Thursday, May 7, 2009
Guest Blogger: Bridal Opulence is a Nashville-based, wedding coordinator who offers services ranging from full planning to day of wedding coordination.
More & more brides are becoming very eco chic when planning their wedding! In fact, Nashville brides are leading the pack when incorporating eco friendly decor and materials to make a huge impact on their wedding carbon footprint.
What’s a carbon footprint? A carbon footprint is the measure of impact that human activities have on their environment in regards to the amount of greenhouse gases produced, measured in units of carbon dioxide.
Track your carbon footprint
There are a number of fabulous websites that allow brides to track their wedding carbon footprint. Carbon footprint allows your wedding guest to choose a gift of planting a tree in your honor, which also helps to prevent climate change! As the recipient of this eco gift you will receive a gift certificate dated with your wedding date and a listing of how many trees will be donated by your guest.
tree planting event in Kenya - Oct 2006
latest tree growth - Feb 2009
TerraPass is a resourceful site that allows you and your planner to track your wedding carbon footprint, which is pretty useful if you are a true eco chic bride.
Give green bags
In search of a eco friendly out of town {OOT} bag? I love these great eco friendly bags from Bliss Wedding Market. These eco friendly bags are silk screened & made of 100% natural cotton. These bags are available in various city designs, however I did not see Nashville listed in the cities, but hey - we are Music City so maybe with enough influence they will create a bag for Nashville Brides!!
To add to Latrice’s brilliant options for reducing your carbon footprint, I’d like to add a few more ways to go green:
Give green gifts
My friend Sarah started Partners Tea. While she travels the world, she is based in Nashville and is “dedicated to connecting tea lovers with tea growers to improve the lives of both”.
She has introduced a new blend, which she calls “love” probably in honor of ABG brides. Only kidding. No seriously, I wanted to share it with you because I think it would be a great gift - if you are a tea lover - for your wedding guests.
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Sarah inspecting rooibos harvest with Barent, Cedarburg Mountains, South Africa, January, 2009
Love tea blend is a sweet and lively pomegranate white tea with cacao nibs and rose petals. They are $4 each and make a great wedding or shower favor, especially for a green minded bride. Partners Tea Company is a local Nashville company dedicated to making a difference through sharing our Fair Trade and Organic teas.
Sleep eco-friendly
When you are planning your wedding and want to calculate your footprint, you will quickly see that some things like air flights and hotel usage really impact the environment. Some changes are easier to make than others. I can’t help you with the airline impact but here are some green hotel options:
“Today’s green-savvy guests will find plenty of eco options at aloft Nashville-Cool Springs, thanks to our see green program. It starts at arrival, with park-like landscaping that offers the chance for a breath of fresh air.
Inside, natural materials like cork and sustainable wood veneers are integrated into the hotel’s design. And in guest rooms, less landfill litter is the thinking behind our in-shower product dispensers—non-biodegradable bottles, be gone! Guests can also choose to reuse—towels and linens, that is—to help save water and energy. Let’s go green!”
Also - Kristen gave me the following specifics about aloft’s green program:
1. We use compact fluorescent lighting throughout the property thus saving nearly 1000 tons of CO2e
2. We have lighting timers in all closets and back of house areas
3. All guest room HVAC systems have 9.4 EER
4. All HVAC unit temperatures in the common areas are set at a 2’ variance
5. Certain BOH HVAC unites cycle off from 5pm – 6am
6. aloft is Energy Star Approved
According to Conde Nast, “The newest hotel in Nashville is also the city’s greenest. The Hutton Hotel opened in mid-February, and counts among its eco-friendly attributes bamboo flooring, reclaimed wood furnishings, and card readers that turn off lights when guests leave their rooms. The hotel is green enough for Al Gore-a Tennessean himself-who will be holding his Climate Project annual meeting there in May.”
Millennium Hotels and Resorts is committed in working towards preserving the environment, with eco-friendly initiatives across all 15 U.S. hotels and at the corporate level. We are working towards these initiatives as a first step of the company’s long-term focus on being “green.”
In 2008, Gaylord Opryland was awarded Good Earth Keeping Awards from both the Tennessee Hotel & Lodging Association and the Greater Nashville Hotels & Lodging Association. The resort also earned an Environ-Management Award in 2006 from the American Hotel & Lodging Association.