Eco-Vintage Weddings

Green Post: The Great American Apparel Diet

Happy Monday, everyone! I hope you all had a restful Thanksgiving holiday; I certainly enjoyed my time with family this weekend!

Today’s Green Post is really a shout-out to a group of women that just amaze me. The Great American Apparel Diet is a super-motivated group of women who have decided to go on a diet of sorts.  This diet is not your “I ate too much stuffing so my pores are oozing apples and onions” kind of diet.

No, these women are completely eliminating  “new apparel” from their diets for one year.

Sound easy? If you think so, readers – you’re stronger than me! I LOVE to shop (thanks to my maid of honor, Kristen – she’s the best shopper I know and tends to make shopping an adventure!), and to give up shopping for ONE WHOLE YEAR is extremely intimidating to me. Still, these ladies ROCK for jumping head-first into a pool of self-discovery while on this journey. You just HAVE to read their blog entries…INSPIRING, people.

[An aside: I'm not proud of my penchant for shopping - it makes me sad inside that I don't think I can join these strong-willed women in their fight against consumerism. However, I am planning a wedding - maybe I'll do it next year? Ugh, that sounds like an excuse. Well. To continue...]

If you’d like to join the ladies of GAAD, major kudos to you.

Click here to sign up!

Off Day

Hello dear readers,

I’m feeling rather blue today, so instead of a post, I’d invite you all to spend time thinking about what you’re thankful for this holiday season!

To get you started, here’s a list of what I’m thankful for:

- All of you who read this blog.

- My wonderful family and friends, including J, our dog Wyatt, and my coworkers.

- Health.

- Employment.

- Nourishment and shelter.

- And, a nod to my television hunks:  The Office’s Jim Halpert, One Tree Hill’s Nathan Scott, and Grey’s Anatomy’s McDreamy.

Have a wonderful Thanksgiving week!

Green Post: Black Friday Shopping Tips

Good Monday morning, readers! I hope you all had a blissful weekend – I spent the last few days with J, with friends, and with Jim and Pam of The Office…needless to say, I pretty much checked out over the weekend and didn’t do any wedding planning at all! It was very relaxing.

A note about blog posts this week: in addition to the post below, I will put up a post tomorrow (Tuesday), but that’s it – I’m taking a long weekend to enjoy time with family and celebrate what we have to be thankful for this year. I encourage you to do the same!

The Thanksgiving holiday promises yet another exciting day – Black Friday. Two years ago, J and I got up early on Black Friday just to see what we could find, and he purchased our kitchen table (a black pub-style table; very fun!) and I scored a killer pair of black boots on clearance. But this year, J and I have more ambitious plans. A few months ago, J and I decided that we are going to try to purchase our wedding bands on Black Friday. We’ve never been on such a specific mission (as I said, two years ago we shopped for the fun of it), but I am eager to scour the ads on Thanksgiving Day and define our plan of attack.

That being said, this year on Black Friday, J and I are going to make a special effort to “green-ify” our shopping. Here’s a few tips for you on how to make your holiday shopping greener:

1. Bring along your own shopping bags. J and I both purchased green canvas bags from our local grocery store, and this year, we’re going to put them to good use. By eliminating the amount of plastic you take home from the store, you inevitably reduce the carbon footprint of your own family (fewer plastic bags to throw away) and of your community!
2. Bring along water in your own bottle. We all know that shopping can be tiring sometimes, especially when you’re standing in line forever at Best Buy waiting to purchase those seasons of The Office on DVD! Instead of just buying a bottle of water at one of the stores on your list, bring along your own bottle of water. You’re again eliminating waste by not consuming water out of the plastic bottle! Put ice in it to keep it cool, and stick it in your purse.
3. Take advantage of Black Friday sales; invest in a water purifier. This point ties into #2, but it’s worth making. By running tap water through a purifier, you’re eliminating the need for bottled water.
4. Purchase eco-friendly holiday gifts. This year, I plan to purchase many of my holiday gifts from Etsy, which is literally an online marketplace full of beautiful and creative handmade goods. However, I am also in the process of making a gift for my father’s 8 brothers and sisters (my aunts and uncles) using recycled and/or upcycled materials. If you’re looking for eco-friendly items to give as gifts, you can also check out the Eco-Mall directory.
5. Carpool on Black Friday. This is the easiest way to reduce the amount of fossil fuels and pollution in the air, and is also the most fun! Shopping + time with family and relatives is always a recipe for fun.

