what he can do for you. Name tags, napkin rings, flower labels, thank you tags, wedding favours, coasters, the choice is endless...

Posted in Green Wedding Gifts & Favours

Love is like a red red rose

One of our favourite partners Lottie Girling has come up with this gorgeous valentine rose corsage. Made from leather or suede (a by product of the leather industry), these blooms are not only charming and chic, but will still be bloomin' lovely long after those supermarket stems have withered away. She's offering them in an assortment of colours including this delicious red, of course, but if you want something extra special then there's still time to have one made to order. Leave it on the desktop and make sure you get one this Valentine's Day!

Posted in Green Wedding Flowers , Gifts & Favours

Eco friendly gift wrap inspiration

I pulled out my box of vintage silk scarves this weekend to see if I could find a new use for them and an inspirational idea came to me with Christmas and gifts in mind. Why not use them as gift wrap - it worked a treat. So give it a go, rid yourself of the guilt of gift wrapping excess, throw-away all packaging and wrap your gifts in gorgeous vintage silk squares as a stylish alternative to paper wrapping.

Scour charity shops and market stalls for luxurious silk head scarves and apply the ancient and time-honored art of furoshiki wrapping to this year's gifts. The time and thought you've put into your gift won't go unnoticed and they'll be the most luxurious and eco chic gifts under the replantable tree!

It's a neat idea to remember when it comes to wrapping your wedding favours or gifts to friends and family on the occasion of your eco friendly wedding.

Did you know?
We use more than 8,000 tonnes of wrapping paper each year in the UK alone - the equivalent of approximately 50,000 trees.

Image Posch Biota Collection.

Posted in Green Wedding Gifts & Favours

Christmas craft bazaars

Well I've just got home from visiting our local Holiday craft bazaar and produce market held in conjunction an annual open evening for our little market town in North Devon. This is the night that kicks off Christmas and Holiday for us here with its celebration of community and good will. It puts me in mind of the hundreds of craft and makers' sales going on worldwide at this time of the year.

It's a great way to find gifts for all of those people in our lives who are tough to buy for, and can even give us ideas for those elusive eco friendly gifts to show wedding attendants, friends and loved ones how much you appreciate their help and support at a future green wedding.

I do know that over in the US there are plenty on this Saturday, including the BUST Holiday Craftacular. I’ve never attended but I'm told its well worth a visit. Next Sunday, there's a sale at Divine Studio in NYC, so if you're a resident or visiting go ahead and download the invite by clicking here.

There's no easy way to find out where the sales are being held so the best thing is to Google your area and something will pop up, but check back next week and I'll try and find more for you.

Posted in Green Wedding Gifts & Favours

Perfectly formed

I promised three highly creative and talented furniture makers for National Tree Week and last, but not least, is Greig Fensome who produces perfectly formed furniture under the name hiddenink. Working with woods from sustainable sources, Greig designs and handmakes every piece to order. The finished product is a naturally organic work of art and worthy of gracing your home for a lifetime and more. Greig produces these gorgeous boxes, which although are not cheap, would make a perfect Christmas gift for someone with special memories or precious pieces to store.

I know I keep harping on about it, but it's worth considering making your ethical wedding memories more meaningful by asking your guests to contribute to one wonderful, handmade, bespoke, individually designed item of furniture made specially for you, than lots of incidental items which will be forgotten in the passage of time. Commissioning a piece of furniture to mark your ever so eco friendly wedding can be a joyful journey of creative discovery.

Give it a go!

Posted in Green Wedding Gifts & Favours , Wedding Lists

Eco Design Christmas Fair

In London this weekend, wondering what to do and haven't started on your Christmas shopping yet? Here's a chance to browse a whole fair dedicated to ethically produced, green gifts. Don't just think hemp trousers and joss sticks. Admittedly there is a predictable selection of the usual fair trade tea, coffee and chocolate, but there will also be a huge selection of handmade goods which will make fabulous, individual, guilt-free gifts. Organic, recycled, non-toxic, fair trade, handmade, carbon-neutral, low-energy, food, fashion, accessories and lots, lots more.

Location:
Cecil Sharp House (English Folk Dance and Song Society),
2 Regent's Park Road, Camden, London, NW1 7AY
Camden Town tube station.

Posted in Green Wedding Gifts & Favours , News

Fine frames

Featuring our second furniture maker for National Tree Week is a real pleasure. Tjeerd Hendel-Blackford works, like David Ames, in Devon, England producing the finest furniture and gifts from sustainable hardwoods. His pieces, although not stocking fillers, will delight the recipient of one of his gorgeous boxes or picture frames. The frames in particular are unique to Tjeerd where he's developed a little swirl that means the frame will cling onto the edge of a mantelpiece or shelf with the greatest of ease.

Contact Tjeerd to see if he has some gift items in stock or he may still be able to get something specially made for Christmas if you hurry. He designs and makes one off pieces of furniture to commission, so plan ahead if you fancy a chair or desk for a unique wedding gift from your guests.

Posted in Green Wedding Gifts & Favours , Wedding Lists

Brighton Craft Fair

The Brighton Craft Fair is back for the second year. The doors open to the public on Friday 23rd November at 10.00am. Once again they have selected one hundred of the best designer-makers in the UK, across all disciplines. These designer-makers are breathing new life into craft and design, taking both traditional and contemporary skills and processes, and letting their imaginations take the work far, far away from the usual.

