A Green and Just Celebration: Kittel

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Real Green Weddings

Transportation

"We encouraged our guests to coordinate ride-sharing. We set up a spreadsheet online through Google.com's 'Documents' application with columns for name, contact information, rides offered, rides needed, origin and destination, and 'match made,' and created a public URL for the document that could be shared with guests by e-mail (Google Docs, select Share > Share with the World > Let people edit without signing in)."

Hospitality Bags

"When our out-of-town guests checked into their hotel, they found hospitality bags with some of our favorite 'green' items inside. The bags themselves were reusable lightweight cloth produce bags from EcoBags, and we wrote a note welcoming our guests, and telling them to save the bag, which we had found to be a wonderful alternative to disposable plastic produce bags at the supermarket. Inside, there was Fair Trade Certified^TM Honest Tea (Click here to buy), Clif Bars with mostly organic ingredients (Click here to buy), and a ClifBar 'Cool Tags' sticker that reflected a $2 donation to NativeEnergy. We couldn't fully offset our guests' air travel, but we figured this was better than nothing, and might have reminded some of them to offset their travel or to learn more about global warming."

Attire

"We decided to skip having our attendants wear matching custom-made outfits. Rather, our four siblings stood at the wedding canopy in their own dress clothes." The canopy was a tallit (Jewish prayer shawl) that Joelle's parents had used for their wedding canopy, "which was a meaningful opportunity to reuse!"

For the ceremony, Joelle wore a wine colored dress she could wear again and a white robe. "It was hand-made with sustainable fabrics (a hemp/tencel blend) by Conscious Clothing, a green bridal boutique in New Mexico." As Joelle explained, "traditionally, Jewish men wear a white kittel on their wedding day, and we adapted this idea to create a white robe for me to wear, as well. As we explained in our program: 'Before walking down the aisles, we will meet and each help the other put on a kittel ('robe' in Yiddish). In Ashkenazi (Eastern European) Jewish tradition, the kittel is a sacred symbol of simplicity and humility, worn on certain holidays, as well as at one's wedding. At time of death, the kittel serves as a burial shroud, symbolizing ultimate human equality. We are wearing kittels for our wedding ceremony as a reminder to embrace each other fully and honestly during the life that we have been given.'"

"Rather than have custom-made matching kippot (Jewish headcoverings) made, we gathered up extra kippot from family and community and made them available to anyone who wanted to wear one during the ceremony; most of them were returned, and we brought them home for use by one of our own Jewish communities, Tikkun Leil Shabbat.