Vendors

Socially Responsible Wedding Vendors: doing what we can.

Because a wedding is a symbol of embarking on a new chapter of our lives, we wanted to mark that beginning in a real, meaningful, and sustainable way. We wanted to be thoughtful about our joyous occasion so that the event would not just be meaningful in words, but in action as well.

Most of the products produced these days are created under immoral conditions, particularly with regard to the wages and working conditions of workers and the environmental repercussions of creating the goods or the goods themselves, so we tried our best to find products and work with vendors that understood this priority and made it their own. Here are a few examples:

1) Collective Copies (Amherst, Massachusetts) printed and cut our save the date cards on 100 percent tree free cardstock called tortilla (please don't eat them). Collective Copy is a worker-owned collective and the workers are members of UE.
http://www.collectivecopies.com

2) Green Karat (Texas) is creating our wedding bands from recycled gold. The processes for mining new gold are incredibly destructive, especially with so much perfectly usable gold already above ground.
http://www.greenkarat.com

3) Wise Organic Pastures (Brooklyn, NY, and rural Pennsylvania) is providing all the beef and chicken for the wedding. In addition to being hekshered OU, it's also certified USDA organic and free range. It is better for the environment to be a vegetarian, but if you're going to eat meat, eating small, local, and organic cuts down on the chemicals that go into our systems and oil used in transporting the meat to our plates.
http://www.wiseorganicpastures.com

4) Global Exchange Online Store- Global Exchange is a fantastic non-profit doing amazing things in social justice work around the world. One of their many projects has been to slowly build a store selling fairly traded goods from small producers around the world. We're excited to be registered there.
http://www.globalexchange.org/

5) Viva Terra- another store that strives to ensure the workers that created the goods are treated justly and that the goods themselves aren't harmful to the planet.
http://www.vivaterra.com/pls/enetrixp/!stmenu_template.main

6) Corelle Dishes
When registering, we tried really hard to do so for things consistant with our values whenever possible. Corelle Dishes are among the only dishes still made by unionized workers here in the US. Hopefully they'll continue that practice so if you ever need dishes, you can
get them for yourself.

In addition to our awesome socially responsible vendors, we also had some amazing family and friends step up to help make this gathering the raucous event it will be. In no particular order:

1) Robert Kaiserman of Deluxe Gerson Caterers. Our wedding is one in a long line of many Agdern/Kuflik and Kaiserman events over the years, and from helping us plan everything to being a mensch about using Wise Organic, Robert has been a huge help.
http://www.tbsofs.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=18&Itemid=32

2) Cindy Spechler helped us with our invitations. A family friend of the Harfords, her patience sitting with us and Madeline as we poured over book after book after book of invitations was stellar, and the invites look great!

3) Jeff Perlman and the men and women of the Village Klezmer Group. By day, Jeff is an awesome environmentalist working on solar power, and by night, he's one of our favorite klezmer clarinetists, having been one of Marisa's favorites since Jeff's days in the Yale Klezmer Band.
http://www.villageklezmer.com/about.html

4) David Morrison, an old friend of Russ's whose handiwork on the website you're seeing right now. Dave put in a whole bunch of hours to make this thing look right and work right, and we can't thank him enough.
http://www.bndwebdesign.com/home.html

5) Our officiants, Rabbi Jill Jacobs and Elizabeth Richman. Both Jill and Elizabeth have made social justice the cornerstone of their lives and their leadership in the Jewish community, and we admire their work and vision as much as we value their friendship and love. Before we were even engaged, Marisa asked Jill whether she would "hypothetically" marry us; we haven't been able to chase her away yet! After hours upon hours slaving away with Elizabeth on National Havurah Committee programming and Kol Zimrah questions, it seemed fitting for her to be a part of this ceremony as well.

6) Shari Goldman Gottlieb, our close friend, did the calligraphy and illumination for our beautiful shtar. We are so grateful to her for the artistic talent, creativity, and time she dedicated to making it gorgeous.