Kris Nonn and Helen Martin met through her brother Edward when they were all studying at the University of  Tennessee.  After graduation in 2006, Helen moved to Belgium to teach at the International School of Brussels. Kris was miserable without her and followed her there.  They traveled to Ireland and Egypt before returning to Nashville in June of last year.

After spending the summer with family, they moved to Santa Elena, Venezuela to work for a volunteer organization—Kris building and Helen teaching. On Christmas Eve, Kris proposed to Helen on the top of Mount Roraima, and they married on another mountaintop at Monteagle.

“We realized that weddings as events were incredibly wasteful,” explained Helen,“so we tried to tap into both our personal inclinations to conserve and preserve as well as our desire to make our wedding representative of who we are and who we are trying to be.”

Their invitations were crafted of seed paper which guests were encouraged to plant so they could enjoy the wildflowers that would bloom. None of the party invitations required envelopes, and wedding programs were made of hemp paper. All plates and cups came from recycled paper and corn, and gifts bags were reusable grocery sacks.

Guests were housed in the Monteagle Assembly near all wedding activities and were able to walk everywhere. The best man made beer and wine in reused bottles, and family owned fair-trade businesses supplied the coffee and teas.

Cary Allyn designed centerpieces of herbs from Sewanee that were used at the wedding reception, recycled at a brunch the next day and finally presented as thank-you gifts to the party hostesses.  All the candles were beeswax. Bamboo—a rapidly regenerating product cut from Helen’s grandparents’ backyard in Nashville—served as large decorations for the the ceremony at Pilcher Park and was later moved to the reception area. Local vendors supplied all services, the caterer used locally grown produce and a bakery in nearby Tracy City made the cake.

“We know that the greenest option,” Kris added,  “was to not have a wedding at all, but since that’s not a very fun option, we tried our hardest to make this gathering one that was conscious of its impact on the environment.”

The newlyweds are now living in Madison, Wis. where Helen is a special education teacher and Kris is an architect.

Please see the print issue for the entire article and photo presentation.