The Green Bridal Shower

Eco-chic to the max!

A green bridal shower is a wonderful way to honor a bride adopting an environmentally friendly lifestyle. We so often forget that parties are hotbeds of post-consumer waste: paper, plastic, and food just end up in the trash.

The bride will immensely appreciate the steps you take to keep her shower from falling into the same trap. These green bridal shower ideas highlight the beauty of what is natural and simple.

Brighten the planet's future as you help the bride prepare for hers!

If sunlight is not in abundance, twist compact fluorescent lightbulbs into your lamps for guilt-free visibility! Even better, hold a green bridal shower outside. But be sure to reserve a back-up location, just in case it rains.

2. Get the Word Out
You have several environmentally friendly alternatives to standard invitations, just perfect for a green bridal shower:

Good. Buy invitations that are made with a high percentage of recycled paper. Bonus points if they are printed with vegetable-based inks.

Better. Sending postcard invitations removes the need for envelopes, which are just a (preventable) waste of paper.

Best. E-vites instantly reach their recipients without leaving any unwanted footprints. For guests who don't have an e-mail address, a simple telephone call will suffice.

3. Green Craftiness
These bridal shower crafts are made completely from natural or recycled materials. They're just waiting to be given away as eco-friendly favors or game prizes!

• Homemade paper. Collect paper items and scraps around your house - things that you'd throw out anyway. Letters, used envelopes, shopping lists, old greeting cards, junk mail, post-its, movie stubs, and bits of cardstock make perfect candidates for recycled paper. Sprinkle flower petals, stalks of grass, and leaves into the mix for added color and texture. Try to avoid including large amounts of brown paper bags and newspaper, however, or your creation will end up looking like cheap, brown paper towels. The internet offers lots of sites with easy paper-making tutorials. After your new paper dries, you can fold it in half or roll it up. Tie a scrap of ribbon or yarn around it for a simple, pretty presentation!
  

• Potpourri sachet. This sweet-smelling mixture contains lots of ingredients that come straight from the earth. Combine flower petals, herbs, dried berries, orange peel, or other texture-enhancers of your choice. For extra beauty, slice small citrus fruits and let each sliver sun-dry for about five days. Select an essential oil for the potpourri's dominant scent. And to ensure that the smell lasts, add a fixative such as orris root to your concoction. Once you've finished, scoop it into recycled glass jars or your own sachets. To make each sachet, cut two squares of organic farbic or any extra material you may have. With the right sides facing each other, sew three of the four sides together. Flip the little pocket right side out and fill with potpourri. Turn the raw edges inside the sachet and sew it shut!

• Organic chocolate.
• Homemade soaps with
  all-natural ingredients.
• Packets of organic vegetable seeds.

5. A Healthy Appetite
Support local growers by purchasing the bridal shower food at your nearby farmer's market. And whenever you can, go organic. Buy coffee and tea from an organization with a fair-trade program.

If that is not an option, the ingenious creators of All-Purpose Veneerware are here to save the day. Constructed of organic bamboo, a quickly-regenerating resource, these plates and utensils are designed for single use. But with their natural strength and smart simplicity, why not get more use for your money? For another great (and more budget-minded) option, you might try plates and bowls made of sugar cane, an ever-abundant material. And you just won't find table settings more eco-friendly than Veneerware or sugar cane: after use, throw them in your compost pile. They'll actually decompose within a few months!

7. Center of Attention
Bring nature to the table with green bridal shower centerpieces.

• Potted plants. Just say no to cut flowers. Instead, plant succulents or flowers in terra cotta pots or other attractive vessels to add color and beauty to the room. Give the centerpieces away as game prizes.
• Fill tall, slim vases with farmer's market produce. You might follow a consistent color theme; for example, stack lemons and limes in one vase, green and banana peppers in another, and so on. Or have fun with it, going color crazy!
• Soy wax candles burn cleaner and longer than other candles. Look for ones with a natural hemp or cotton wick.

Avoid balloons and paper decorations such as streamers or bells, the epitome of post-consumer waste.

Instead, cluster dried bamboo stalks in a tall, glass vase for a splash of modernist cool. Or place potted bamboo chutes around the room to surround the bride with good luck.

If you want to add a little something to each table, forego traditional confetti for the water soluble stuff, seeds, or flower petals.

9. Recycle Your Words
Inspired by green living, this bridal shower game reinforces the fact that an object's life cylce need never come to an end.

To play "Recylce Your Words," you'll need to create a doublet. A doublet consists of two words that have the same number of letters. Four-letter words work best. These words serve as the two ends of a chain of words. Between them, a number of "mystery" linking words exist. You get to choose how many. To create the first linking word, you can change only one letter of the first doublet word. Next, modify one letter of the first linking word to get a second linking word. See how recycling comes into play? Change one letter of the second linking word to get to the end, the final doublet word. Here is an example to help you visualize the doublet chain:

Cake and Love are the doublet words. There are two spaces (or linking words) between them.

cake
cave
cove
love

Usually two or three links are plenty; doublets are surprisingly tricky when you can't see the mystery words!

Choose any doublet words you like. If you have two words in mind and can't seem to connect them, you may just need to start with one and see where it takes you. You can use a name as a doublet word, such as the bride or groom's name, but just make sure the guests understand that the linking words must be real, English words! Too much leeway in the rules could cause some serious confusion! The first person (or the first few) to solve the doublet wins. Don't be surprised if some of the winners used different linking words. Often there are multiple ways to the end.

10. Green with Envy
Surprise game winners with these eco-chic prizes:

• A basket of organic beauty products.
• Reusable tote bags.

11. Home Grown
Just watch the bride's face light up when she opens these green bridal shower gifts:

• Bamboo kitchen items: cutting board, bowls, even dish towels.
• Organic cotton towels or sheets.
• Composter. Perfect for the eco-minded bride who doesn't have access to an outdoor pile. Ask someone else to go in on this gift with you. Or, if she has a compost pile outside, an adorable kitchen compost crock stores food waste and hides odors in the meantime.
• A cotton shower curtain gives both plastic liners and mildew the boot.

And for great ways to stock a wishing well at a green bridal shower:

• How do toxic, everyday cleaning products keep sneaking into our homes? Instead, give the bride natural cleaners. Purchase them or easily make them yourself. You'll find lots of "recipes" online to clean everything from glass to the bathroom tub. Best of all, you probably already have most of the ingredients, such as vinegar and baking soda, in your home.
• Choose reusable cotton cloths over sponges and paper towels.
• Bamboo mixing spoons and tongs.

A few more green bridal shower ideas and tips:
Encourage guests to carpool in order to cut down on emissions.

Collect and recycle the paper used for bridal shower games.

Gift bags are reusable, so opt for them over wrapping paper. Also, fabrics you may have lying around your house make great wrap. Afterward, donate them to a non-profit organization.

Buy lots of rolls of eco-friendly wrapping paper, and invite guests to bring their gifts to the shower unwrapped. While waiting for the bride to arrive, have a present wrapping pre-party!

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