I hope these tips will be helpful to you – happy shopping!

Photo courtesy of www.consumerreports.org

Our Wedding: Engagement Shoot Inspiration!

Good Thursday morning to you all! I have a rather jam-packed two days here at the office, so here’s an inspiration board for you!

I’m having lunch today with our photographer Kara of Creative Kindling, and I’m so excited to chat about what we’re looking for from both our engagement session and our wedding photography! I made this inspiration board on the Style Circle so I’ll have something to show Kara at lunch today:

Credits: Ruffled Blog, Wedding Chicks (3), Studio Foto, Snippet & Ink (5)

Isn’t it wonderful! I am just oozing with excitement to take these photos – then we can FINALLY finish our save-the-dates (plus, these will make WONDERFUL holiday gifts for our families!).

Happy almost Friday, everyone!

Project Wednesday: My DIY List!

Happy Wednesday, readers! I apologize for the later post today; the morning really got away from me.

For our first Project Wednesday post, I wanted to show you all a list I’ve been compiling since J and I first got engaged (and, if I’m being honest with myself, maybe even a little before that).

I’ve always known since I was a little girl that while I want to feel like a princess on my wedding day, I didn’t want my wedding to look like everyone else’s. As a creative person, I love to write and invent lives and histories for made-up (and sometimes real) characters, and I knew that I could expand this creative energy into planning a wedding.

So, my wedding planning strategy involved the following:  find blog, read blog, email myself links. Eventually I converted this (LONG) threaded email into a DIY project list of sorts, and I’d like to give you all a taste of what I plan to craft for our wedding.

My future sister-in-law and lovely bridesmaid Larissa and I went shopping at Hobby Lobby last night (also with us was my adorable niece, Harper – such a doll!), and here are a few of our finds:

1. 5 large letters (‘G’  for Gillis, my future last name!) to adorn the tables as part of our centerpieces. Larissa had the wonderful idea to paint these wooden letters using grey crackle paint – I can’t wait to tackle this project! We’ll need about 12-13 letters in total, and I can’t wait to keep collecting them!
2. Colored foam. I purchased one sheet of red and one sheet of black to use for props for our photobooth (and our engagement photos, I think!). I am excited!
3. Fancy paper books. I purchased two books full of fancy paper from Hobby Lobby for 50% off! I plan to use these papers to dress up the inside flaps of our envelopes and to make invitations for my bachelorette party and/or other stationery.
4. Twine. I LOVE TWINE, and I can’t wait to figure out where we can put it to use!
5. A corner rounder punch – basically, it’s a hole punch that doesn’t punch holes, but instead rounds the corners of stationery. Hello useful!
6. Little cards for our wishing tree. For Larissa’s baby shower, I had her guests write down wishes for Mommy and Baby, and the end result (unbelievably warm and heartfelt notes) encouraged me to do a little research. Many blogs have mentioned couples having “wishing trees” near the guestbook area, and I just love the image of lots of hand-written well wishes hanging from twine on our wishing tree.

I’m SO excited to get started on these projects; now I need to finish gathering materials and get a move on!

What DIY projects did you tackle for your wedding?
I’d love to hear from you!

Our Wedding Tuesday: Save The Date!

Happy Tuesday, readers! I hope you all made it through your Monday relatively unscathed; I know I struggle to get out of bed after a wonderful weekend!

Today’s a big day for EVW – we’re finally ready to show all of you our Save-the-Date cards!

The inspiration for our cards came from Etsy seller Golden Silhouette, who had bingo card Save-the-Dates for sale in her shop. I loved the ingenuity of the cards, and I felt that they fit in so well with our vintage-inspired theme! I showed this template to Jordan, and he agreed that while the bingo card was a wonderfully creative idea, we needed to make it our own to make it work.

So, after much deliberation as to how to make this template our own, here’s a mock-up of what our Save-the-Date bingo card looks like!

