From Decorations to the Wedding Gown: Five Tips to Plann an Environmentally-Friendly Wedding
Weddings generally involve lots of items you may only use once. From the wedding gown to paper decorations to the invitations, weddings typically involve a lot of one-time-use items. If you want to reduce that effect to safeguard the environment, here are some tips to keep in mind:
1. Use reusable decorations.
Decorating the wedding is one of the areas that can involve the most waste. Work with a decorator who can help you hire most of the decorations. That way, you can rest assured that the decorations, ranging from cloth streamers to tablecloths to silk floral centrepieces, will be used at your wedding as well as at other weddings. This reduces the amount of waste that goes to the landfill.
2. Consider a hired or vintage dress.
If you like, you can even make environmental decisions regarding your dress. If you don't want material sourced from scratch, made into a new dress, and then transported to you using fossil fuels, you may want to consider hiring a gown or buying a vintage one. Family gowns are also great from both an environmental and sentimental standpoint. Alternatively, consider wearing a simple dress that you could wear again to special occasions, rather than a wedding gown.
3. Pick a central location.
The more people who have to fly to your wedding, the bigger its carbon footprint is. To reduce travel, choose to have your wedding in the location where most of your guests live. That reduces travel and makes it easier for people to come to your wedding without flying or driving a long way.
4. Look for an environmentally-friendly location.
In addition to making environmentally-friendly choices when buying or hiring items for your wedding, you may also want to choose an environmentally friendly location for your wedding. Talk with each venue about its commitment to the environment. For example, how do they deal with rubbish? Do they compost? Do they embrace strategies to lower how often they run their air conditioner? Ideally, you should discuss issues like that when interviewing reps from potential venues.
5. Give seeds or donations as wedding favours.
In lieu of giving out wedding favours such as plastic bottles of bubbles or other items that are likely to end up in a landfill, give out sustainable wedding favours. You could make a small donation to an environmental charity on behalf of your guests, or you could give them seeds for revegetating. Work with your wedding planner to make little seed balls -- clumps of weeds wrapped in biodegradable paper -- that your guests can (literally) throw into their yard to grow some plants.