Part two in a three-part series

Sarah K. Burkhalter and Andrew Burkhalter, who attend Seattle Mennonite Church, both work for environmental non-profit organizations. While planning their August 2006 wedding, the couple considered the environmental impact of the event and how best to use the earth’s resources.

Andrew and Sarah K. Burkhalter. Photo by Conrad Erb, www.conraderb.com.

Below is a Q&A with the couple:

Why did you encourage people to make donations to your workplaces or carbon offsets?

… We in fact invited people to donate to Mennonite Central Committee (MCC) and to the capital campaign that was being held by First Mennonite Church of San Francisco to purchase the building that houses its Mennonite Voluntary Service (MVS) unit.

We chose MCC simply because we respect and admire the good work that it does. We also wanted to support MVS because we had both participated in the program. In fact, we met because Andrew decided to do MVS in Seattle. We chose to specifically direct donations to the San Francisco MVS Capital Campaign because Sarah had had an amazing year as an MVSer there.

Since we both work at environmental nonprofits—and because we held our wedding at a location that required travel even for local folks—we also encouraged people to purchase carbon offsets in lieu of a gift. Guests had the option of calculating the amount of greenhouse gases that their travel entailed, then putting money toward renewable-energy projects to “offset” those emissions.
You chose findgift.com for your wedding registry. What is it and why?

Findgift.com is a website that allows you to register for any product offered online by any store. I’m sure there are other, similar services and I don’t remember why we picked this one in particular (it was free, that was a perk!). But this way we were able to be deliberate about finding gift options that both aligned with our values and were reasonably priced. So, for example, we were able to choose many products from places as varied as Ten Thousand Villages, Bed Bath and Beyond, Greenhome.com, and REI.
How did people respond to these gift-giving methods?

We had a very favorable response—I think that people liked having options, and felt that if they chose to give us a gift, it was something that fit with our values. A lot of people donated to MCC and MVS, which we felt glad about.
Would you recommend this to other couples?

Absolutely. It was a little bit more work for us—we spent a fair amount of time trying to find the cheapest organic-cotton towels on the entire internet—but we liked having the flexibility, and offering gift-givers options beyond just material products. For those who did choose to give gifts, we felt good about having steered their purchasing toward more sustainable options.

Andrew graduated from Goshen (Ind.) College and Sarah from Seattle Pacific University.