Going Greener: Top Tips for a More Eco-Friendly Sustainable Wedding

21st October 2019

We know you don't want to hear it - but in general, weddings are not great for the environment. There's the travel, the new outfits, and the inevitable waste that comes with a celebration of a large group of people. Of course, no one expects you to have a ~ carbon neutral zero waste wedding ~ but there's lots of small changes you can think about to make your special day a little less wasteful, and there are also great Eco Weding Venues out there. 

As always, we've put together a Pinterest mood-board bursting full of little ideas to make your wedding more sustainable. The good news is that they're also really budget friendly, focused on re-using what you already have, and giving back to the earth. Enjoy! 

1. Choose a Sustainable Venue 

This is a big one! Every wedding venue is going to be producing waste and emissions of some sort, so you want to focus on finding venues which deal with this in the most sustainable way. 

For example, Folly Farm do everything they can to conserve the beautiful Bath & Bristol nature surrounding them, using biomass heating, solar energy, harvesting rain water and using seasonal produce from their own garden in their kitchen. On top of that, they donate all their profits to a local environmental charity - amazing!

Fison Barn in Oxfordshire are the proud guardians of 500 hectares of farmland, woodland and wetland on a bank of the Thames. They are also part of the Earth Trust and do everything they can to look after their environment. A beautiful venue focusing on sustainability. 

What a beautiful experience to get married in a venue which cares about the surroundings just as much as you do. 

A few other eco wedding venues we'd like to showcase here are:

You can check out all the Eco Wedding Venues on Amazing Space Weddings here.

2. Think About Travel

In an ideal world, your venue would be in a location which is not too far for your guests to travel. However, it's likely that no matter what venue you choose, you'll have friends and family travelling there from all over the country (and possibly even further). 

Encourage your guests to travel to your wedding in the most sustainable possible way. Either by public transport, or ask them to car share. You could put guests who are coming from the same areas in touch to arrange a car share, and it will be a great bonding experience for them before the big day!

Of course, sometimes plane travel is unavoidable, and the guests who make the effort to fly over for your wedding are most likely your most special friends and family. You could ask these guests to look in to offsetting their carbon emissions if they do have to fly. 

3. Go Paperless

It can be really romantic and exciting to receive post, especially when that post is a beautifully designed wedding invitation. However, not only do your save the dates and invitations use paper (and therefore trees, land, fertiliser and machinery), they also use transport and petrol to deliver your invitations all around the country.

A more sustainable option would be to send out beautiful virtual save the dates and e-invites, to save trees and hidden emissions, along with saving yourself a lot of money and time.

There are some fantastic websites for online wedding invitations:

Greenvelope - They have some stunning designs for e-invitations, along with an amazing RSVP system for your guests, polls to ask menu questions, and they send out reminders and message your guests before the big day. Their slogan is 'Save Time. Save Trees. Save Money' and we love it!

Paperless Post - Here you'll find super stylish designs, with classic, modern and destination invitations, along with everything in between. They also offer RSVP and messaging options between you and your guests. 

Can't bear the thought of paperless invitations? Another option would be printing your invitations on seed paper, which your guests can then plant after the wedding, to one day become wild flowers. 

Instead of writing menus, place cards and any other signage on paper, instead opt for something a little more sustainable that you already have. You may have some old palettes & wood in the shed which would be ideal to paint on. You could write on stones you've found on a trip to a beach together instead of place cards, or even use leaves. Think outside the box and get creative!

This also applies for paper napkins; replace them for material ones which can then be washed and used again and again. 

4. Wear Old Outfits 

It's easy to think that the worst offenders for climate issues are planes, cars and food, but the fashion industry is actually responsible for around 10% of of annual global carbon emissions, which is even more than international flights and shipping combined. Scary! 

The way to combat this is to massively reduce our consumption of fast fashion and in an ideal world, to stop buying new clothes. Instead, we can shop vintage, visit charity shops, browse eBay for second-hand bargains, and make sure to really look after the fast fashion items we already own so they will last for years to come.

The majority of your wedding guests would typically go out and buy a lovely new outfit to celebrate your special day. You could instead encourage your guests to wear an outfit they already have, or to borrow something special from a friend, or even to get crafty and renew an outfit or pair of shoes they already own. 

The wonderful Venetia & Max La Manna tried this with their wedding guests, and their theme was:
'Something old, nothing new, something borrowed, something renewed'

5. Work With What You Already Have

Think carefully about decorating your venue, and try to avoid buying anything new where possible, especially if it's decorations you'll only use for one day. You don't really want to spend a chunk of your budget on plastic balloons, streamers and lights, for them to all end up in landfill at the end of the day.

Most venues have lovely decorative items you can hire or borrow from them, such as special hanging lights, decorative rugs, along with the essentials like tables & chairs. Use as much as you can from what is available to you, and then you always have the option to source your own additional items. 

Some wedding decor ideas to re-use what you already have are: 

• Bring in beautiful rugs you and your friends & families already own.
• Collect mismatched glass jars, vases and bottles leading up to the wedding, which you could put candles and lights in for a romantic glow. Charity, second hand and vintage shops are great for these.
• Have a look in the shed for some large wood boards which you could paint the order of ceremonies on. You could create your own chalk board from old wood or a palette and some chalk paint.
• Bring in your warm white Christmas lights (and we're sure your friends will have plenty too) which you can drape around the venue.

6. Forgo the Flowers

We know, we know, we all love flowers, but hear us out!

