Fair Trade Weddings

Some of you may know by now that Jency, the store manager, and I, the bookkeeper/whatever else guy, are getting married this spring.  That's right.  Sorry, the rest of human males, she's mine.  Any of you wise guys tries anything, and I WILL beat you up.

But seriously.  All this wedding planning stuff has had me doing Google search after Google search for things like invitations, flowers, even rings.  Something cool I've been finding through our MySpace friends are fairly-traded alternatives for many common components of the American wedding.  Here's a quick list of things I've seen so far:

• Fairly traded flowers
• Fairly traded, eco-friendly, conflict-free rings
• More fairly traded, eco-friendly, conflict-free rings
• Fairly traded, handmade paper for invitations/programs
• More fairly traded, handmade paper for invitations/programs
• Fairly traded, handmade guestbooks and photo albums

We're actually using a few of these items in our wedding.  

We're getting these cards from one of the store's vendors, Originals from Africa, to use as our invitations.  They come from Zimbabwe.  Jency just took a sample to a local guy that does letter-pressing, and it turned out AWESOME.  These are going to be very cool, and not too expensive.

We'll also be using one of these guestbooks from another of our store's vendors, Handmade Expressions.  This one's handmade and leather-bound in India.  I don't think they're available for purchase directly from their website.  If you're interested in any of this stuff, talk to us and we can probably order it for you.

After I created our MySpace account I started friending anyone I could find with a similar mission.  One place I found is a fair trade store in Maine.  They've got a whole section of their website devoted to fairly traded wedding stuff.

There are all kinds of resources on the web for making your wedding 'socially conscious' -- i.e., green, fair trade, conflict-free, etc.  Getting married soon?  Check it out.