In Loving Memory

Mr. Olive and I have been looking for unique ways to remember the people that will not be able to celebrate the wedding with us. We have chosen three ways to honor those who cannot be attend.

I particularly wanted to honor my grandmothers (one passed away in 2005 and the other is too sick to travel to the wedding) and my uncle who passed away last summer. In their honor I will be adding photo charms to my wedding bouquet. This way they will be with me all day and then I will be able to save the charms as a keepsake (as I do not plan to save the bouquet). I talked to my florist and she thought this was a wonderful idea and doesn’t believe she will have any trouble incorporating them into the bouquet. I will use a photo of each of them from the day of their wedding.

This is an idea of what I am planning:

Flickr


Source

And this beautiful photo (I can't seem to upload it...): http://www.flickr.com/photos/mijita/2401836349/

The florist suggested looking for photo charm frames at a craft store but then I found a wonderful seller on Etsy, DesignsbyTami, who makes and sells two sided charms. She was selling a bracelet of three charms for $25 so I asked her if she would be willing to sell me three single charms for $20. She responded quickly and was happy to do this for me. She will be making me three, soldered glass charms for $20 + $2 shipping. I am happy to be able to support an independent vendor and to have a quality keepsake.

Here is the bracelet and what the charms will look like:

Charm Braclet by DesignsbyTami

I will gather the pictures when I go to Minnesota this weekend for my bridal shower. Once she has the pictures the turn around should be very fast! I will post additional pictures when they arrive!

Another way that we are planning to remember the important people in our lives is by placing framed family and wedding photos on our cake table. We will not be having a traditional large wedding cake (more on that later) but we will be doing a small, 9” round cake to use for the tradition of cutting the cake. The cake table at our venue is very large so we needed to add something to fill it up since our cake is so small. We will be placing our parents and grandparents wedding photos as well as other sentimental family photos. The photos will be placed in frames we already own or in frames bought from second-hand stores. It will look something like this (with a much smaller cake):

Flickr

Finally, in lieu of favors, we will be making a donation to the National MS Society in memory of Mr. Olive’s cousin who recently passed away due to complications related to Multiple Sclerosis (I will blog more about this soon).

How did/are you remembering loves ones on your special day?

Event Space

Mr. Olive and I first set foot in our event space in July 2006. We had gone to San Francisco to visit his father and we spent a day doing wine tastings and lunch in Napa. We had lunch on the deck at Auberge du Soliel overlooking the gorgeous vineyards below. There was a wedding rehearsal going on during our lunch and we talked about how wonderful it would be to marry there. I was hooked. From this day one it was always the place I thought of whenever weddings came up.

Bride Looking at the Valley

We were lucky that this site was also a very ecofriendly choice and fit my needs for an ecofriendly wedding! Their website outlines the following eco-practices:

HOTEL
- Founding member of the Green Spa Network (greenspanetwork.org)
- Water Conservation – low flow shower, toilet and faucets
- Dimmers in all guest rooms, meeting rooms and dining rooms
- Daylight provides natural lighting during lunch services
- Glass, paper and oil recycling - Reduced Junk and Bulk mailing
- Landscaping produces our own mulch
- Non-toxic “Method” cleaning products
- Organic pest controls sprays


RESTAURANT
- Biodynamic and Pesticide-free onsite vegetable and herb garden
- Full size non disposable resort amenities – all of which are Paraben free
- Local and organic farmers used by Auberge du Soleil: California Certified Organic Farms (Frog Hollow, Capay Organics, Full Belly Farms, Swanton Berry Farm); Sustainable Agriculture Farms (K&J Orchards, Kashawashi Orchards, Blue Moon Organic Berries, Goldbud Peaches, Meridian Hazelnut Farm)
- Organic Coffee

Couple at Ceremony Site

There are many things to consider when choosing an ecofriendly/sustainable site for your wedding. Some suggestions for choosing an ecofriendly site:
- A site that will benefit from your event such as a museum, art gallery, city party or local vineyard/farm.

- A site that has both your ceremony and reception in one place (to reduce travel emissions) or is close to your house of worship.

- A site with nice style to reduce the need for extra decorations/flowers

- Choose a hotel with green practices from the Green Hotels Association (listed by state).

Spring Wedding in Central Park

Some questions to ask a possible site include:

- Will the space benefit from your event such as a museum, garden, art gallery or zoo?

- Does the site use locally grown or organic foods?

- What is their recycling policy?

- Do they support community events and local businesses/vendors?