I apologize if this image is rather difficult to see (click the image to view it larger); our colors are a dark slate grey, ivory and yellow, and we plan to print the card on heavy grey cardstock. Instead of using the word “Bingo,” we wanted to use a love-inspired word. I love the word “Bliss,” and I think it looks so fun at the top of our bingo card! As you can see, near the bottom, the number ’17′ is circled in a faint yellow color, with the word “July” written atop it. In the free space we’ve placed a Photoshop brush of a beautiful vintage chandelier, which is one part of a larger graphic we’re planning to include throughout our invitation suite.

There’s one more part to our Save-the-Date card that we have left to do. This idea was inspired by an engagement card I received from my cousin Amber. The front of the card was affixed with a vellum wrap-around belly band that said, “You’re Engaged!” I loved the way this looked, and since we needed to inform our guests of our wedding date and location (and this web site!) I wanted to include a belly band on our Save-the-Date.

Here’s what the belly band will say:

Birds of a feather, please save the date
to witness the marriage of
Sara Eiesland & Jordan Gillis
July seventeenth, two thousand and ten
Sioux Falls, South Dakota

For more information on our wedding plans,
visit www.ecovintageweddings.com.

Formal invitation to follow.

The text above will be right-aligned, and on the left side of the belly band, we’ll have a picture of us from our engagement photography session (which is coming up in a few weeks!). I love how the Save-the-Date begins with “Birds of a feather” … this text was taken from the wedding invitation of a fellow kindred blogger and her partner, Sara & Matt of A $2000 Wedding.

Here’s one of my favorite parts:  the two edges/sides of the belly band will meet on the back of the bingo card and be sealed with a button! My maid of honor and I went to the flea market a few weekends ago, and we found a whole mason jar full of buttons for only $5.00! I’m so excited for this part of the Save-the-Date process; actually putting together the separate pieces!

It’s our goal to send out our Save-the-Date cards in mid-January, so we still have some time to finish up the process. But, the bingo cards themselves are ready to print, and we plan to send them to my father’s company for printing any day now! We’ve already begun collecting addresses, and after that, we’ll be on the hunt for yellow or ivory envelopes and wrap-around address labels. It’s so exciting!

I’d love to hear your feedback!
What do you think of our Save-the-Dates?!

Green Post Monday: Bride$hare

Good Monday morning, readers! Sorry for the drought in posting last week – I was swimming in a lot of happenings late in the week at work, but I’m ready and excited to share some wonderful vendors and insight with you all this week!

Today’s Green Post Monday is devoted to Bride$hare, an innovative social network that allows brides to save money by sharing wedding-related resources and goods with other brides. Decor, apparel, rentals, and even vendors can be shared, swapped, or sold through Bride$hare connections.

The trick to Bride$hare is often to find a bride who’s having her wedding festivities in the same city and/or state as you, or even in the same venue, so that you can maximize both of your budgets and make pick-up and drop-off of these supplies even easier! The mission of Bride$hare is simple: help ease pressure on the wallet – and the world – through the recycling and reuse of everything wedding related. As the site says, “after all, green is the new white!”

The insight behind Bride$hare began with Dana, the author of Broke-Ass Bride, who, if you’ve never happened upon her blog, shame-shame! She has WONDERFUL tips to offer for brides on a budget (ahem, ME!), and I can’t gush about her own wedding enough – Dana and her new hubby were LITERALLY glowing on their wedding day, and not because of all the details that made their day special. No ma’am, these kids are IN LOVE, and that’s the glow that’s so evident in their wedding photos. Seriously, what thinks about their mason jars full of wildflowers or their menus after saying “I do”?! No one. It’s beautiful how they’re so caught up in celebrating their newly-cemented committment to each other that they literally are shining through and through.

So seriously, go check out Bride$hare, and then check out Broke-Ass Bride…you’ll be instantly inspired to “green-ify” your wedding. And you’ll totally gush over Dana and her hubby’s magazine spread in Southern Weddings – whew!

Showcase Wednesday: The Wedding Perch

Hello readers! For our first annual Showcase Wednesday post, I have a real treat for you from Etsy:  The Wedding Perch!

I stumbled upon The Wedding Perch when I was looking for a unique and rustic alternative to the typical guest book you sign at weddings. I can’t wait to show you all of the goodies from this Etsy shop, so here come the photos!

