Kyle and I are nature lovers, animal lovers, people lovers, basically tree-huggers who shower and dress nicely, so we try and tread as lightly on the earth as we possibly can. That doesn't mean we're perfect, no one is - well, some people are (I'm looking at you, Gandhi) - but we do the best we can while still maintaining a comfortable lifestyle. Since we're not going to sacrifice our tree hugging for our wedding day, we're planing to incorporate a number of eco-friendly elements into our wedding. And since I've been doing a lot of research on the matter, it's only fair that I share some of the things I've learned with you in case this is also what you're looking for! Last time I wrote about eco-friendly flower options. This week, since we've been starting to think about our invitations, let's focus on paper goods and stationary.

It goes without saying that recycled paper is a super obvious and popular choice. Kraft paper may wear the crown for paper of the year, but you can get all sorts of recycled papers. Our save the dates had kraft paper envelopes, and we've bought more kraft paper envelopes for our invites (it just goes so well with the vintage typewriter font!). Recycled paper is usually made with anything from 25% to 100% recycled paper. Of course, 100% is the best if you can find it :)

  top left: our save the dates; top right: Eastwind Creations; bottom: Oh So Beautiful Paper

Another option that's really neat is seed paper. Basically, it's plantable paper made from recycled fibers and seeds. And, um, it really doesn't get much more awesome than that. Maybe this isn't something you would use for your entire invitation suite, but it's definitely something you could use for escort cards or thank you notes or even confetti! All of the materials are completely eco-friendly, and you literally just stick the paper in the dirt and... viola! A plant is born!

top: Forever Fiances; bottom: Bloomin Invites on Wedding Invite Love

Another option, which I REALLY love for menus in particular for some reason, is real wood (maybe because I hug trees on the weekends). You can get this very thin slice of wood from sustainable sources and incorporate a really unique element into your wedding stationary. Night Owl Paper Goods prints their design or your own personal design on to sustainably harvested birch wood.

Night Owl Paper Goods on Poptastic Bride

We haven't decided yet what variety of stationary we're going to use throughout our wedding, but I pretty much love all of the above and will probably try to incorporate all of it. I guess I'm greedy like that. But isn't it all so beautiful?! And good to the earth to boot!

Did you use any earth friendly stationary at your wedding? Are there any other stationary companies I should check out? As with everything else, we're trying to do as much printing as we can ourselves to save some money, but if the price is right, I'll gladly pay someone else to do it!