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09-13-10

Interview with Tonia from Itty Bitty Impact

Tonia is the blog­ger behind Itty Bitty Impact. Her green lifestyle jour­ney began when she and her fiancé Mike bought a home together two years ago. They started “greeni­fy­ing” every­day house­hold tasks and real­ized that their small changes were adding up and mak­ing a dif­fer­ence. As part of their process in “greeni­fy­ing” their every­day lives, Tonia and Mike decided their greeni­fi­ca­tion should include the whole of them — includ­ing their upcom­ing wed­ding.. We decided to talk to Tonia about her wed­ding plans and what’s she’s doing to make sure their spe­cial day is eco-​​friendly.

You can fol­low Tonia and Mike’s plans, along with adven­tures with their dog, Lake Supe­rior on Twit­ter at @IttyBittyImpact or on her blog, Itty Bitty Impact.

JDB: First off, con­grat­u­la­tions on the engage­ment and the pend­ing wedding!

While many brides seem to give in to the pres­sure to have the biggest, bad­dest wed­ding ever, you and your fiancé have decided to take a more sim­ple, eco-​​friendly/​green route. Was this some­thing you’ve wanted for a long time, or some­thing you decided upon after get­ting engaged?

TS: I like to think of myself as a tomboy…or, at least I’m no girly-​​girl. However…I will admit that my BFF (best friend for­ever) and I used to buy wed­ding mag­a­zines when we were 14 or 15, and we’d sip hot choco­late at the book­store and pre­tend we were brides-​​to-​​be plan­ning our wed­dings. We did that all the time. I cringe now to think of what my wed­ding would be like if I had let my 15 year old self do the real plan­ning.

It wasn’t until I owned my own home that I got really into low-​​impact liv­ing. There’s some­thing about water­ing your own lawn (and watch­ing all that water get wasted), buy­ing your own gro­ceries (and real­iz­ing a lot of the stuff you eat comes all the way from Florida or Mex­ico), and wash­ing your own laun­dry (and read­ing the ingre­di­ents list on the deter­gent bottle…yikes!), that made my fiancé and I think, “There’s gotta be a bet­ter way to do this stuff…”

Two years ago, we changed how we live at home and “got greener.” And as a result, a lot of our friends and rel­a­tives have made sim­i­lar changes in their lives and reduced their daily impact on the envi­ron­ment. We real­ized that set­ting a good exam­ple for oth­ers is prob­a­bly one of the most impor­tant results of liv­ing a greener lifestyle. We want our wed­ding to be one big green party– because it’s the right thing to do, and it’s who we are, and it sends a great mes­sage to all our loved ones.

JDB: Expound a lit­tle bit on vision for an eco-​​friendly wedding.

TS: Basi­cally, we’re going to do most of the usual “wed­dingy” stuff, but do them more sim­ply or more resource­fully. I say “most” because we are for­go­ing a few of the typ­i­cal tra­di­tions (i.e. a wed­ding cake) either because we couldn’t pull it off it in a non-​​wasteful way, or because it just wasn’t mean­ing­ful to us in the first place.

Here are some of the main things we are doing to keep the wed­ding low-​​impact:

• Rings: Our rings are cus­tom made by Tamara McFar­land, a vegan hobby-​​farmer in Cal­i­for­nia. She uses 100% recy­cled met­als and fair trade stones in her jew­elry. The stone in my ring is man-​​made, which means it was not mined and did not impact the envi­ron­ment or soci­ety in a neg­a­tive way.
• Glass­ware: We are pro­vid­ing mason jars for guests to drink water/​beer out of instead of using the dis­pos­able plas­tic cups that the bar provides.
• Caterer: We asked every caterer in town whether they use dis­pos­able plates/​flatware or not. Only one said that they do not use dis­pos­able. We went with them.
• Décor: Our decorations/​favors are almost com­pletely thrift-​​store finds, and we’re mak­ing every­thing else our­selves, so we’re not buy­ing any plas­tic crap that will promptly enter a land­fill afterwards.
• Reg­istry: We are care­fully choos­ing high-​​quality items that will last us a long time. My par­ents are still using many house­hold items they received as gifts for their wed­ding. When some­thing is made to last, there’s no need to ever replace it.
• Save the Dates: We emailed our Save the Date announce­ments, expect for five of them because the recip­i­ents don’t use email.
• Invites: Guests will receive a snail-​​mail invi­ta­tion, but they will RSVP by going to our web­site. This reduces the paper we use, and is more con­ve­nient for most peo­ple. Our grand­par­ents, and a few other guests who don’t use the Inter­net, will RSVP over the phone.
• Rehearsal din­ner: We wanted a BBQ, so my fiancé’s par­ents tracked down a local WI guy who does pig-​​roasts. All his pigs are raised right there in town, free-​​range. He’ll also be grilling some fresh veg­gies for us from his garden.

