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But first… my reason WHY

As for many people, it is deeply rooted in my childhood days.

I was born in beautiful Lithuania and grow up loving the outdoors. I’ve been told by family members (it is a shame I can not remember myself) that since I was like two years old, I used to wonder in our garden from 6 am every morning!

And for as long as I can remember, I was a passionate handcrafter.

When I was a child and later – a teenager, I was hand making cards, bouquets, pictures and other gifts to my family and friends for birthdays, Christmas and other celebrations. And for this purpose I used whatever I could find at home or in nature. I even used to grow some flowers and grasses for this reason – thanks to my dearest Grandma who taught me how to be a gardener. All of that seemed just right by that time.

But I grow up. 

And I kind of forgot how good these things made me feel. Some people say that as children we know our real calling, but we tend to forget while growing up, you know. So I reached the age when I needed to choose my profession. I’ve decided to study Architecture thinking that I won’t be bored too much as it is a creative occupation. However, during my years at the university I started to work as a journalist. And I loved my job! My mother once said that when I finish university, I will definitely write articles about architecture. Though something was still not right…

And then I got married in 2015.

I really enjoyed preparing for my day, so (not surprisingly to my family and friends) few months later I started my first blog Bride Goes Wild. The thing was that I DIY’ed a lot of things for my wedding and I reused and creatively repurposed a lot of stuff I could find at home and in the houses of our families, because I believed that all that will make our day more authentic (and, at the end, the wedding was beautiful and people talked about it for few months). So many of my articles at Bride Goes Wild were already about this kind of styling and decor stuff even at the very beginning. Just by then I still was not naming them as ‘sustainable’.

Then suddenly, after a year of blogging, there was a turning point in my life.

I’ve decided to try to work in weddings. At least to learn more about things I am writing about. Or, let’s say, to find the answer to the question what exactly I desire to write about. So I left Lithuania and moved to London. I volunteered and worked as paid assistant in many styled shoots, weddings and workshops around Europe. I was lucky enough to find a lot of friends and mentors. Please believe me – the experience I gained is priceless. However, it took me more than two years to understand that there is something… something hugely important behind the wedding industry that is making me feel uncomfortable and even sad about it. The wedding industry is not sustainable. At all. A lot of waste, large carbon footprint and last but not least – even lack of respect to other people.

By realising and truly feeling this fact in my heart I had my big moment, you know…

Everything just magically fell into places. My love for writing; the admiration of weddings; my childhood handcrafts; the approach of reusing and DIY’ing things for my own wedding; the search for zero waste alternatives in my everyday life; the bad feeling while unpacking hundreds and hundreds of roses from plastic for a late afternoon wedding; my passion for Buddhism philosophy…

Even the fact that I was kind of white crow at the university. Because while other students praised well-known names of modern architecture like Zaha Hadid, Norman Foster and Rem Koolhaas, my biggest inspiration always was… Laurie Baker! He was a British-born Indian architect known (not widely enough, in my opinion) for his initiatives in environmentally friendly, high quality but cost-effective architecture which still maintained striking aesthetic sensibility. While having this big moment of mine I realised that I want to write about sustainability in weddings more than about anything else in this world. That day I’ve found my calling.

And so, that’s why Oh Sustainable day! was born.

Oh, and now what?

Thank you for taking time to read my oh-not-so-short story. I believe that the hardest topic for every writer to write about is to talk about herself (or himself), so please don’t be too hard on me. And I sincerely hope that my story resonates with you. If you want to share your personal experiences or have any questions about sustainability in wedding design and styling – please don’t hesitate to drop me a line. The easiest way to do this is via EMAIL or WHATSAPP.

I am looking forward to hearing from you!