Make Your Wedding Day a Charitable Event with JustGive.org

"As wedding season nears, couples everywhere are planning their perfect weddings and looking for ways to creatively stretch their budget to make them special.

For the all-important day to share and declare love, no wedding detail is too small or insignificant. The ceremony and celebration are full of meaning. Expressing their unique union. Making priceless memories. Starting their life together as one.

With JustGive.org, couples can easily make their ideal wedding a reality with several budget-friendly and eco-chic choices:

1. Thank guests in a personal and lasting way. Make a heartfelt donation as a Wedding Favor and honor a loved one's memory or donate to a cause the two of you care deeply about. It's the type of favor that says a lot about how you're starting life together: giving back.

2. Create a Charitable Wedding Registry and offer guests a meaningful and affordable gift option. In only three steps (create account, wedding details, add charities), JustGive lets you customize a wedding page that tells friends and family why giving to charity is important to both of you. We take care of the details and make it a cinch to announce the registry and keep track of gifts. You receive a distinct link that takes guests directly to your registry (easy to add to your wedding website too), and emails from JustGive inform you when donations are made. Your thank-you list is simple; all gifts are conveniently recorded online, in a password-protected account.

3. Share the love with your wedding party. Donate to their favorite cause or give them personal GiveNow charity gift cards they can use to support a cause that means the world to them.

Guests appreciate that donations made through your Wedding Registry are tax deductible, including the five-dollar transaction fee. This nominal fee, less than typical shipping charges for traditional gifts, helps support JustGive's services and ensures that more of every dollar donated goes directly to those who need it.

More than 18,000 wedding donations honoring 2,000 JustGive couples have raised nearly $1.5 million for charity in the last six years. Shara S., of Elverson , Pennsylvania , attended a friend's wedding where donations were made to the families of fallen solders and loved the idea of making her own wedding favors a meaningful charitable gift to help others. She described the process as "hassle-free and so worth it," saying it "beat any mints, picture frame, or wine stopper you can buy."

For couples looking for more earth-friendly and charitable options, JustGive's Wedding Center offers additional ideas—from selecting a "green" reception site to donating leftovers to help the hungry to asking that wedding vendors donate a portion of their fee to charity."

Last year, we expanded the site to make it easier for engaged couples to include charity as part of their special day," comments Founder Kendall Webb. "We added more options for personalizing gifts, more creative ideas for giving, and more convenient ways to find charities where their wedding gifts can make a difference."

San Francisco-based JustGive.org, started in 2000 by Harvard graduate Kendall Webb, was among the first nonprofit organizations to harness the power of the Web for charitable purposes. JustGive is guided by its mission to connect people with the causes they care about most. The destination for online charitable giving, JustGive.org has been recognized by Forbes as one of the Best of the Web. "