Spreading Your Joy Beyond Your Wedding Day

1. Dollar Dance: Have the traditional dollar dance and donate all the money to a local cause.

2. Alternative Gift Registry: You can add things from all over the internet on here-fair trade, eco friendly, donations to charities, used items, artwork by your friends and family. Try to avoid big corporate stores as much as possible. Unfortunately, if you are starting out-it is harder to this. They just don't produce fair trade skillets and microwaves.

3. If you decide on big flower arrangements, send them to local nursing homes afterward. They are sure to brighten someones day.

4. Send left over food and cake to a local homeless shelter or soup kitchen

5. Fair trade favors and gifts ;)

Quest for Fair Trade Chocolate

So I bought these wrappers from personalcreations.com to give as gifts/favors to those at my rehearsal dinner as "thank yous" but I refuse to fill them with Hershey bars.
This week's mission has been to find fair trade chocolate bars to put in them, but most bars are far too BIG and EXPENSIVE. I looked at the local coop grocery store and nothing there will work. All I have found is Divine (pictured below from divine.serrv.org) that will work...but I would much rather like to share all the exotic flavors that exist in the world of fair trade chocolate. Any ideas?





What is fair trade?

Why chocolate? (from globalexchange.org)

For now, chocolate is a bitter sweet…

• 284,000 children toil in abusive labor conditions in West Africa’s cocoa fields
• Cocoa companies pay prices so low that many cocoa farmers cannot meet their families’ basic needs

But we can fix all that...with Fair Trade certified chocolate:

• Forced and abusive child labor are prohibited
• Farming families earn a price that is adequate to meet their basic human needs
• Environmentally sustainable production methods are required

How can I incorporate fair trade into my wedding?
There are also several places that make individual chocolates that people give for favors sometimes. Here is a starting list.

It all starts with a ring

You need to know the evils behind the gold and diamond industry. Our pretty rings may be causing pain in others around the world. Here are a few ways to avoid the negative impacts of gold and diamond mining, although I encourage you to do some research on your own. Your wedding ring symbolizes your love and will be with you all the days of your life-make sure it sticks with your values.

greenkarat.com Uses recylced metals and conflict free stones.

estsy.com Has loads of handmade, beautiful, unique rings. Many of them used recycled metals or fairly traded metals and stones. Two of my favorites are: singleB: beautiful (work pictured bottom)and beyondtherockz (work pictured top).

Buy used: Try pawn shops and antique stores.

Ask your ring provider where your stone and metals come from. They should be able to tell you the source and whether the materials are conflict free or not.

Happy Engagement!