Hire a Digital Photographer

The biggest and most obvious reason for using a digital photographer is because receiving your portraits on a CD is not only much more cost effective than print but it also rids you of the need to have several hundred prints made that you might not ever look at again. While I know some people just like their pictures printed, with access to online data storage websites you can rest assured that your pictures will never be destroyed in a fire or some other way. If, god forbid, something like a fire occurred in your house your pictures will be safe if your computer is destroyed and even with backing them up on another hard drive you still run the risk of loosing those pictures if your hard drive is destroyed. To tie into our earlier post about creating a website to keep everyone informed of your wedding you can easily share your photo’s online with those same friends and family that were following your big day on your website. Not to mention the money you will save by not having to order prints. In addition to the economic benefits of hiring a digital photographer ecologically speaking the reasons against hiring a traditional photographer are just as good. It is common knowledge that the chemicals that are used in the development of pictures are highly toxic. Not only that, but so is the paper that is used to produce printed photos. In addition to both the paper and chemicals being toxic the paper is also not generally biodegradable. Another bad mark against traditional photography is that the chemicals that are used in the process are poured down the drain during photo production and depending on how much chemicals are being used that is a lot of chemicals that end up in our water stream in some form or fashion. Also large amounts of emissions escape in the production of photographic paper in the form of methylene chloride. This stuff is about as non eco-friendly as chemicals come. We are not saying that you should not get ANY prints because obviously you will want to have a few. However you can review any and all pictures before you print them with digital files so that way you can make sure that the only ones you printed are your favorites. Stay tuned for more tips on how to have an eco-friendly wedding!

1) Create a website to keep everyone in the loop

Through the creation of the Internet opportunities abound when trying to limit the amount of paper you use. Obviously paper comes from trees and so reducing your paper usage in theory will help save trees. That is why creating an online website is a great way to keep all your wedding attendees informed of whats going on with your big day. Some of the logistical things you could do is put everyones email addresses in an easily E-mailable database so you can keep everyone informed of any changes that may be occurring without having to send paper to do it. If you really want to green it up another good thing to do is actually send the invitations by email as well. If you must send paper, sending a double sided post card instead of a multi sheeted envelope is another good idea. Although these are just a few ideas on reducing your paper usage by creating a website there are a lot of other ways you can use your website like letting your friends and family know about the bachelor/ette party and gift registry through the website to name a few. The bottom line is that utilizing a website to keep  everyone abreast about the details of your special day is a great step in greening up your wedding day.