JDB: Has this been an easy jour­ney for the two of you or are you find­ing it harder than expected?

TS: Harder than expected! The thing is, we have other pri­or­i­ties besides keep­ing things green (gasp!). It’s really impor­tant to us that our guests feel appre­ci­ated and com­fort­able the whole week­end, so we had to really con­sider things like, “If we make every­one drink out of the same glass (mason jar) all night, will they get annoyed/​want to rinse it out if they switch from, say, beer to lemon­ade?” With every deci­sion we make, we have to weigh our dif­fer­ent pri­or­i­ties against each other.

JDB: What’s the response been like from your close friends and family?

TS: Our imme­di­ate fam­i­lies have been really sup­port­ive and they totally believe in our vision. Our extended fam­ily and friends…well, most of them are from the Twin Cities or Chicago, and they have NO idea what they’re in for! The Min­nesota rel­a­tives will prob­a­bly say some­thing neu­tral, like “Well this is a lit­tle dif­fer­ent…” and the Chicago rel­a­tives will just tell us we’re hip­pies and then drink all our beer.

JDB: Have you had to make con­ces­sions along the way, or have you been able meet all your expec­ta­tions and vision for an eco-​​friendly wedding?

TS: Yes, con­ces­sions have been made. One of my obses­sions from the early days of plan­ning was to have every­one sit­ting on hand­made benches dur­ing the cer­e­mony, which is tak­ing place out­side. I strongly dis­like the look of fold­ing chairs, and they’re super expen­sive to rent! But my fam­ily finally talked me into rent­ing chairs after explain­ing to me that Nonna and Nonno just really won’t be com­fort­able on a wooded bench for an hour. And now look­ing back I think I must have been crazy to expect my dad and brother to hand-​​craft 50 benches, out of reclaimed wood no less!! Yeah…I’m over it.

The recep­tion food was another con­ces­sion. Our caterer wasn’t OK with the idea of us bring­ing in our own chicken (we wanted to pro­vide locally raised, free-​​range chicken for the entrée), but see­ing as they’re the only caterer in town that doesn’t use dis­pos­able plates for their food, we decided we had to just go with what­ever chicken they have, which is most likely not local or organic. =\

JDB: What are some sim­ple things brides and grooms can do in plan­ning their own wed­dings to keep it sim­ple and eco-​​friendly?

TS: 1. Cut out the fat: Don’t do every sin­gle “wed­dingy” thing just for the sake of it. If it doesn’t mean some­thing to you, then why do it? Your plan­ning process will be instantly sim­pli­fied if you stick to what really mat­ters and lose the rest.
2. Eco-​​friendly is also bud­get friendly, so stick to your bud­get and you’ll nat­u­rally make greener deci­sions. For exam­ple, we saved tons of money because we didn’t mail out save-​​the-​​date cards. It was such an easy deci­sion because it was good for our pocket as well as the Earth.
3. Explore alter­na­tives. Your wed­ding will be more per­sonal, and greener, if you don’t go with the first florist, the first caterer, or the first venue you find. Leave time for research…the really cool lady who grows organic peonies in her back­yard and makes gor­geous bou­quets might not pop up on the first page of Google, but she’s out there if you look for her.
4. Elbow grease! Why buy stuff that was made in China when you could make it your­self? And if you’re not crafty, I have one word for you: www​.etsy​.com

JDB: Thanks so much Tonia for shar­ing a bit of your expe­ri­ence with us. Best wishes on your upcom­ing wed­ding! May you and Mike be blessed for years to come.

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