Why Green is the Right Color For Your Budget Wedding

I just read a post telling me that Emerald had been voted pantone's 'color of the year.' It's set to appear on runways and in stores, and that's good news for brides because there are so many ways to build emerald, and other shades of green into your wedding. They all look fantastic, and most of them will save you money.

Of course having a 'green' wedding doesn't mean you have to use the color green, but those guys who decided to adopt green as the color of the conservation movement knew a thing or two. It turns out that the best way to use the color can also be the best way to help save the planet, what better way to start your new, married life?

Every wedding starts with invitations. Don't go to an expensive printer. You can save money and the environment by making your own invitations.

Choose a recycled paper for the invitations and envelopes and buy in bulk. You can use these for menus, orders of service, thank you notes.

Embellish by hand using a simple rubber stamp and some embossing powder and print the invitation text using your computer printer. The stamp and embossing powder will give your invitations a hand made, rather than home made look, and the raised finish you get, from nothing more complex than some embossing powder and a heat tool, looks expensive.

Buy a rubber stamp from any online or local store, or even from amazon, once the wedding is over you can keep it or sell on ebay. The heat tool can be useful for embossing scrapbook pages of your wedding and for your first Christmas/.holiday cards as a married couple.

How can you make the actually green in color? Choose green paper or a design like peacock which features green. You invitation could be printer on green colored paper, have a green colored border, or feature a hand stamped green design.

Forget them!

When you're trying to save the planet, you need to buy local, and you certainly don't want to have flowers flown in from the other side of the world. You'll need to

• Buy flowers that are in season
• Buy flowers that can be sourced locally.

If you have your heart set on a winter wedding, you'll find that hard. One solutions is to make your bouquet and centerpieces entirely from greenery. Some greens, such as seeded eucalyptus, look fabulous when sprayed with a metallic paint. You can create gorgeous table centers from large bunches of greenery sprayed silver or gold. If you don't like greenery, gypsophilla or baby's breath is just as effective. Spray once with a metallic spray, and then when the paint is dry, spray with am iridescent glitter. The glitter on its own gives a wonderful 'frosted' effect.

Another option is to use cylinder vases filled with frosted pine cones.

Vases filled with branches also make lovely centerpieces. If you can pick these up from local gardens you can save a lot of money, add some glitter spray, or if you have the time, frost the branches properly. All you need to do is spray the branches roughly with glue and then sprinkle kosher salt over them. You'll get a lovely 'winter wonderland' effect. For a little more 'bling' hang some inexpensive crystals on the branches and you're done!

For larger decorations in the Church or other venue, contact your local garden centers and nurseries. They may hire trees and topiaries which look really stunning at a wedding. Prince William chose this option to decorate Westminster Abbey, so it's not just sensible, its royal.

Another option is to use potted plants or potted plant arrangements for your centerpieces. Being green is all about reducing waste, take the plants to your home and love them or give them to family to enjoy. It's better than just paying a lot of money for something you throw away at the end of the wedding.

If you want to incorporate the color green in your wedding flowers here are some options:

• Hydrangea 'limelight' is a pale green and looks lovely with white flowers.
• Green and white kale makes an interesting bouquet, and can be combined with other vegetables and herbs to make something unique.
• Green Goddess is a green calla lily
• Bells or Ireland and Amaranthus are good green filler flowers.
• there are many pale green orchids
• lime green roses
• green gladioli
• there are some white tulips which have a pale green edge
• and my personal favorite, the green anthurium will give any wedding a tropical tinge.

There's no better place to hold a green wedding than in a garden. With lots of locations for photographs and the decoration already in place, gardens are an excellent choice of venue for budget brides. If you have space, your own or your parents garden is ideal, you might spruce up the flowers beds and borders for the event, but none of the effort or expense will be wasted.

The green option is to have the wedding and the reception at the same place, there is no cost to moving the guests from one to the other, again this saves money and the planet, but perhaps best of all it makes the travel easier for any guests who may really want to come, but can't quite face all the travelling involved.

In the winter, a large garden center greenhouse could also be a great venue, and if you can't actually have the wedding there, you can ask for help to hire their larger plants, potted trees and topiaries and decorate another venue with them.

The least expensive wedding reception is one where the guests bring their own food.

Sounds unlikely?

Friends in Canada who wanted a large wedding but couldn't afford it, did a deal with a local restaurant. They devised a small number of different picnic menus, the guests then chose what they wanted and bought the picnic which was delivered to the venue, a local garden which had been hired for the day. Table cloths dotted the grass and they entertained over 200 people for very little and everyone said how much they enjoyed the informal picnic instead of a formal sit down wedding.

If you choose the catered route, stick to locally grown foods that are in season.

Add the color green to your reception meal by using green trim on table cloths and napkins, green glass for stemware and vases. You could also choose green food

• Asparagus soup
• A Spinach flavored pasta dish
• Pears poached in wine with a lime jelly.

The final touch is a green honeymoon, an energy friendly vacation somewhere close by. When your friends are sunning themselves in the Caribbean, you'll feel truly virtuous.

Personally, the honeymoon is where I'd draw the line.

Honeymoons should be special. Travelling a long way is tiring, and having traveled literally half way across the world for my honeymoon (England to Hawaii) I'm not sure I'd recommend it. However, when children come along, and you're saving to buy a house, expensive vacations are the first luxuries to go, so my advice is to be green. Conserve everything, including your budget. Have a great wedding with your friends, but don't be afraid to indulge yourself on your honeymoon and make it one to remember.