Lawrence.com

So this weekend my wife and I will be arriving at the culmination of a months-long plan. To host our own wedding.

Kind of.

Roughly a year ago, we eloped to a local watering hole, and had a relatively unannounced and brief wedding “ceremony,” if you will. So here we are, almost a year later, planning what will be an “official” observation of our legal union. This way all the out-of-town friends and family will have a chance to cry and have drinks as well they should. I grew up Irish-Catholic. That’s just how they do.

As I was telling someone recently, we had kind of a theme in mind while we were doing our planning, although it’s not a theme in the decorative or informational sense, but moreso in the functional sense, rather than form. We wanted to figure out how to be as sustainable as we could manage to be.

Our sustainability decision arrived as it usually does- the same way it did with the garden, and with a lot of our food, the same way with doing little energy saving things around the house; the idea comes up, and we say “lets see if we can actually do this.” And to the drawing boards we went. I should mention that this has not necessarily been a success rate of 100%, but I don’t think that’s what this whole sustainability thing is- it’s not a race, but it is a relative term. There are ways of being more, or less sustainable. I guarantee you that we will still probably have several bags of trash going to the dump at the end of our party, but there will be a lot of things that won’t see the dump on our clock. My wife thought it’d be cute to have a picnic theme (see that’s an actual theme), which kind of lends itself to an outside event. As outside events (and also huge events) lend themselves to paper plates, we arrived at our first dilemma: were we really going to go buy several packages of single use plates and cups so that at least a couple hundred people could take them out of the packaging, hold them for about fifteen minutes and then throw them out? As always, my wife came up with a clever solution; buy all the plates and tablecloths at thrift stores! Of course this takes a certain kind of person (i.e. my wife) who thrives upon, no… lives for going to thrift stores. I can’t say that we saved a whole lot of time and money going this route, but I will say that it probably wasn’t nearly as expensive as you think. At many of the stores we went to, they were more than happy to strike a deal with us on the bulk basis, and we’ve got some pretty um, groovy plates to boot. They will all be re-donated after our event, except those that people take home with them, because I’m also behind the big push to bring back commemorative plates. In keeping with the picnic style, we’re having hamburgers and veggie hot dogs. The hamburgers are made of grass-fed beef from Homespun Hill Farm in Baldwin. They were converted from cows to hamburger patties in Overbrook, Ks. Again, in a conversation recently, someone said “Fifty pounds of grassfed beef?! Did you mortgage the house?” Nope; bulk-buy at the Lawrence Farmer’s market. Granted, Farmer Debbie from Homespun Hill needed some advanced notice to complete our order, but aside from a few emails, the whole deal went down recently on a couple Saturday mornings on New Hampshire St.

It wouldn’t be a wedding without flowers, right? We took a trip last weekend to see the Pendletons, and talked to Karen about what we needed. I should be able to tell you what kind of flowers we’re getting, but I wasn’t paying very good attention at that point. What matters is that they’re local, and in season. I should also mention that we’re getting some awesome tomatoes from them as well for the burgers. You’re right that tomatoes aren’t in season yet, unless you’re the Pendletons and you have an awesome greenhouse setup for early tomatoes.

Lettuce and other greens will come from Hoyland Farm, owned and operated by Bob and Joy Lominska. Their son, Avery runs the booth at the farmers’ market. Yes, he’s the guy with the dreads who always has great-looking stuff for sale.

Much of the beer will be from the venerable Free State Brewing Company (Doesn’t that sound so official?) Although it’s super tricky to land a keg from there, it’s always been worth it in the past.

Although we kind of dropped the ball on the cups (I think we’re just using good old plastic cups) we did get our hands on some of that cornstarch plastic ware (cornstarch ware?) for people to eat with. As I remember, this stuff is kind of brittle, but it’s all good- it won’t be in the landfills for the rest of our lives.

Another tough spot for us was the condiments. I’m sure there are local sources for Ketchup and Mustard and the like, but I’m afraid time ran short on us. Instead of a wedding cake, several of our friends are making pies. Cake is kind of trite anyway. Pies are way more subversive.

I’m sure there are any number of other things that we could have done to be even more sustainable than we already will be, and I encourage you to comment on that if you have any suggestions so other readers can benefit from the collective knowledge base. The point for us is that we made an effort to operate under the principle of consuming less and throwing less away, and it didn’t take the focus off of the nature of the event. As most things that require a little extra effort tend to do, I’ll bet it will pay off.