- In the case of an outdoor ceremony, what is the rain plan?

Does your site have an ecofriendly practices? What are you doing to "green" your site?

With this Ring...

My grandparents were married for over 60 years before my grandfather passed away in 1992. They had four children and started their own business running a flower shop in rural Wisconsin. My grandmother wore her engagement ring and wedding band every single day. When she passed away in 2006 the wedding jewelery was passed along to my mother (her only living daughter). My grandmother had worn the rings for so long - 75 years - that the metal from the two rings had fused together into one.

Marge & Ole Odden
1931

When it came to choosing my wedding band I was at a complete blank. There was no particular style or design that I was looking for. I was hoping to find a white gold band with some smaller diamonds, but nothing too big or flashy.

I considered three eco-friendly wedding band options:
1. Use a family piece
2. Buy from a reputable business
3. Buy vintage

As you may remember, Mr. Olive designed my engagement ring using a diamond from his grandmother's collection. I thought it would be a lovely idea to use a ring from my family as the matching wedding band. The only ring that would have worked was my grandmother's and I didn't want to separate it from her engagement ring. My mom wears my grandmothers rings and I know that they will be passed along to me someday.

The next option I considered was buying a ring from a responsible vendor. Some of the eco-friendly businesses I checked out were:

Green Karat: Green Karat uses recycled gold in all of their pieces. You can even use recycle your own gold for store credit or use it to make a ring. This is a great option for taking a piece of family jewelery and creating a unique piece with sentimental history.

Brilliant Earth: Brilliant Earth uses conflict free diamonds from Canada, fair labor and environmental practices, and donate 5% of profits to African communities. I liked the wedding bands at Brilliant Earth the most because for me they were the most traditional.

Leber Jeweler: Offers the Earthwise Jewelry® Collection, combining conflict free diamonds, fairly traded colored gemstones and environmentally conscious precious metals.

Finally, I considered buying a vintage wedding band. This was the option that I was most interested in. Ultimately my goal is to reduce, reuse and recycle - in that order. I definitely wanted a wedding band so reduce wasn't an option here but by purchasing a vintage band I could reuse instead of buying a new piece (even if it is conflict free and recycled).

I searched in several different stores looking for wedding bands. They can be a bit harder to find than other vintage jewelry because they are usually kept in the family or worn into a state of disrepair (as was the case with my grandmother). Another challenge in purchasing vintage wedding bands is that some designs can't be sized (like eternity bands) so you need to find a ring that fits without sizing.

While we were in San Francisco for our big wedding planning weekend we had a chance to visit a great vintage jeweler, Old & New Estates.

2181A Union Street
San Francisco, CA 94123

It was here that I found the perfect wedding band! These beautiful band is an art deco style from the 1920s. It contains 9 tiny channel set diamonds into the front of the band and the rest of the band has a hand carved art deco design. I have never seen anything like it and I knew the minute I put it on that it was the right wring for me. It was the perfect combination of simplicity and elegance! I think it goes very well with my engagement ring which is wonderful because I plan to wear them together once we are married.

Back of Ring with Diamond Set in Front

Art Deco Engraving

How did you choose your wedding band? Will you wear your engagement ring with your wedding band?

Making a Destination Wedding Green

One of the biggest pieces of green wedding advice that I have read is to reduce the amount of travel (especially air travel) due to its impact on the environment.

No Planes!

As you have probably figured out, this is a piece of green advice that we did not follow. We are having a destination wedding and 70 of the 75 guests will need to fly to San Francisco. I wish that we could have had a local wedding but this just wasn't an option for us. My family lives in Minnesota, Mr. Olive's family lives on the East coast and our friends are all over the country. We decided early on that the only way to make everyone happy was for everyone travel. We had dreamed about getting married in Napa Valley and we knew the perfect venue to bring together our family and friends.

We have incorporated many other green travel aspects into our wedding such as transporting guests by bus, using a limo company with a "green fleet" and choosing a hotel location that reduces the need to rent a car (more on these later).

If you are concerned about the travel impact of your destination wedding you can choose to purchase a carbon offset for a portion of your guest travel, your wedding event or your honeymoon. Offsetting guest travel would be a great alternative to the traditional favors! Each site calculates the amount of carbon a little differently. Here are two reputable carbon offset organizations with wedding calculators:

Carbon Fund

You can calculate and offset the carbon impact of your wedding in their ZeroCarbon™ Weddings section. The calculation takes into account the number of guests, number flying, avg. flight distance, number of cars, avg. driving distance, and the number of hotel night stays.

