Before you know it wedding season will be upon us, and with green being the new wedding white, you can bet plenty of people will be planning eco-friendly weddings. I recently read an article that offered some of the following tips for planning a green wedding :

* having a daytime, outdoors wedding so you don’t have to use electricity
* choosing locally grown flowers
* serving organic fare
* purchasing a pre-owned wedding gown, such as from a consignment or thrift store

Now, as you probably now, weddings are pretty pricey affairs: these days, the average wedding will set you back about $30,000. That’s more than the starting salary I got when I entered the magazine world fresh out of college. It’s also one of the reasons that my last wedding book was (here comes shameless self promotion) Tie the Knot on a Shoestring. (Here’s another shameless self promotion: if you’d like to buy the book, you can click on the button at the end of this post.)

But thinking about family and kids–and considering I’m not planning any weddings soon nor am I writing about them much these days (though any publisher that’s interested in having me do a green weddings book, please email me)–this topic made me realize that you could easily apply this green wedding notion to any celebration you might be having. At the same time, you can make it an eco-friendly party that won’t bust your budget.

Here’s how I might do that with my each of my daughter’s upcoming birthday parties:

* Use invitations made of recycled paper to invite their friends.
Or, we could forgo paper all together and invite everyone using Evite.com (hey, all their friends have email accounts at this point, so why not?).

* Give reusable Nalgene water bottles as favors.
What I love about Nalgene bottles is that they come in various shapes, sizes and colors. That way each daughter could choose bottles based on her favorite color. (I already know that one would go for purple while the other would go for green.) Since an empty bottle could be seen as so boring, we could fill each one with organic candy, such as Green & Black’s.

* Make part of the celebration a trip to a pick-your-own farm.
Since both my daughters have summer birthdays, when our CSA will be in full swing, it’s worth considering having part of their celebration at a farm. Then, each kid could take home a pint of berries or a bushel of apples as her favor.

* Bake our own cake from scratch using organic ingredients.
There’s something to be said about cooking with your kids, and baking your own cake will allow you to have fun time with your kids, make an organic cake and save money to boot.

What are some other ways you might plan an eco-friendly celebration?

Thought the folks here would like to know that this blog was recently highlighted in a roundup of noteworthy green blogs. You can read all about it here on Yahoo Finance. Enjoy!