Great Green Gifts for Your Bridesmaids

For all you green-minded brides out there, I’ve got a few terrific ideas for green gifts for some of your nearest and dearest: your bridesmaids. After all, if you want to have a really green wedding, you need to make every aspect of your nuptials, from your travel to your rehearsal dinner to your bridesmaids’ gifts as green as possible. You can start by not packaging your green gifts for your bridesmaids in something disposable like paper, unless it’s some kind of cool recycled paper or a fabric covering that can be reused for some other purpose, like a head scarf or a placemat. Probably the best kind of gift to give them is a green handbag made either from undyed organic fabric like hemp or cotton, or one fashioned from something like recycled plastic fibers or a repurposed bag that has been turned into a handbag. For instance, I recently saw some very cool, very trendy handbags made from Cambodian rice bags. After these brightly colored, attractively printed bags are emptied of their cargo of rice, they are cleaned and converted into handbags by Cambodian artisans who sew handles on them and turn them into cutting edge, ecologically correct handbags.

Frankly, I think an idea like this is simply too good just to give to the bridesmaids. If I were a bride, I’d score one for myself when I bought a batch for my bridesmaids. A large handbag made of tough recycled plastic is a great bag for taking on the honeymoon because it’s big enough to hold everything that you’d need on a long flight or train trip, including your water bottles, blankets, cosmetics, cell phone, books and magazines, and so on. Even if you don’t go for handbags made from recycled materials, it’s very chic these days to buy handbags made from organic materials. As a further nod to ecological correctness, you should stay away from anything made from leather. This will also please any of your bridesmaids who are Vegans or vegetarians. Leather is passé, and besides, science has shown over and over again that cows are major contributors to global warming because of the methane they emit when they pass gas, and thus, are bad for the environment. So my advice for you brides looking to give green handbags to your bridesmaids is this: stay away from leather or plastics made from petrochemicals, and do buy something manufactured using organically grown fabrics and recycled plastic materials. Doing this won’t solve the world’s environmental problems, but every little bit helps.