Here’s the guestbook I was talking about; according to the seller, “this authentic tree trunk slice is hand burned with the couple’s initials. The initials are surrounded by a hand burned heart and arrow. Your wedding party, immediate family members, or every wedding guest can sign his/her name on this unique wooden piece to create a lasting and decorative memory!”

I know we’ll LOVE to frame this and keep in visible in our home for years to come!

Next up are The Wedding Perch‘s lovely little favor bags. How cute would these be filled with candies made locally or birdseed/petals/lavender to throw in the air post-ceremony?

Last up are these adorable escort cards made of Lotka (or plantable) paper! Lotka paper is handmade in Nepal, and is produced through an environmentally friendly process. Also, half of the paper’s materials are recycled! Plus, as an added bonus to your guests, they can plant the escort cards in their gardens after the wedding for a beautiful floral display of your love and commitment! Now that’s eco-friendly decor.

Check out The Wedding Perch Etsy shop here!

All photos from The Wedding Perch shop

Drum Roll, Please…

We have selected bridesmaid dresses!

That’s right, readers – after searching high (as in high prices) and low (as in desperate Google searches for “metallic grey dresses”), my lovely gal pals and I have finally found a bridesmaid dress that not only will look fetch on all of my ladies, but is absolutely cost-effective, too!

The dress is from Dessy‘s After Six line, and after selecting four of my favorites, this is the one that all of my girlfriends loved:

Isn’t it beautiful! While the picture shows the dress in brown, my ladies will be wearing the dress in a metallic silvery grey satin (I still have to get swatches of the colors, but for now I like “mocha”). The dress comes with optional straps that my girls can elect to wear (I care not), which will help my chestier and/or more modest chums!

Here’s my next debate, however:  readers, do you see the waistline of the dress, and how the dress features almost a band around the waist? We have the option to either keep that band of fabric the same color as the dress, or to select an accent color for the band. Although I’ve flirted with the idea of having coral be my accent color, I really feel that my true love is yellow (yes, I changed my mind again…) so I love the idea of using a lighter hue of yellow as the accent color for the band. However, I also like the use of ivory as the accent color, since that’s the color of my wedding gown.

Even still, I love the dress in solid metallic grey, and to me, if I were a bridesmaid, I would prefer a solid-colored dress to a dress with an accent color. (I seriously think if it were me, I would wear this bridesmaid dress again to another wedding or a fancy holiday party.)

My solution: at this point, I think I’ll have the girls order the gowns in solid metallic grey, and that way, we have the option to add a yellow or ivory ribbon/sash to the dress, if we so choose.

Do you all remember this dress pattern? See the beautiful woman on the right in the amazing patterned strapless number? I love how she’s rocking that wrap with the brooch, and I recently fell in love with having my girls walk down the aisle with wraps and brooches of their own. But I’m not so sure of this look anymore, and I’m not sure why.

Readers, what do you think of the bridesmaid dress we’ve chosen? Have a thought about the color conundrum? What about the wrap look – what do you think? Please comment below!

Have a happy Tuesday!

Top Photo: Dessy’s After Six, Style 6553, www.dessy.com
Bottom Photo:  McCalls Dress Patterns, www.McCalls.com

Green Post Monday: Color Me Mine

Good Monday morning, everyone! If I seem a little cheerier today, it’s because today is my 23rd birthday – yay for birthdays!

Today’s Green Post Monday is devoted to Color Me Mine, a paint-your-own ceramics studio right here in Sioux Falls, SD. If you’re looking to make your own handmade gifts this holiday season, look no further: Color Me Mine has many ceramic pieces, from plates and mugs to vases and figurines, that you can personalize for your family and friends!

For the bride-to-be, Color Me Mine can provide the tools needed to create wonderful and personalized gifts for bridesmaids and other special people. Also, because brides are investing their time and energy in creating something special for their loved ones, they aren’t contributing to commercialized waste by purchasing gifts at a store that doesn’t uphold eco-friendly practices!

The Color Me Mine studio is also available to rent. How much fun would it be to get together with your bridesmaids and paint the afternoon away! That’s a bachelorette party or wedding shower in the making, if you ask me.

While Color Me Mine isn’t the most “green” venue in Sioux Falls, the studio strives to encourage community between novices and professionals, and to provide an open environment to create beautiful pieces of art. I would love to treat my bridesmaids to an afternoon at Color Me Mine!

Photo: Color Me Mine