Beeswax candles

When we were first researching venues, I ran a search on flickr for photos of other weddings to see what kind of feel the places had. The photos of weddings held at our venue looked vibrant, fun and casual, which is one of the reasons we ended up going with it. One wedding in particular had some evening photos with votive candles on the tables, and it looked so beautiful:

I started researching votive candles and votive holders and found that I could get the standard fare for pretty cheap! But somewhere along the way I was clued into the fact that those cheap paraffin candles are pretty terrible for the environment:

"Paraffin wax consists of alkane hydrocarbons and melts between 47°C and 65°C (around 120° to 150° F). It is derived from light lubricating oil distillates. When burned, the fumes can contain a number of carcinogens including Acetaldehyde, Acrolein, Benzene, Formaldehyde, Polychlorodibenzo-p-dioxins, Polyaromatic Hydrocarbons and Toulene."

- Green Living Tips. Woah, that's definitely not the kind of thing I want to expose my nearest and dearest to! Not only that a lot of the cheapo candles you can buy in bulk come from China where the industrial practices can be shady. A fantastic alternative is 100% beeswax, which is natural, renewable, clean burning and relatively inexpensive. Not only that, but you can often find beeswax candles from bees that have been buzzing around your own backyard!

Cost comparison:

• 100 paraffin unscented tea-light candles in metal cups: $9.99 (Amazon.com)
• 24 beeswax tea-light candles in plastic cups: $15.00 (Toadily Handmade)

So beeswax candles are more expensive ($.63 each vs. $.10 each) but not prohibitively so and the environmental offset is significant. Some other things to consider:

• if the beeswax is unfiltered it will have a natural yellow-gold color and mild scent. The ivory beeswax candles you can find have been filtered which removes much of the natural scent.
• Consider getting tea lights "naked" or without metal or plastic cups. If you're use glass holders, put a little water in the bottom which will make removing the wax easier.
• If you find a phemonenal deal on beeswax candles, make sure you're buying 100% beeswax before making your purchase. If they are cut with paraffin they will be cheaper.
• DIY option - buy cotton wicking and filtered beeswax to melt and pour your own candles into recycled jars, glasses or teacups

What about soy?

Soy candles are made of hydrogenated soybean oil and have a low melting point so are often contained in tins or jars. Soy candles also burn clean and have many of the same benefits as beeswax candles. But growing, harvesting and processing soybeans is far more land, water, chemical and fossil fuel intensive than beeswax production. However, if you're vegan, then soy candles are probably the right choice for you.

Resources:

• Toadily Handmade - 100% beeswax candles from Mission Viejo, California
• Hurd Beeswax Candles - Berkeley, California
• Candle Bee Farm - candles from a vegetarian beekeeper in Kentucky
• Sunbeam Candles - Created with solar power in upstate New York
• Chicago Honey Co-Op - totally cool urban apiary in Chicago
  

Tabletop trials and tribulations

I'm really pretty chill about most of our wedding details and decor. I mean, it just does not matter that much. We knew we didn't want it to look like a banquet hall or have everything really matchy matchy. Since the entire event is outside on a patio and deck, there's nothing to decorate except the tables anyway. Initially we thought we'd rent green tablecloths and have white antique tea cloths as overlays, with potted herbs as centerpieces. Then we learned that 1) the green tablecloths that the rental company had were a really yucky color and 2) our venue would provide us with white tablecloths and napkins FOR FREE!

So we changed our minds, and decided to use the free linens since that would save us approximately $120. But I still felt like there should be a splash of color on the tables, either in the form of a runner or an overlay or something. So I did some online research and dragged Dave to fabric and craft stores. I learned a lot:

• store bought table runners start at about $20.
• fabric starts at about $8 a yard, and eco-friendly (bamboo, organic cotton, hemp) is around $15 a yard.
• paper is LOVELY; it comes in a lot of patterns, colors, textures, and eco-friendly options; it does not require ironing or sewing, it can be reused and repurposed, and above all it's CHEAP!

I really wanted to use either a tree-free or recycled paper. There area lot of options out there. I found lokta paper, which is handmade in the mountains of Nepal from the inner bark of the lokta bush. Lokta is one of the strongest paper fibers, and since new growth regenerates quickly it provides a renewable resource. Works for me!

If you're thinking of going this route, I've listed some resources below for ideas:

Paper Source - Papers from Japan, Nepal, India, Europe and others. Chain of retail stores too.
The Paper Studio - a huge selection, and you can search by color!
Paper Mojo - A nice selection organized by type of print, and a great sale section
LCI paper - carries Japanese chiyogami paper in several sizes and a lot of solid colors
Hollander's - over 1,600 styles of paper including a wide selection of natural fibers

However, because the weight and color of paper varies so much, especially with handmade paper, I highly suggest seeing these in person before making a purchase. Also, you'll save shipping costs and minimize your carbon footprint if you patronize a local paper or art shop.

Buying your wedding dress online

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The biggest reason I bought my dress online was due to the fact that I refused to spend more than a couple of hundred dollars on this dress, or a lot of time searching for the perfect vintage dress that was within my budget. The eco-dresses out there are fantastic, but I couldn't find anything that was really my style or in my budget. It would have been fun to search for that vintage dress, but I knew it would have taken a lot of time that I didn't have! However, shopping online means you can't try it on (and most places won't take returns), you're not supporting a local business, the dress was likely made overseas, and with all the transportation from wherever its made, to their warehouse to your door, there are a lot of fossil fuels used. I feel pretty bad about those aspects, so I was determined to find something I could wear again.

I also had a pretty good idea of what I wanted in terms of cut, style, length, etc. (tea-length, casual, strapless - like a summer sun dress) I did go to one local bridal shop that purportedly had a good selection of affordable vintage, tea-length dresses but the service was pretty terrible and I didn't find anything close to what I was looking for. If you have no idea what you are looking for, then trying to find a wedding dress online is going to be really challenging.
Here are some things I learned along the way:

• Google image search is your friend!
• If its incredibly unbelievably cheap, you're likely buying a replica - beware!
• Try to find a picture of a real bride wearing the dress so you can see how it would look on someone other than the 5'10" 115lb model wearing it.
• Read reviews of the place you're buying the dress from, and make sure they are legit before giving up your credit card number. Also, make sure they are authorized by the manufacturer to sell the dress, otherwise it could be a knock-off and of poor quality.
  
• Pay close attention to the manufacturer's size chart and measure yourself before you commit to ordering a certain size - dress sizes are different than street-clothes sizes!
• That said, budget for alterations! Its very likely you'll have to make some changes to make it fit perfectly. My dress cost about $200 with shipping but the alterations were well over $300. I was ok with that since no matter what the cost of the dress I'd have to have it altered. It was also my opportunity to give some business to a local dressmaker!

I ended up buying my Dessy dress from Tie The Knot Bride (they are an authorized retailer) and had a good experience. They estimated that the dress would be shipped 10 weeks after I ordered it, but it was delivered in about 6 weeks.

Birthday Calendar Guestbook

I really love the idea of guests being able to write greetings and well-wishes to us at our wedding. Its kind of like having your friends sign your yearbook and pouring over all of the notes at the end of the school year.

I was inspired today by Foy and Jeff's (of A Low Impact Wedding) fantastic calendar guestbook. Their guests left comments and wishes for them in a calendar on their birthday or anniversary. Because what are you going to do with a guestbook after the wedding anyway? In their words, "Put it in a box where it can clutter up the place." But the same problem ensues with a normal calendar for that year once the year is over.

Another problem is that the squares for each date greatly limit how much the guests can write. I want people to be encouraged to fill up a whole page if they want to, or draw a sketch, write a poem or whatever they want. Enter the perpetual birthday calendar. My idea is to use a 200 page spiral bound sketchbook, and use both sides of each page label each one page for each day of the year. You could use rubber stamps to decorate and do the lettering. Then guests would have a lot of space to write, and you could use the calendar perpetually, flipping the page each day.
These are kind of boring but I'm sure there are other sets out there. I haven't put this idea into practice yet, but am definitely considering it!

Photo Holders

Right off the bat we knew we couldn't do everything ourselves, because we both have very busy and demanding jobs and didn't want the wedding planning to completely take over our lives. But we wanted to retain creative control over the wedding, so we're doing all of the decor ourselves.Our first project was really designed and executed by Dave. We wanted to have photos of us and our families at the tables for people to look at and talk about, but we didn't want them to be just scattered around. So Dave made these clever photo holders from nothing more than wood and wire for just a few cents each.

Ingredients:

• Wood - either use a 4 by 4 or a square post, usually comes in 3 by 3


• Thick Wire -we found straight 12" lengths of wire about the same gauge as hangers in our local hardware store for. 20 each. You could also use wire hangers though.
  

Tools:

• Saw for cutting wood into cubes


• sander and sandpaper (or just sandpaper if you're paitent!)


• Drill


• Pliers

• measuring tape


• straight edge


• pencil

Instructions:

With the pliers, bend one end of the wire into a spiral.

This will take some muscle! You can do circles, squares, triangles, etc:

Alternative - use an aligator clip (arguably not as elegant).
Using the measuring tape and pencil, mark four inch intervals on the wood, then cut into cubes.

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On the cut end, use a straight edge to find the center by drawing diagonally from corner to corner:

Using a drill bit the same gague as your wire, drill a hole about an inch and a half or two inches deep, being careful to make sure its as straight as possible. (we used a drill press) Sand the cube until its nice and smooth. Insert the non-coiled end of the wire into the hole you've drilled. Stain or paint the wooden base.

Wedding guests and cell phones

Our wedding is going to be a pretty casual affair. That said, I really hate the idea of someone texting or tweeting or facebooking or blogging from their phone during our ceremony and reception. I hadn't really thought of this until reading Sara's blog post about attending a traditional church wedding and seeing the person next to her "bent over his cell phone, sending text messages to his friend." Eek!

There are several sort of "organic" things we are doing to avoid seeing our friends with phones in hands during the ceremony, including making the ceremony short and sweet, and making it funny and touching - in other words, worth paying attention to.

I thought about having our officiant at the beginning ask everyone to take out their cell phones and turn them off - but a lot of my friends' phones are also their cameras, and since we're not having a photographer I don't want to potentially lose photos. Even if they are of poor quality!


Besides, I kind of hate telling people what to do, and for the same reason, I don't want to have a bunch of "no cell phone" signs around. At the same time its something that would really bother me, it has a high potential of happening, and it's something we could potentially prevent.
Any ideas?


I just found this option online, but apparantly jamming cell phone signals is illegal, and potentially unsafe. I'd hate to be the reason someone couldn't call 911 in a nearby building!