TerraPass

TerraPass also has a wedding calculator to determine a wedding output. Their calculator is more specific than Carbon Fund. It considers four different sources of emissions: airline emissions from guest travel (short, medium and long flights), automobile emissions from guest travel (number of cars and avg. miles), energy use in hotel rooms, and the energy use for the wedding itself (DJ, the caterer, temperature control, lighting, etc.).


The purchase of a wedding TerraPass includes "a certificate of offset with a handsome frame for display at your wedding (valued at $40, including shipping). The frame is made from salvaged Douglas fir using environmentally responsible materials and business practices. After your wedding, the frame makes a great keepsake."

A "Green" Dress - Part I

The search for an ecofriendly wedding dress (with a tight budget) was quite interesting. I considered renting, buying used or finding a new, ecofriendly dress.

For Rent

Mr. Olive's brother got married a couple of years ago to a wonderful woman from Brazil. She wore a gorgeous dress that she rented in Brazil for less than $250! Apparently it is quite common for brides in Brazil to rent their dresses. I know the idea of renting a wedding dress might sound completely crazy but to me it made perfect sense. I didn't plan to keep my dress after the wedding (closet space in NYC is too valuable) and I figured I could rent a beautiful dress for much less than it would cost to buy! Men rent tuxes all the time so why can't I rent my wedding dress? I also figured that living in the largest city in the country I should be able to find plenty of rental options.

Manhattan

Boy was I wrong. I found two stores that claimed to rent wedding gowns. I tried calling the first store, MyrJan (Prospect Heights, Brooklyn) to schedule an appointment but they never answered the telephone.


I did schedule an appointment with the second store, Fancy Wedding Center, also in Brooklyn. My FSIL and my bridesmaid went with me to search for the perfect dress. This store was tiny and they gave me a book of pictures to look through. I could choose three pictures from the book and try on those dresses (there was nobody else in the store so I have no idea why the appointment was so limited). I tried on the three dresses but they were a huge disappointment. They were all way too big and the material was scratchy. On top of this the dresses were still expensive (over $300), did not include alterations and the rental only covered three days which wouldn't work for my destination wedding. I left disappointed and discouraged. Apparently renting the wedding gown was not in my future.


Staying tuned for Plan B - buying a used dress...

A Celtic Wedding Ring

Source

Mr. Olive and I drove to Fairfield, Connecticut today for the 2008 Fairfield County Irish Festival to search for his wedding ring! As you may remember, Mr. Olive and his brothers will be wearing their family kilt for the wedding. He wanted a Celtic two-tone, open knot wedding ring. He found a vendor online from Massachusetts who would be at the festival so we decided to make the drive up.

Celtic Revival is a small family owned business that was started in 1992. They have an extensive selection of beautiful rings with all different designs and different types of knots. All of the rings are handmade to order so you can choose the size, width, knot design and the types of metal. Another great thing is that Celtic Revival donates a percentage of the profits from their wedding ring orders to Habitat for Humanity and the Heifer Program.

Luckily, Mr. Olive found the perfect ring! He choose the Serenity 8.2 mm ring with a white gold boarder and a yellow gold center. They will hand make the ring to fit Mr. Olive and it should arrive by FedEx in about four weeks.

Serenity

It was so fun to watch Mr. Olive try on wedding bands. I can't wait until we are married and I can see his wedding band every day. How long did it take to find your man's wedding band? Did you pick it out for him or did he find it on his own?

We also found a beautiful hand-carved wood box that the ring bearer will carry (instead of a pillow). This way we can keep the box after the wedding as a special and useful memento! The square box is 3.5" x 3.5" x 2".

The Eco/Socially Responsible Elements

1. Independently owned business.

2. Locally made products.

3. Reusable ring-bearer box.

Others ways to have an ecofriendly wedding band is to use a family piece, buy vintage, or use recycled metals or stones.

I Heart The Postlady

Source

I love getting the mail every day. I mean I really love getting the mail so much that I have the only mailbox key for our apartment, this way Mr. Olive can never beat me to it (so sneaky)! Sometimes I order things online, instead of buying in a store, just so I can get them in the mail :) I know, I'm a dork. Anyhow, today was an especially exciting mail day! The postlady delivered two wonderful wedding items!


First, the invite for our couple's wedding shower in Minnesota hosted by my sister-in-law and nieces (also my flower girls)!

Second, our first RSVP postcard!

Yippie!

What was the last exciting wedding item you received in the mail?