DIY green wedding

DIY wedding planning has a lot of appeal. And new-style web sites are taking it to a whole new level.

Using these sites can save you time, allowing to you have fun planning exactly what you want. They’re also green, because they cut down hugely on paperwork, so you’ll be saving the planet too. You might even get your man interested, as it involves net surfing.

They are just starting to take off in New Zealand. Two new web sites, Paperless Wedding and Perfect Venue, are good examples… more on these below. But in the US it’s really advanced – and useful. We came across a rather geeky but very good article about planning almost everything online.

The writer started off planning his wedding colour scheme then he moved on to wedding venue directories and venue reviews.

Then he created his own wedding website, with information for guests, etc. You or your man might be up for this. As we said, it could be a good way of getting him involved in planning the wedding. Forgive us, if this sounds sexist but the writer in a guy.

He’s also planning a Facebook page for his wedding, so people can stay updated, and a bit of twittering (or tweeting) too. Check out the rest for yourself, at www.mashable.com/2009/09/23/diy-wedding.

Online planning has the bonus of saving trees, by using less paper for a start. Such sites are now starting to appear in New Zealand. For instance, www.paperlesswedding.co.nz offers online wedding invites. Emma Taylor, who developed the site with new husband Jim, sees this as being both cheaper and greener than old-style paper invitations.

If you’re getting married in Christchurch or nearby, there’s a new site, www.perfectvenue.co.nz listing local wedding venues. It features everything from the tramway, a most unusual venue, to the netball centre to a wine shed (a very nice one), to more traditional locations.

Just in case you were wondering what mashable, as in How to Plan a DIY Wedding, means, it’s a webpage that combines information from two or more sources to create a new service. Just think of the Google Maps you check out for driving directions and the red markers showing the start and end points of your journey.