Nice Day for a Green Wedding

The prospect of environmentally sound nuptials sends a BusinessWeek editor on a whirlwind tour of eco-fashion options

by Heather Green

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I need to set a few things straight: I don't have Birkenstocks and I don't stock seitan (gluten meat) in my refrigerator. Those feel like real badges of eco-cool. But adopting them would mean that I would have to learn how to cook and my heels might get cold. Yet somehow, I have catapulted myself beyond all those environmentally responsible emblems right into looking for an eco-conscious wedding dress.

Talk about priorities. And it's not like I don't already have a wedding dress. I can hear all of you muttering that green mantra: reduce, reuse, recycle. But here's the thing: I can't eat or dance in the dress I have. And I didn't buy it. When my grandmother closed her bridal shop five years ago she insisted on giving me a dress. Let's not discuss that there wasn't a prince charming on the scene. So I picked out a dress online that my grandmother could order directly for me, and presto, it arrived and was immediately stuffed in the closet.

Until this year, when I got engaged, dragged it out, and put it on. That’s when I realized that the adorable beaded bodice and cap sleeves aren't designed for movement. They're designed to be adorable.

It Started with McMansions

Why an environmentally friendly wedding dress? It all came down to watching expensive McMansions shouldering aside the corn and dairy cattle in the county where I grew up. They're huge and use a lot of energy and raw building materials. I am not judging the people who buy these homes. I enjoyed blithely ignoring all these climate change issues as much as anyone. But McMansions crystallized for me the notion that we have to be aware of the impact our everyday actions have on the environment.

McMansions led to planning a wedding where we tried to make the bigger purchases as environmentally friendly as possible. We opted for locally raised flowers and beef for the meat eaters at the reception. We bought recycled paper for the save-the-date cards and invitations. Instead of gifts, we're asking our friends to donate money to charities.

That left my dress, which led to lots of online shopping, a surprising solution to the dress issue, and the discovery of an even larger world of environmentally friendly clothing than I had imagined. It's all out there when you start to look, everything from cute lingerie to chic designer wear in organic cotton, bamboo, and silk/hemp blends.

Shopping Advice By Blog

I thought finding an eco-wedding dress would be hard. Instead, it turned out to be ridiculously easy, thanks to Google (GOOG) and other brides who had already trod this ground and blogged about it. I started first with Conscious Clothing, which has about a dozen original frocks in hemp or silk/hemp blends that cost between $700 and $1,200. Though beautiful, nothing really struck my fancy. Another favorite among eco-brides online is Faernyn's Grove. One look at their bustier-inspired line, though, was all I needed to realize that their fashions would be a no-go with my Southern relatives.

My hemp-loving niece, meantime, uncovered Threadhead Creations, which offers six different custom-made hemp and silk/hemp blend dresses that run between $385 and $795. The one dress I liked seemed just a little too formal. I plan to wear the dress my grandmother gave me for the ceremony and the pictures and then change into something that lets me kick up my heels.

Distracted By Hemp Denim

That meant searching further afield, which seemed exhausting. So I hit a few shops online and stopped by a few others in person to look at denim for a treat. Okay, so organic jeans I pretty much knew about already. Denim's ubiquitous, so no surprise that organic denim is on the rise. Edun (founded by U2 singer Bono's wife Ali Hewson), Del Forte, and Loomstate sell hip jackets and jeans that are made entirely or partially out of organic materials. But starting at $150, they're pricey. I was interested in something that was less of an investment. Levi has $59 eco-Organic jeans, but they only contain a smidgin of organic cotton.