Dan and Daniela’s 250 guest wedding in April in Malibu was gorgeous and eco-friendly to the max in a relaxed, fun and creative way. It’s their life style after all: to be sensitive to all there is. We were in tune about “green” not just being an exchange of “bad” products with “good” products , but a philosophy of life. Integrating local vendors and talent of the closer community is one part of it.
Daniela, Dan, Susan (Daniela’s mom) and I had gone on a vendor trip through LA in December, which started checking out Invitesite in Pasadena. As much as they liked the variety of their eco cool papers, colors and shapes, they got inspired to ask their friends Dave Wilson and Hannah Barr-DiChiara to produce a keep sake, which their guests might even want to frame. So they created a very A personal, creative wedding invitation.
Dave had taken photographs from the beach at Daniela’s grand parents home, the prospective wedding venue and then created a water color painting – not knowing that he had just produced the inspiration and art work for a wedding.
The wedding colors, blue and orange and the abstract sunset were composed for an arty design, repeated in the wedding CD, a recording of Daniela and Dan, who are musicians. They tour a lot in Canada and compose songs for (a couple of famous) commercials. Their designers Dave and Hannah made sure that the San Francisco printer was as eco-friendly as the recycled paper. Detail: behind the sunset in the water color is the actual invite, which can be pulled out.
Using recycled paper like Daniela and Dan or paper made from rags and 500 sustainable fibers, offered for over a decade by Helen and Scott from Invitesite, is much less harmful than the “regular” paper making process. The chain saw loving paper industry often doesn’t stop cutting down ancient growth and clear cutting rain forests and even the caring paper manufacturer can’t avoid requiring huge amounts of water and fossil fuels. Statistics say that the pulp and paper industry is the second largest consumer of energy, ad the printing industry, with tons of ink, toner, solvents, coatings, and adhesives and you are looking at a rather scary picture. New businesses to the rescue: as long as eco friendly products, like soy inks are used, the impact on the environment is bearable. But the traditional wedding invitation – including an outer envelope, inner envelope, the invitation itself, a reply card, and directions to the venue – plus a variety of other stationary is quite a production and requires a lot of energy
