Tuesday, April 23, 2013

Do-It-Yourself (and Buy Nothing New) Wedding Videography

So weddings are expensive! Really expensive. And I think wedding planning has felt challenging largely because many of the weddings I've seen and read about feel really wasteful (in terms of money and resources). There's probably a whole post I can write about this later. 

Anyway, we decided that we wanted some video of our upcoming wedding, but didn't want to shell out $2,000+ for a videographer, so:

I bought a few used (and cheap!) flipcams to have get video clips throughout the day (which we can then have professionally edited -- this was totally inspired by my awesome friend Kim). As regular readers will know, I have strong feelings about the huge impact of our culture of disposable technology so, not only do I feel good about getting used electronics, which have no further environmental or socially irresponsible impact, but I also just save myself a good $1900+ on videos for our wedding. I call that a win!

Thursday, April 18, 2013

Getting Rich with Responsible Consumerism!

So something that I particularly am loving so far about the "buy nothing new" year is that, not only am I supporting my social and environmental values, but I am also saving a significant amount of money!


This is a graph of my net worth from the last few months. I've taken out the dollar amounts, but even without them you can see where my net worth was in December and January, when I started the "buy nothing new" year, and where it's grown to in just three months. I haven't gotten a raise or come into any money, and I haven't even sold any of the things I'm trying to get rid of yet, but my net worth from January to March grew almost $10,000.

That's right, I just made $10,000 in three months just by cutting back the amount of "stuff" that I'm buying. And I really wasn't buying that much to begin with -- a few art supplies here, a shirt or two there, CVS runs for last minute things I needed -- but by cutting out a large portion of that and buying used for the things I still need, I've saved a substantial amount of money. And I expect this trend to continue (although realistically I know it will probably level out a bit).

So really, who can afford not to be a conscious consumer? :)

Monday, April 15, 2013

Four (and a half) Month Update

So I'm now four and a half months in the "Buy Nothing New" year, and I've been neglecting the blog a little bit, so I want to post an update. 

As far as buying nothing new, things have been going great! I still struggle with gifts and how to navigate that, but I'm trying to get more and more creative.

As far as buying in general, I think I've fallen off the wagon a little bit. Goodwill is my weakness, and I find that when I go in there and let myself look around (as opposed to just searching for exactly what I came in for), I tend to buy things that I don't really need.

In the last two months I bought the following items at Goodwill:
- Button down shirt for work
- Cute hat that I really didn't need
- Vases for centerpieces for the wedding
- Rubber duckies (which I ended up using for wedding stuff)
- Three sweaters that I didn't need
- Picture frames that I didn't need
- And I almost bought a trumpet :)

While it's awesome that I can find all of these great things at Goodwill (which is responsible for workers, the environment, and my bank account), I think I really need to re-visit the consumerism flowchart that I wrote about earlier. All of this shopping is a little bit counter-productive to my de-cluttering initiative! It's time to get back on track!

Buy Nothing New Wedding Update

I have been largely away from the blog for a few weeks now, in part because I have been spending most of my free internet time planning for this upcoming wedding! I'm really doing my best to put together a wedding that still reflects my values, and here's where I'm at right now:

Things I've figured out in a responsible/sustainable way(Blog posts coming soon!):
- Venue, food, photography
- Do-It-Yourself Videography
- My dress/ensemble
- Centerpieces (I love Goodwill!)

Things I still haven't quite figured out how to do sustainably:
- Future Husband's apparel (How do you multiple coordinating ties in a specific color family used?)
- Gifts for the awesome people who are helping us out
- Other decorations and activities
- Flowers 

If anyone has suggestion on any of these things, please let me know! I promise to come back and start blogging again very soon :)