Enter Brandi Dunagan, the owner of Country Sugar Events in San Antonio, a certified green wedding planner with a list of vendors who can line up local produce for the reception, find locally grown flowers, design invitations that use paper made from seeds and perform a variety of other services that will make the wedding more environmentally sensitive.
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Kate Harrison, founder of the online resource for eco-friendly weddings, the Green Bride Guide, said interest in green weddings has grown over the past four years to a point now where almost half of the brides expect to include at least one, environmentally sensitive activity in their event.
She estimates that environmentally sensitive weddings are a $2 billion industry that should grow as 20-year-olds who have been surrounded by environmental concerns their whole lives move into prime marrying age.
The Wedding Report, a service that analyzes the wedding industry, said in a 2009 survey said that more than 36 percent of the couples it surveyed purchased products and services from vendors that were considered “green” or “earth friendly.”
Flowers, invitations, gifts and decorations were the most popular categories for green purchases, while wedding dresses, rings, photography and entertainment were the least popular.
Dunagan said her green events concentrate on buying local produce to keep both the impact and costs of shipping down but can include other features – such as sending save-the-date notices out electronically rather than by mail, finding one venue for the ceremony and reception rather than two, and buying vintage dresses rather than having them newly made.
The cost is not necessarily higher than a traditional wedding, Dunagan said.
“We’re going to do what they want,” said Dunagan, who was certified as a green wedding planner by Longevity Inc.’s Wedding Planning Institute. “You can have one for under $10,000.”
Speaking as someone who is thankfully not in the market for anything wedding-related (and hopefully won’t be for another 20 years or more), what struck me about this story was the lack of anything quantitative. There’s not a single example of how much a “green” option will save or cost you. For many of the items mentioned, it’s not even really clear to me why they’re considered “green”; sending “save the date” notices electronically is the main exception. I’m all about doing stuff in a more environmentally-friendly fashion, but I’m somewhat skeptical of this because the wedding industry – and its close cousin, the baby industry – is a ginormous racket, famous for creating needs where they previously did not exist, and charging for them accordingly. As such, any article about a new trend in wedding planning is automatically suspect to me. I hope I’m wrong this time, but it’ll take more than a puff piece to convince me.