Today we have real couple, Jessie & Nancy sharing their favorite fair trade products from their wedding registry. I especially love their story, and how they incorporated so many of their personal values into their wedding…something that my husband and I tried to do as well. I know you’ll enjoy their picks, and if you are interested in having your favorite products featured, email me and I will give you more details (it is easy and painless, I promise)!
We live in Baltimore, Maryland and got married in a religious/community-based ceremony on June 2, 2012. We were able to make our marriage legal in Maryland this past January. Nancy works as a palliative care social worker at a hospital and Jessie is an attorney who works primarily in the areas of civil rights and workplace justice. It was important to us to have our wedding reflect our values and we were excited by the idea of our wedding having a positive impact on our community and the causes we believe in.
To that end, we chose the beautiful Irvine Nature Center, an environmental education center, in Owings Mills, Maryland as our wedding venue, had all vegan food (including bicycle-powered smoothies!), and composted all the leftovers. We also asked our guests to donate to some local nonprofits that we love or to help us advocate for marriage equality in Maryland this past fall in lieu of tangible wedding gifts. But, recognizing that guests would also want to give us physical presents, we set out to find a fair trade wedding registry. We were thrilled to find Seven Hopes United–the products were fantastic, the customer service exceptional, and, most importantly, we could feel good about receiving gifts knowing they were helping to lift communities out of poverty through fair labor practices. We also loved that by registering with Seven Hopes United, we could help raise the profile of fair trade goods among our guests.
- Jessie & Nancy
1) Large Capiz Bowl Olive
The colors are really beautiful–almost iridescent. A great bowl for fruit or salads.
2) Tumblers – Cobalt Dreams and matching 3) Cobalt Blue Glass Pitcher
These are stunning and we use the tumblers on a daily basis. We’ve gotten so many compliments about these–the color is really striking. They also seem to cool us down by at least 15 degrees when used in the heat of summer.
4) Mountain Ridge Turkish Towels
We love the texture of these, but we feel especially attached to these towels because they survived our recent dryer fire! We think it must’ve been their good fair trade karma that saved them…
5) Ceramic Appetizer Set – Festive Feast (Sorry, Currently Unavailable)
This piece is beautiful and the removable dishes make it very handy for serving snacks and dips. We sort of feel like show-offs when we put this out when guests are over, but then we get to tell folks it’s fair trade when they ask us about it!
