Global warming is heating up the green wedding movement
Budget wedding eco-friendly events comprise one of the most promising wedding trends today. Growing concern about global warming and climate change is stirring the wedding business throughout America as creative go-green couples discover ways to make their modest budget wedding more environmentally responsible. Most go-green wedding clients already use energy-saving products and non-polluting services. Many couples choose to get married close to home, close to nature, or close to a particular environmental cause, and honeymoon destinations may be within driving distance. When planning a wedding with green wedding vendors, others show their concern about climate change by using their website to send paperless invitations, distribute chemical-free digital photos, and webcast their event to minimize travel to their destination wedding venue. Professional wedding planners are finally paying attention. Wedding planner training, wedding planner businesses, and wedding planner courses are catching up with the go-green times. It’s no longer surprising to observe a younger wedding planner book green wedding venues and vendors for a majority of their clients. Even traditional bridal gowns go green when they're rented, recycled, or purchased second hand, and eco-friendly outdoor wedding venues, including garden weddings, are more popular than ever. The exploding green wedding phenomenon is changing how Americans are getting married, adding a go-green chapter to the traditional wedding planning book.
The Blooming Green Wedding Market is a Budget Wedding Business Opportunity
Social values, global warming and climate change, and a desire to downsize the big white wedding to modest budget-wedding scale are common motivators for eco-minded couples who want to make a statement, educate their guests, and support green wedding vendors. From a wedding planner perspective, it's shocking that certain sectors of the wedding industry continue to ignore the inconvenient truth that green wedding and budget wedding customers represent a rising tide, not a passing fad. Except for go-green advertising by a limited number of green wedding businesses and wedding planning websites, attention to the fast-growing green wedding and budget wedding movement in the United States has been limited to articles about global warming, climate change, and go-green wedding events written by journalists who understand that the green wedding trend and budget wedding trends are here to stay. A green wedding planning book is still a rarity in the wedding sections of most bookstores. The wedding consulting profession is missing an economic opportunity. The mainstream industry's standard wedding planner book is missing a vital chapter. Careers in wedding planning today require the wedding planner book go-green venues and vendors for clients who care enough about global warming and climate change to know what to ask and where to turn. Will it be your wedding business, or to a wedding planning book?
Course Video Tutorial: 'A Journalist and Author Teaches the New Green Wedding' (37:42)
Foremost among those writing about the burgeoning green wedding movement is Mireya Navarro, an environmental writer for the New York Times and author of the wedding planning book 'Green Wedding: Planning Your Eco-Friendly Celebration.' Based on her research for 'How Green Was My Wedding,' a groundbreaking New York Times feature, it tells the inspiring stories of pioneering couples across America who discovered a variety of go-green venues and vendors while planning their eco-friendly celebrations. Lavishly illustrated but full of facts, it’s much more than a picture-wedding planner book, detailing how the carbon footprint of any wedding can be reduced using innovative technology, how go-green newlyweds can set up eco-friendly housekeeping, and how an array of green-planning resources can be accessed for free. Written for a mainstream audience, 'Green Wedding' makes a convincing case for planning a distinctive go-green wedding, without preaching, judging, or advocating conformity to a particular practice. In this course video tutorial, Mireya teaches Members green wedding planning techniques, including ideas, illustrations, and resources that can't be found in a traditional wedding planning book or, like the subject of wedding psychology and counseling, in any other wedding planner course.
Learn 12 essential elements of planning a green wedding:
- What makes a green wedding
- Why the green and budget wedding movements are here to stay
- How to identify and verify true-green venues and vendors
- How to limit your guest list without hurting feelings
- Ways to make non-green venues greener
- Why locally grown food is great for any celebration
- What organic really means and why local is often as good
- What Fair Trade standards mean and why they matter
- Leveraging Internet technology to save trees, travel, and time
- Six ways the white wedding gown can go green
- How to offer clients green options and attract green business
- How to help new green clients navigate the global green market
- How to identify phony 'greenwasher' vendors, venues, and businesses
