Tuesday, July 1, 2008

The Bride Wore Green

You've all heard about green weddings right?

The wedding gown is spun from local sheep;s wool; the gazpacho from a local tomato farm; the champagne flutes from bio-degradable cellulose, etc.

Certainly, despite the smirk I can't help wearing, this is admirable.

Americans, as a rule, live beyond their resource footprint and any couple willing to dedicate themselves to lessening that inequity in their first day together are to be commended.

And now, according to this recent story in The New York Times, they don't have to stop after they drive away in their Prius with cans (soon to be recycled) tied to the back.

Now your honeymoon can be green too!

And it's not just granola-crunching, Teva-wearing, vegan tree huggers doing it either.

In fact EVERYBODY's doing it! Who knew?

My eyes popped a bit when I read the following sentence in the Times story: "An online survey conducted by Brides magazine in 2007 showed that 60 percent of the respondents believed that the environment was an important factor in planning their wedding."

And here I thought it was color theme, or the caterer. Well that's what it was in that Steve Martin movie. So sue me!

This-whole-"let's-not-be-known-as-the-generation-that-finally-ravaged-the-planet-beyond-redemption"-thing must be catching on.

According to the story, places all over the country are cashing in on the (what I hope will be a permanent) trend.

Some, like a hotel in Spain, run entirely on solar power and have couples stay in locally-made yurts. Seriously, I'm not making this stuff up. Go ahead and click on the link I provided and read it for yourself. I'll wait. Seriously, go ahead, I'm not going anywhere. Time is different here in cyberspace.

...

NOW do you believe me?

Anyway, for those of you who believed me the first time and don't have time to go linking (is this a verb yet? If not, then I claim it as my invention!) all over the Internet, the article also tackles the issue of all that carbon it takes to fly to your honeymoon destination.

And it offers two solutions, the old carbon offset routine (which I continue to have doubts about) or something simpler, stay close.

According to the article, you can just have a good old time down on the farm, Blackberry Farm in the Great Smoky Mountains in Tennessee to be exact.

It's a privately run organic farm that just added a barn to accommodate wedding parties. Can't you just smell the romance?

Who knows where this will all go, but its hard to argue with people trying to do the right thing in the midst of the psychological and scheduling maelstrom that is sometimes called planning a wedding and honeymoon.

But where ever it goes, here's hoping it goes green.

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