Tamara and Jack were married on August 8, 2008, (8.8.8 supposedly the luckiest day of the year) in a beautiful ceremony at the Ladybird Johnson Wildflower Center here in Austin. Many of you are already familiar with Tamara and Jack from previous posts, of which Tamara is now a kind of celebrity for being “that bride on the rock!”. They’re an amazing couple and I feel blessed that our paths have crossed. One of the reasons I connected with them is that they are genuinely concerned about our environment and in creating a sustainable future for the planet. They went above and beyond to make their wedding green. One of the main things they did was to offset all the carbon from the entire wedding, rehearsal dinner and wedding related showers! In addition, their venue was green, their invites were on recycled card stock, Tamara’s ring is vintage, the centerpieces & bouquets were created from native plants and then replanted after the wedding and the favors were fair trade and locally hand made. Also (yes, there’s more!) instead of having a traditional wedding shower they registered with Changing The Present so that guests could easily make donations to others in need. I think this is super cool, I had never heard of changingthepresent.org before and encourage everyone to check it out. Why not share the joy of your wedding in such a way that you give back to others and to the planet? Thank you Tamara and Jack for being such an inspiration to me and for letting me capture all the beautiful memories of your special day!  View their engagement photos and her bridal photos.

The New York Times is covering green weddings! How cool is that! It’s so exciting for me to see environmentally sustainable practices infiltrate the wedding industry. This is a great article for any couple contemplating the green wedding alternative. It’s chock full of wonderful links and online resources to planning an eco friendly union. Two of my personal favorites include ecochicweddings.com and protovert.com, both great for finding clever ways to green your wedding. Another recent fav not listed in this NY Times article is changingethepresent.com/weddings, where you can create a charitable wedding registry where guests can donate to a variety of non for profit organizations in addition to the conventional wedding gifts.