What you will find at The Brighton Craft Fair is well made, well designed, contemporary work, sometimes with a sense of fun but always with originality. You will be buying hand-made and original work direct from the maker.

Go along to find unique Christmas gifts, but savvy couples will also be scouting for designer makers from whom to commission a beautiful one off piece of work to mark their wedding celebration and become a family heirloom of the future.

Posted in Green Wedding Gifts & Favours , Wedding Lists

Wood glorious wood

National Tree Week continues and recognising that we're on the run up to Christmas we're featuring our favorite furniture makers each day for the rest of the week. Getting a gorgeous gift made by a designer maker is a great experience. Some have small pieces in stock for you to choose from, others will make a gift to order. But whatever the piece, you'll be sure to get a unique one off which has been hand made from sustainable timber.

First up is David Ames who has a selection of affordable small gifts like candle holders, vases and cheese boards made from oak, elm, applewood and ash. Talk to David and he will craft you a wizard piece totally unique to you. I particularly like these cute slab bud vases which make the most of just a few blooms and looks gorgeous too.

Ever thought of commissioning a piece of furniture specially for you? A wooden bed crafted from sustainable local timber, that all your guests can contribute to, would be such a memorable and special wedding gift - it will outlast your children, grandchildren and great grandchildren.

Posted in Green Wedding Gifts & Favours , Wedding Lists

To Carbon Offset or not?

Over the last few months there's been a lot of debate about carbon offsetting. How beneficial is it? How legitimate are many of the companies offering carbon offset schemes? The growth of green wash and the ability of not so environmentally conscious organsations to 'wash' their way onto the green bandwagon by buying into the carbon offset environment has made us just a teeny bit cynical of the whole process.

The jury's out, but we do still believe that planting trees is a truly legitimate way of putting something back. There are more benefits in the life of a tree than just capturing carbon, and Alan at Wedding Tree Favours has the perfect solution.

After his own daughter asked him to provide her with his tree saplings for her wedding favours, the seed of a new business began to grow. Now he collects and plants thousands of indigenous tree seeds every year and lovingly nurtures them to sapling stage, when he sends them out to eco savvy couples to use as favours and gifts for weddings.

Posted in Green Wedding Gifts & Favours

Buy handmade

Thoughts of weddings, even eco friendly ones, are being put on the back burner to make room for the festive season and, as we gear up for Christmas, don't get sucked into that mad shopping frenzy. Make your Christmas more meaningful by only giving handmade gifts - make your own, buy Fairtrade or seek out your local makers' studios who will all be throwing their doors open for Christmas shopping over the next six weeks. And pledge to buy Handmade now!

I did...

Posted in Green Wedding Gifts & Favours

tree-nation

Stumped for ideas for wedding favours or what to gift your special helpers to say thank you for their love and support on your wedding day? Then why not adopt an African tree? Tree-Nation, a dynamic Barcelona-based website committed to planting eight million trees in sub-Saharan Niger, the world's poorest nation, are inviting people to sponsor their tree planting programme.

Their fabulous website encourages social networking for its tree 'parents' and, once you've made your donation, you can track and map its growth via GPS and Google Maps. Working alongside ecologists in Niger and supported by the United Nations Environment Programme, Tree-Nation is already nourishing the sprouts of the mighty baobabs, shade giving acacias and other indigenous species in a special nursery before transplanting them in their heart shaped park where 5,000 trees have been planted so far. Although desertification threatens most of the land in Niger, the trees grow in places that receive enough rainfall to support them. Their roots should eventually reach into underground water stores, bringing otherwise untapped water to the surface and improving the soil.

A baobab can survive for up to 2000 years - what better way to leave a lasting legacy of your love...

Posted in Green Wedding Gifts & Favours , Wedding Lists

Peace Love Earth

Our incredibly talented partner Anna Mkhitarian who makes fabulous eco chic wedding dresses under her label Annatarian, has just launched a range of whistful jewellery made from .925 recycled pure sterling silver. Called Peace Love Earth, Anna says "the jewelry was inspired by a need to provoke thought about these three words: PEACE, LOVE, and EARTH and is designed to inspire positive change."

Check out these cute Seven Wishes Bracelets inspired by Armenian traditional wish bracelets, Victoria Foraker, and fairies. The little charms, suspended on surplus string and presented in the gorgeous sealed boxes, make perfect favours or gifts for your bridesmaids.

All Anna's jewellery is made in Los Angeles, California under sweatshop free conditions.

Posted in Green Wedding Gifts & Favours , Jewellery

Stuck for an eco chic wedding gift idea?

Well here are some brilliant ones from Oxfam Unwrapped. What better gift for an eco chic couple than a living, breathing garden, bringing life and prosperity to both the environment and people with a greater need than our own around the world. Oxfam Unwrapped's gift-giving program makes the most of your donations, providing financial assistance to Oxfam’s many programs, while giving a gift that supports those who benefit most. Give just £16 and plant 50 trees, while £200 will buy a plot of land for families to plant crops which they can sell in local markets and earn their own living. We're all for the ethical and ecological focus of these gifts which stress the sometimes overlooked connection between humanitarian efforts, environmental commitments, and issues of local food and agriculture.

Posted in Green Wedding Charities , Gifts & Favours