Choosing to have a sustainable wedding is a great way to reduce your big day’s impact on the environment. Sadly much in the same way a “perfect” wedding is almost elusive, so is a completely carbon-neutral wedding.
But that doesn’t mean you can’t have a pretty perfect sustainable wedding, Far from it. There has never been a better time to make more sustainable choices for your wedding day.
Locally Sourced Food
Not just using local suppliers, choosing a menu for both food and drinks that use as much locally sourced produce as possible, including meat, fish, vegetables and ingredients that local suppliers can prepare. If this is something your venue offers, then choosing to have your menu created in-house can reduce the need for suppliers ot travel to the venue thus reducing the environmental impact further.
Check Your Venues Eco-Credentials
When looking for a venue for your wedding, choose one local to reduce travel time to the venue for the wedding party. Ask what sustainable practises the venue currently has in place and what they can offer you in terms of a suitable wedding with regards to what they provide and their credentials, such as using natural decoration and supplies over disposable plastic items.
Shop Sustainably
We all know the furore created when it was revealed that Carrie Johnson nee Symonds hired her wedding dress. It also creates a much-needed discourse about the impact wedding dresses can have and the cost involved in buying a new dress. Choosing to hire a wedding dress or shopping for vintage wedding dresses that are preloved can still mean you have a gorgeous wedding dress without the impact of buying a brand new dress. This can then be applied to all outfits for the wedding party too.
Plants and Flowers
Choose ethically sourced plants and flowers for your wedding and choose beautiful blooms that can act as decor and wedding favours allowing people to take them home, so they can be used once the wedding is over. Not only do they look amazing in the context of a wedding venue, but they are more sustainable too. Using flowers for all aspects of your wedding, such as table placements, plants for seating plans to offset the carbon dioxide produced by guests and for replacing non-sustainable materials such as ribbons and plastic decorative items.,they
Go Digital
For wedding invites, wedding stationery, and so on, choose to go digital for those attending your wedding. Send out e-vites or emails with all the details they will need or create a QR code for your big day that tells people where they will be sitting, the order of service and the menu etc. This will reduce the need for printing out all of these details.
Choosing A Sustainable Wedding
There are many small changes you can make to allow your wedding to be more sustainable. Thinking carefully about how your wedding decor is made, the impact your choices have on your environment, and creating swaps to reduce this impact can go a long way in planning for the perfect wedding day for you that is conscious of the world around you.
