Make a Difference With These Earth Friendly
Bella Figura: Bella Figura offers beautiful wedding invitations that are also sustainable thanks to materials that include 100 percent tree-free papers and vegetable-oil and citrus-based solvent inks.
Make a Difference With These Earth Friendly
Beyond that, the company recycles everything used to create the invitations (to reduce waste in landfills), uses wind-powered energy at their headquarters and donates surplus paper to art teachers. Bella Figura also encourages customers to donate a tree upon placing their order, which the company matches. Seriously, this company does everything.
Tiny Prints: Choose the eco-friendly invitation option at Tiny Prints for pretty designs that use recycled papers. The company also has a partnership with
American Forests to restore parts of the Deschutes National Forest in Oregon that were affected in a lightning fire in 2012, helping plant pine and fir trees across an amazing 2,000 acres in the forest. Just think, you can order paper goods and contribute to forest growth at the same time!
Make a Difference With These Earth Friendly
The Windmill Paper Boutique
The Windmill Paper Boutique offers eco-friendly paper invitations as well as stand-out, non-paper alternatives you wouldn’t think of using in your wedding suite, like wood, cork, metal, plastic and acrylic. Even its vegetable-based inks are environmentally conscious! And in an effort to support eco-friendly business,
Make a Difference With These Earth Friendly
The Windmill Paper Boutique selects wind-powered printers to manufacture the products. So you’ll get the small-business attention to detail, with the big-brand know-how for a total win-win.
Vaseful
Not only is Vaseful a beautiful flower service that ships nationwide, it also provides a unique source of employment and interactive environment for disabled members of its community. Vaseful will work with you to design the perfect flowers for your wedding style, from bride and bridesmaid bouquets to centerpieces and ceremony décor.
Based in New York City, Repeat Roses collects flowers after a wedding, repurposes the arrangements, and delivers them to residents and patients in nursing homes, hospice care and shelter facilities to help to spread the joy from your wedding into the homes and bedsides of those who could use a little extra cheer. Leftover greenery and unusable flowers are composted rather than thrown away in the trash, so nothing goes to waste.
Make a Difference With These Earth Friendly
Rebloom
Available in New York and Boston, Rebloom is the pay-it-forward of florals, working with event planners and brides to repurpose flower arrangements. Before the event starts, Rebloom collects the floral details (such as price and quantity) from the original buyer, picks up the arrangements post-event, rearranges the florals using the best quality blooms, and then resells them the next day at up to a 90 percent discount.
Make a Difference With These Earth Friendly
A portion of proceeds from this exchange is donated to a charity of the event host’s choice. Both sides of the transaction are done online, while buyers are notified of newly available arrangements through a subscription-based newsletter in a flash-sale style.
- Cookies for Kids’ Cancer An evening snack served by the dance floor is a great way to pump some energy back into the crowd—and cookies are a tried-and-true favorite, especially when the proceeds go to pediatric cancer research and clinical trials. Choose from Cookies for Kids’ Cancer’s 10 gourmet flavors to reenergize your friends and family at the tail end of your reception, and let them know they’re supporting a great cause.
- Feed Your Soul:Dessert buffets are trending in receptions everywhere, so why not supplement yours with goodies that donate to an organization as meaningful as St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital? Feed Your Soul offers 19 different flavors of cookies (in bulk or individually packaged), all certified Kosher dairy.
- VEEV Spirits Yes, your alcohol can be environmentally friendly too! VEEV offers carbon neutral spirits, as well as organic, ready-to-pour cocktails like coconut coladas and, the classic crowd-pleaser, margaritas. In addition to the earth-friendly wind-powered distillery, 1 percent of all sales are donated to rainforest preservation and environmental initiatives. Cheers to that!
- The Bridal Garden You can donate previously worn veils, headpieces, sashes, boleros, shawls, jewelry and—if you can part with it—wedding gowns to The Bridal Garden. You can also buy your wedding gown at 75 percent off the original retail price from its shop and have the proceeds go to educating disadvantaged children.Mountain and Sackett The fellas can get in on charitable dressing too! Sixty percent of sales on select men’s ties at Mountain and Sackett are donated to Autism Speaks. Pick one of the handmade ties that sports a pattern using the charity’s signature puzzle piece. Brides for a CauseAt Brides for a Cause, you can donate your wedding gown to its Wish Upon a Wedding organization—a nonprofit that provides weddings and vow renewal services for couples going through terminal illness or a life-altering situation.
- Brandon Kidd PhotographyBrandon Kidd Photography donates 10 percent of proceeds from its photography packages to an organization of the client’s choice. Every time you look back at your wedding photos, you’ll get that extra-fuzzy feeling knowing they also represent giving back to a meaningful cause.
Studio EMP
At Studio EMP, you can help endangered species just by smiling for the camera. The photography company encourages people to stay informed of wildlife welfare by working with Big Life Foundation, a wildlife and endangered species preservation foundation, and donating a portion of its profits to the foundation. Fearless Photographers Fearless Photographers is made up of individual wedding photographers who donate a portion of their proceeds to any of the multiple charities they partner with, including Doctors Without Borders, Save the Children and the Environmental Defense Fund. They’re impressing us with their goal for 2015: to reach $100,000 in donations!