You are engaged to be married & are planning for your wedding. Part of the planning process is considering your guest list, who to invite to join you in celebrating your best day ever. Who have been your tribe past & present? Who do you think you will remain an important part of your lives after you are married? Just as you consider the impact they have had on you, you must consider the impact your wedding day will have on Mother Nature. In wedding planning, every decision has a ripple effect and that goes for the change it will have the environment from the city you get married in to the spot you travel to for your honeymoon and even where you will live when you have kids!
We think taking care of the planet is not just important, it is essential. As much as we need to cultivate our relationships with others including our significant others (you have a fiancé!), friends, family, yes, even Aunt Karen, we also need to consider our relationship to the land. Indigenous people know this better than most of us who settled here yet instead of learning from them, we pushed forward in the pursuit of progress. Fast forward to today and one good thing that has come during the pandemic is we have had time to slow down and many people are turning back to the land, rediscovering what it has to offer. Whether growing a home garden or planting flowers to enhance the beauty of the space one is stuck in 24/7, we are learning.
We are honored to be added to the Plan with Purpose group of Wedding Planners. So we thought it would be a great time to share our passion and highlight some great people and organizations doing amazing things for Mother Earth. You may wonder what this has to do with events, and we would argue what doesn’t it have to do with your event? We believe in considering sustainability and the impact your event will have in waste and emissions as you are planning. It can be a negative impact or a positive one. We are a proud partner with these organizations and encourage you to take the time to get to know them. We want to start by introducing a couple local to our business in LA & Phoenix.
California
LA Compost began in 2013 with the collective efforts of volunteers, friends and family. They wanted communities to see how far their organic material was traveling and the harmful effects it had on the environment. Then they shifted to a model of decentralized community compost hubs -cared for, maintained and enjoyed by activated community members. LA Compost hubs are built in places where people coexist -in churches, schools, gardens, and workplaces throughout LA County. For more information or o find a hub near you, click here.
TreePeople is another great nonprofit that inspires and supports the people of LA to come together to plant and care for trees, harvest the rain, and renew depleted landscapes. Born more than 40 years ago from the efforts of a teenager, they have involved more than 3 million people in planting and caring for more than 3 million trees. They unite with communities to grow a greener, shadier and more water-secure city at homes, neighborhoods, schools and in the local mountains.
I first met up with them when I was organizing a group of Disney interns to volunteer to plant trees in Culver City. We learned a lot of the proper way to plant a tree so it can thrive from the start and we had a fun! They are also helping influence government agencies to ensure a healthy future for Los Angeles and you'd be missing out if don't connect with them to plant even more trees!
Arizona
The Center for Biological Diversity believes the welfare of humans is deeply connected to nature, a vast diversity of wild animals and plants. The Center was founded in New Mexico's Gila wilderness, where Kierán Suckling, Peter Galvin, and Todd Schulke met while surveying owls for the U.S. Forest Service in 1989. They were successful in stopping logging to protect a spotted owl and since then they have expanded to protecting sensitive species in Arizona, the Southwest and now throughout the country. Biological diversity has intrinsic value, and because its loss hurts society as a whole, they work to secure a future for all living things, especially those hovering on the brink of extinction. They innovated by systematically using biological data, legal expertise, and the citizen petition provision of the powerful Endangered Species Act to obtain legally binding new protections for animals, plants, and their habitats.
Keep Sedona Beautiful, Inc., founded in 1972, preserves Sedona’s scenic environment by helping to protect the red rocks and blue skies from the influx of visitors. They partner with the stewardship of its 600 members and 120+ volunteers in order to help keep the roadways litter-free, using gentle but effective signage, awesome starry night skies, plenty of protected open spaces, buildings in harmony with the environment, and so much more. We love Sedona for engagement photos and elopements / small weddings, and we love that they are helping keep it beautiful for future visitors.
Worldwide
Green Belt Movement was established by Professor Wangari Maathai, a woman from Kenya who won the Nobel Prize in 2004 for the grassroots efforts that has now planted over 51 million trees across Africa. The Green Belt Movement promotes environmental conservation by building climate resilience and empowering communities, especially women and girls and fostering democratic space and sustainable livelihoods. The Green Belt Movement continues and currently has a Gift-a-tree campaign, allowing people around the world the opportunity to participate in planting trees in Kenya today for only $10. In honor of their work, we made a donation & invite you to join us!
We hope this was helpful & encouraging. We know there are many more amazing organizations out there helping the environment and we are so grateful. We hope this encourages you to find a way for you to lower your carbon footprint or protect the environment in some way right where you are. If that means, using cloth bags for grocery shopping, declining a straw when you go out to dinner or plan your wedding in a way that reduces waste. Of course, if that is something important to you, we know many ways to make that happen. Here are a few more ideas. And when you are ready to get started, contact us so we can guide you through it!
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