When planning a wedding, essentially you are making choices for all your guests: what they will eat, how far they will travel, what kind of party favors they will take home. The average couple getting married invites between 100 and 150 people – so, whatever choices you are making – multiply them by the number of guests you are inviting and think about what impact on the environment your wedding will have.
Here i summarized a few aspects of the wedding planning, where you can make “green” choices, and feel good about saving the planet!
1.Wedding location. – Before picking a wedding location, compile your guest-list and study it carefully. If 70% of your guests need to fly in for your wedding from the same state, think about inconvenience you are causing them, and also about all the CO2 emissions the airplanes are responsible for. Maybe it’s better to have bride and groom and 30% of the guests to fly the other way and join the majority of your guests, and have the wedding where they live? If nobody is flying nowhere, and the distances involved are shorter, still – assess how much each of the guests would have to drive, and try to pick the venue that allows for the minimal miles driven per person ratio. Of course, you can’t pick the venue based solely on it’s location, you need to love it, too! :) Another popular solution to minimize the gas emissions is to hire a shuttle for all the guests. I see this a lot when NYC couples have weddings in the tri-state area surrounding New York. It’s considerably cheaper to have a wedding outside of the city, yet -many Manhattanite guests don’t even have cars. Hence, hiring the bus to take guests to the wedding location from the city center is a great move – both for the guests and the environment. (Not only you are saving your guests money on car-rental and/or gas, but you are ensuring their safety on the way back. They don’t have to worry about driving home while drunk. – They can take a shuttle-bus back, and , possibly, -a short cab-ride from the drop-off place to their homes.) Needless to say, this works only when many guests live in a concentrated area like a city or town.
2.Vendors. – You might be surprised, but not all vendors are equal when sustainability is concerned. If the “green” aspect of the wedding is important to you, try to go with all the local vendors. The less they fly and drive, the more environmentally-cautious it makes your wedding. Consider a few other things when picking the right vendors: do they care about our planet, do they adhere to “green” practices when running their businesses? Let me give you an example of a “green” wedding photographer: a photographer like that would use rechargeable batteries whenever possible; recycle the non-rechargeable batteries, and old photo-equipment; waste as little paper as possible. Now, how can a photographer get around without wasting paper? That’s simple: nowadays there are so many ways to go paperless. I, personally, offer my clients all-digital packages. This meant that even though i would pick the best photos after the wedding, post-edit and retouch them, i would give them to the clients on DVDs as digital files, not as 4×6 or 5×7 proofs or big prints. I find that this works much better. Early in my career I used to print about 400 4×6 photos from each wedding, and give this extremely heavy paper box to the couple along with the digital files. Since then, i found that those boxes with paper proofs usually sit in someone’s basement. Most couples go on and order the beautiful coffee-book flush-mount albums within a year following their wedding, and once they have the albums, surely they don’t need the proofs any more. In addition, ordering the big prints [11×14 or 16×20 in] right after the wedding could often be a rush decision. A lot of couples move to a new home a year or two after getting married. New home means new decor. It seems like a wiser decision to give the couple all the digital files, and allow them to select the best prints to print large only when they are truly ready, when they know exactly on which wall they want this to hang, which colors are the walls and the room’s decor, etc.
Last but not least, watch out for too many forms, contracts and brochures that the vendors offer you. A truly environmentally-cautious vendor will have the minimum amount of paper advertising materials, and most of them will be digital.
3.Food. So, you are going to decide what 100+ people are going to eat. Of course the most important part is that it has to be delicious. But within the realm of the “delicious foods” there are a world of choices. Try to go with organic and locally-grown fruits and vegetables, organic meat and free-range organic chicken. For fish entry, try to pick fish that is not considered endangered, and get wild-caught fish vs. farm-raised. If you want to step it up a notch, consider having a really delicious vegetarian meal option that will entice even the meat-lovers, and if you are really brave soul – have a meatless dinner! Remember what they say about skipping 1 meat meal a week – it makes a huge difference. Now, multiply it by the amount of your guests, and the impact becomes 100 times more! If you know your guests love meat too much, perhaps just stick to serving vegetarian appetizers.
4. Party favors, wedding invitations, placement cards and table settings: Recycle, recycle and upcycle! Here you can get really creative. One of the most important tips, is – give something really useful! Not something that would just lay around and people would feel bad throwing it out while having no use for it! IWhenever in doubt, give something edible: chocolate, home-made jam or candies! I don’t want to get carried away in this section since it’s such a huge topic all by itself, but one of my favorite “green” wedding solutions is using little rocks for either – writing guest names and table-number on them and using them instead of placement cards, OR – giving plain flat rocks to the guests to write their wishes to bride and groom. You only waste the ink of the marker, nothing else. I also love seeing Green apples with a tiny sticker for the guest’s name used instead of place-cards. As for the party favors, i love seeing “plant the flowers on our behalf” little packets with seeds. It’s sweet, truly special and sustainable! Recycling different bottles, mason jars and old vases could be a fun project, and save you a lot of money, too.
5.In the rare cases when a couple is having their wedding on their own land, or their parents’ land – if there is place to plant something new, i find it an amazing and touching tradition when a couple asks every guest to bring some seeds of flowers or herbs to plant, or they could even plant trees together. If the wedding is a very informal affair, and guest come for the weekend and stay on couple’s land, it’s a fun communal activity to let guests plant all their green gifts. :) Just imagine how beautiful it must feel to have the grove of trees grown big and tall 20 or 30 years after the wedding, walking into that grove and remembering the day the trees were planted, and along with it – remembering each guest that gifted you the particular tree. If I myself had a wedding [and some land, too – sigh.. :)], i would definitely do this!
6.Rings, Jewelry and even the Wedding Dress: If you use your grand-parents’ or great grand-parents’ rings, you give them the new life and honor their lives and their love and marriage at the same time. Aaaaand… – you don’t need to buy brand-new rings! Even if the rings don’t fit and are too big, you could take to a jeweler to adjust. Same goes about other bridal jewelry. Last but not least, I’ve seen brides use their mom’s or even grandmother’s wedding gowns, upgrade them a little bit and wear them. Vintage wedding dresses can be amazingly stylish, and is a great way to show you have a strong connection with your family history!
There are many other creative ways to insure your wedding is as sustainable as possible. In the end, it’s the thought that counts. If you have the intention to have a sustainable wedding, you are already on the right track! Don’t go too crazy and don’t be hard on yourself if you can’t get everything right. Just keep the “sustainability aspects” in mind, and it’ll help you make some great decisions every step of the way! Happy Planning!
Author Anna is a freelance wedding photographer based in Manhattan, New York. She brings laughter and joy to the wedding day, and always tries to shoot the same with her camera.She tries to utilize meditation concepts in her photography whenever possible.
How are you going to incoporate “green” in your wedding? Let us know in your comments.
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Categories: Budget Saving, Green Wedding, Plan Your Theme Wedding, Wedding Tips
Tagged: eco friendly, environmental friendly wedding, green wedding, nature friendly, wedmepretty.com
Date: March 21, 2013
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