Thiruvananthapuram: Copper wire, cycle wheel rim and other scrap shop rejects are about to find a place and purpose at a wedding reception venue here, a day before the World Environment Day. But even if the wedding of Dheeraj Reghunathan and Athira Pillai happened in another month, the reception would still have been green. For, Dheeraj's brother, Dinesh Reghunathan, has been a Green Army mentor for a long time and he believes that weddings don't become green merely by avoiding plastic plates.
"The concept of a green wedding may not be new. But even as people claim that their weddings are green, they still use flex board, thermocol and other materials that get discarded. I feel there is no point in spending so much on materials that will not be used again," he says. In the place of flex boards, they will use sketched butter paper. Even plantain, a usual sight at the entrance of every wedding, has been replaced with creepers with roots. The mood at Olympia Chambers, Chandrasekharan Nair Stadium, will be brightened using indigenous varieties like yam, ferns and roadside flowering plant.
The decoration of the venue will be supervised by an urban designers' group called Recycle Bin. Its founder Ganga Dileep C. says, "The decorations will not be on a grand scale. We will keep it simple. We have used alternatives to what is conventional. We wish to show that it can be elegant, that same ambience can be created but using subaltern methods." Dinesh started it all by convincing his family to avoid disposable plates and glasses.
He says they are fine with the concept. However, even as they are excited about putting together an ethically correct event, they have to race against time. Only after the wedding in Mavelikkara on Sunday, they can do up Olympia Chambers. "I am tense. Even if one thing goes wrong, I will be dead," jokes Dinesh.
