Make a donation to a charity in lieu of favors. 

Recycled invites are pricey, but you can uses electronic responses or even design your response cards to double later as seating cards.

Eat lower on the food chain- serve a vegetarian meal.

Rent, rather than buy decorations.

Holding a green wedding, or other event, is a great way to show people "green" outlets and resources they may not normally be familiar with.

Having goodie bags as gifts for guests filled with eco-friendly products and information is another great way to turn on friends and family to a more environmentally responsible lifestyle.

Many times ceremonies and receptions are held at different locations, in lieu of saving resouces (and money), hold the entire event at one location.

Also, instead of recieving 13 gravy boats as wedding presents, ask that trees are planted or donations be made in the couples' name.

A good resouces for more green wedding ideas is www.ecochicweddings.com

Yes! We did choose a venue where both the ceremony and reception will be held and we are offering a vegetarian option for dinner as well. We registered at an eco-product website which has beautiful stuff, so I hope that will get people thinking, too. 

 Haven't decided on the invites yet, though I did find some interesting ones at www.greenfieldpaper.com. They can customize something called seed paper where your guests can actually plant the invite (embedded with seed) after the wedding and it will bloom later. Kind of cool...

My man and I are tying the knot in the fall, and we're incorporating as many eco elements as possible. Our objective is to make conscientious decisions without beating our guests over the head with them. We don't need our wedding to come off like "Environmentalism 101." Instead, we're  hoping that people experience the day as a gorgeous, fabulous party... which just happened to be easy on the earth. It helps that so many of these ideas are the cost-conscious option as well. Here are some of my favorites so far:

 We made our save the dates and invitations, and printed them at a local green printer. Our Save The Date was a postcard incorporating photos of us holding hand-written "save," "the," and "date" signs at various landmarks around our city... where we'll be holding the wedding. The photos make it more likely that at least our family guests will keep the card as a cutie-pie memento of the whole wedding, instead of throwing it away down the road. 

Our wedding party is wearing black! It may sound a lil' morbid at first... but we decided our wedding "colors" should incorporate black, so that our bridesmaids and groomsmen can wear something chic that they'll get plenty of use out of down the road. I know the big wedding joke is "you'll be able to wear this again!" but in our case, we're doing everything we can to make sure it's true.

We went with a caterer that cares as much about seasonal, local, organic foods as we do! It's a great way to showcase the flavors of where we live. We'll be offering a lot of veggie fare, composting, and donating leftovers to a local foodbank. We'll be stocking our bar with organic wine, beer and alcohol too. 

We're going easy on the flowers, picking potted plants instead of cut flowers, and choosing organic when possible. We picked an awesome florist, who will be utilizing recycled paper (old magazines) to make paper flowers, paper wreaths and paper ribbon details to mix in with the fresh flowers. It gives our wedding a funky, "found" element which matches our personalities perfectly. Other ideas that could work in this vein are incorporating more ribbons, buttons, feathers and vintage jewels into bouquets. As an added bonus, they last forever, reminding you of your big day.

Our flower girl will be wearing vintage petticoats. How ridiculously adorable is that?

We hired a green event manager, the fabulous Nelle from Zahzoom weddings and parties. She helped us with ideas, gave us a list of local eco-vendors, and will be keeping everything straight the day-of.

I'm rocking a vintage engagement ring, and the man and I are currently shopping around for a wedding band that's either recycled, vintage, or man-made diamond... not sure yet!

We're registering with eco vendors like the lovely VivaTerra, and sending our thank you's on recycled paper. Here's a link to the cheapest and coolest thank you notes I've found so far at Vickery.

And remember... when it comes to decor, Ebay is a girl's best friend! I'm currently hunting around for vintage wallpaper swatches to give the reception tables a graphic splash of pattern.

Congrats to all you greenie brides out there! 

I am still hunting around for eco registries myself. There is  the fabulous Gaiam , a'course... (full disclosure: they're the parent company of LIME, and we love 'em!)

There's also a handful of different customizable "registry aggregator" sites like felicite and myregistry which would allow you to add your own eco-y things from the smaller sites all over the web that don't have registry capability. This is the way I'm incorporating gifts from my fave go to site for web shopping: etsy — handmade, indie stuff from visionary local artists. Here's a cool blog about etsy-centered weddings...
http://etsywedding.blogspot.com/

I also want to give props to the I Do Foundation. Create a wedding gift registry with the I Do Foundation's partner stores and up to 10 percent of gift purchases will be donated to your favorite charity. You'd be surprised how much charity moolah you can generate in this way.

Lemme know what else you find and I will do the same! 

In addition to the great (and the so-so) options already mentioned...

Sometimes the pre-wedding festivities themselves get way out of hand. (Weekends in Vegas/Mexico? Stretch SUV limos? Carbon footprint, anyone?) I understand Bridezillas, and the people who love them, feel they're entitled to lavishness, but it can get excessive in every respect.

Scaling back on the showers and bachelor/ette parties and engagement parties and bridal luncheons and whatever else people do these days strikes me as another responsible choice. At least keep it saner, and everyone around you will probably stay saner too.