Making Charity Part of Your Wedding

Original location:
http://www.marriedforgood.com/making_charity.html

Looking for ways to incorporate charity into your wedding? Here are some popular ideas:

1. Hold your wedding reception at a venue where the usage fee will benefit the organization, such as a local park, historic home. or museum.


2. Donate your leftover wedding food to a food rescue service. Second Harvest will direct you to a local food bank in your area.


3. Donate leftover flowers or centerpieces to a local hospital, nursing home, or women's shelter. They will really brighten someone else's day. The Hospital Directory will help you find a local hospital, CareScout will direct you to local nursing homes based on distance from your zip code, and The National Coalition Against Domestic Violence provides state-by-state hotline numbers you can call to locate women's shelters near you.


4. Instead of giving your guests favors, make donations in their honor. Place a small calligraphy-written card at each guest's place setting, saying, "In your honor, (names of couple) have made a donation to (name of charity)." This makes a wonderful wedding keepsake for your guests.


5. You can also place cards like the ones mentioned above in your guest's hotel rooms, in lieu of a welcome basket (most guests never eat all those snacks anyway!) It would be especially appropriate to have the cards indicate that you have made a donation to a hunger organization in your guest's honor.


6. Are your bridesmaids complaining that they'll never wear their dresses again? Let them know they can donate their gently-used dresses to The Glass Slipper Project, a Chicago-based charity which accepts donations of evening wear and accessories to distribute to disadvantaged high school girls who are unable to buy a prom dress for their own big night.


7. If you're not planning on saving your gown for your daughter, then you might consider donating your wedding dress to Brides Against Breast Cancer, a charitable organization that sells used gowns and dresses and uses the money to fulfill the wishes of breast cancer patients around the country.

 

Web graphics provided by: