After training in Los Angeles for several months Mieko and Giancarlo did the Tango in Topanga (June 2008) and they also did the cash – asking everybody to pitch in to pay for their trip to Japan and Italy. The couple combined three wedding trends: 1. train for your first dance, 2. ask for eco-friendly money gifts for your travel fund instead for stuff wrapped into more stuff and 3. experience an adventure wedding. They traveled to their homelands to wed in honor of their lineage. (Calm your conscience with carbon offsetting your travel) Viva! cross culture marriages, you get so much more for your money. Imagine: a Japanese ceremony in a Shinto temple followed by a kekkon hiroen (reception) where you drink Sake and change your Kimono and dresses several times. (which you don’t just use for one day) Then sing Italian love songs to acoustic guitars at your big fat organic Italian wedding in the country side of the Toscana with local wine and artisan cheese..

Dance Instructors like Isabella’s Dance Academy in LA are prepared to train couples within days.

What’s the opposite of green? Posh?

For their August 8, 2008 wedding Martha and Fernando hired Artem Chigvintsev, a celebrity instructor from “So You Can Dance”. The couple showed a dazzling first dance in front of 350 guests in LA’s Millenium Biltmore Hotel. Hot! Hot! Hot! Unfortunately every filet mignon, jumbo prawn, glam ice sculpture, pesticide soaked flower and guests-presenting-gold-tickets-and-getting- chic-lapel-pins- in-return made the planet even hotter.