If you’re passionate about protecting the environment and preserving mother Earth, then you’ll no doubt want this to be reflected in your wedding.. Lucky for you, there are so many exciting ways to incorporate your passion into your special day, and to help get your guests involved in your worthwhile cause.
Your earth-loving celebration can easily be filled with earth-hugging options like biodegradable materials and reusable decor, so you can have a waste and guilt free celebration. Our wedding planners have tips for every aspect of your big day because your green wedding deserves to be as green as you are! From reducing electricity and fuel to re-purposing and giving back, we’ve got advice for every aspect for your sustainable wedding.
We’ve gathered some of our favourite ideas for creating a socially and environmentally-conscious event that will make you feel good.
- Go For Biodegradable Options
It can be easy to stay organic when you use biodegradable containers, utensils, and serveware. BioandChic.com products are great for trays, favours, and to-go boxes because they are suitable for composting.
- Ethical Rings
You can begin green wedding planning as early as when you’re shopping for rings.. Select a gemstone or metal that is socially and environmentally responsible. Consider an antique or vintage ring.
- Finding Your Dream Venue
If you’re feeling adventurous, look for a wedding venue where you can grow most of the food on the menu using sustainable farming practices. You can also choose a venue that is stunning on its own, requiring less decorating.
You might also want to think about getting married locally, or wherever most of your guests can easily access, to reduce the amount of fuel your event uses. If you plan on being married elsewhere, ask your family and friends to carpool, cutting down on gas and maybe inspiring new friendships to grow.
- Get All The Recyclables
Save the trees by making sure that all your invitation letters, menus, programs for the day are all from recycled paper. Think printed linen and glass tablet. And for your save-the-dates consider going the digital route by sharing key information via your wedding website and sharing an easy RSVP link for everyone to access.
- Support Local Suppliers
By outsourcing to local vendors, you get to cut down on your carbon footprint from long distance transportation of produce, as all your veggies and flowers will be coming from somewhere near you.
- Values
Have a team that supports what you stand for, and try to get vendors that work hard to contribute to the conservation of energy and waste production. If they’re not already practising it, find out if they’re at least willing to collaborate with you with green efforts. For example, you could opt to go for florists that reuse their flowers, or food vendors that work with local farmers.
- Something Borrowed
You could take something new, something blue, and something borrowed a step further by incorporating several family heirlooms into your wedding. Repurposing items means you’ll be able to cut down on consumption.
- Take It To The Thrift Store
Search for flea markets to scour for deserted treasures to give them a second purpose as features in your wedding. You might be shocked what gems you’ll find that would make amazing decor pieces.
- Reusable Rentables
There are companies that allow couples to rent everything from cutlery, linens, as well as the cleaning services to take care of the rented items. That way you don’t have to worry about getting paper plates and plastic cutlery.
- Double Purpose Deco Pieces
See if you can find decor pieces you can use that’ll serve a dual purpose, working as, for example, a centrepiece as well thank you tokens. That way you cut down on the resources you need to get.
- Bin It Right
Have your venue or wedding planner a brief to organize a systematic disposal system around the venue that segregates the trash into recyclables, cans, paper and plastic.
- Don’t Toss The Flowers
You could consider holding onto your flowers and donating them to a hospital or companies that collect flowers for charity. You could even have them converted to some kind of memorabilia you could treasure.
- Leftovers
Most of the time, there’s often a lot of leftover food from the catering company that’ll end up getting tossed if not handled right. So make sure to collaborate with your hired caterer to make sure that all the remaining food is donated to the homeless.
- Charity of Choice
You could take things a notch up and share your prefered charity with them if they’d be interested in making donations of any kind.
- Provide A Shuttle Service
If you can help organize transport to help ferry your guests to and fro, that would cut down on the number of cars moving about. That, in effect, would significantly reduce the amount of exhaust released into the atmosphere.
Planning a wedding means organising a celebration that celebrates all that’s beautiful about a couple, and as someone passionate about the environment, you can uphold that. Here’s to hoping that your green wedding fantasies come true and this guide helped give you some useful insight on how to incorporate your passion into your big day.