Flowers do seem like an essential at weddings, but those pretty petals can have pretty huge environmental impacts. There's the chemicals, pesticides and land space needed to grow the flowers, the travel for them to reach your wedding (some even fly internationally), and the fuel guzzling vehicles needed to transport these flowers. Of course, flowers will look absolutely beautiful on your wedding day (and hopefully a good few days afterwards), but you then need to make sure you compost your flowers so they can eventually become part of the earth again, rather than them releasing gases under mounds of plastic in landfill. Some flower waste also can't be composted due to the poisonous residues they may add to the soil.

If we've just ruined all your flowery wedding dreams, we're sorry! But don't worry, there are some wonderful alternatives you could consider: 

• Use foliage and greenery. You could drape hanging ivy over the beams in your venue, and use local and readily available foliage to bulk out any arrangements you may have. 
• Bring in your own house plants and any owned by your green fingered friends. These can look beautiful around your venue and also bring a personal touch to your space.
• Choose to use flowers which are still growing in their pots, so their life isn't just for your wedding day.
• Visit your local flower market, speak to the stall owners and select the blooms which are as local as possible.
• Ask your green fingered friends. You could see if any of your wedding guests would be willing to bring any flowers they've grown in their gardens. You'll likely end up with a beautiful colourful array of flowers which all have their own personal story.
• Use dried flowers, which will then look beautiful for years.
• If you are set on using a florist and cut flowers, ask your florist about only using local, seasonal flowers. These should have been grown on sustainable land which focuses on bee-friendly 'slow flowers', using no harmful pesticides. You may need to compromise on which flowers you can choose from in order to reduce travel miles.

7. Eco-Conscious Catering & Booze

We know there will always be guests who complain if you make your wedding catering all vegan/vegetarian, but the benefits to the environment are undeniable. Another benefit of only serving plant-based food is that you can easily compost any food waste at the end of the day. 

You could give your guests the choice between a vegan or vegetarian meal, and add a little note that anyone who strongly objects can contact you to discuss a meat alternative. Remember, this is your special day, so if you disagree with the meat & dairy industry, you don't need to compromise your beliefs just to please your vegetable hating great uncle. There are so many amazing vegan & vegetarian caterers now, most of which your guests won't even notice use all vegetables, or meat alternatives as the food will be so delicious. 

If this sounds too extreme, you could aim to have 50% of the meals at your wedding as vegetarian as a compromise. 

Again, remember to shop local, and choose caterers who won't have far to travel. Request a menu which uses seasonal ingredients sourced from the surrounding areas. You will be supporting local independent businesses, along with saving a huge amount of money and carbon emissions - and your bellies will thank you too!

Bubbles - this is a big one. You don't necessarily need real Champagne from France. You could instead explore options for local wines instead, or even British sparkling wine. 

8. Gifts which Give Back

Most guests will be very eager to buy you a lovely brand new wedding gift to celebrate your big day. Here's a few ideas to avoid waste and unwanted items: 

• Think carefully about what you actually need, if you do want to ask for gifts. 
• Make sure you don't double up! You don't want to end up with ten of the same slow cooker.
• If you're against your guests buying new items, you could send out a list of items you'd love, and see if anyone already has a spare one, or see if they can find a 'nearly new' version in a second hand shop. 
• Ask for experiences instead of gifts. Always wanted to do a skydive? Desperate to go to a restaurant but can't justify the cost? Have a favourite place for cocktails? These are all lovely personal gifts which your guests will be more than happy to fund.
• Say no gifts and mean it!

You also want to think about whether you'd like to give out wedding favours to give your guests a memory of your special day. To reduce the excess and waste from your wedding day, you could give out the flowers and plants you used to decorate your venue at the end of the night. One wedding idea on Pinterest above gave each guest a succulent plant, with a note saying 'our wedding would have succ-ed without you'! Waste free & life giving, we love it.

Another lovely idea is to give out little paper packets full of flower seeds, which your guests can plant in their gardens. You'll probably get lots of updates as their flowers grow too. Something edible always goes down well, you could bulk buy your favourite sweet treats and fill up old jam jars with them to give each guest.

9. Recycle, Compost and Replenish the Earth

You want to avoid as much of your wedding waste as possible going in to landfill, so it's important to consider: 

• Food Waste - Encourage your guests to bring a tupperware with them, or you could provide little cardboard food boxes, which your guests can fill up with delicious leftovers at the end of the day. Anything which isn't taken home could be scraped in to a food waste bin or compost heap. Your venue may have one on site already, or this could be something your caterers could help with.
• Flowers & Plants - Any flowers and plants you used to decorate the venue, and which can't be taken home or given to guests, could be added to green waste to eventually turn back in to soil and re-grow more beautiful plants.
• Bottles from the Bar - Chances are you'll end up with hundreds of empty bottles of beer, bubbly, cider, you name it. Make sure these all go to glass recycling to become new bottles again in the future. 
• Request No Plastic - Speak to your venue and caterers about serving any food on ceramic plates which can be washed and used again, or alternatively, on cardboard/bamboo plates which can bio-degrade easily if your reception is more casual or outside.
• One Cup Policy - Give each guest a glass cup of their own which will be 'theirs' for the day. Set up a water point where glasses can be rinsed between drinks, or filled up with drinking water.

10. Take a Local Honeymoon

We're not asking you to cancel your Bali honeymoon of dreams, but suggest you consider whether you actually need to fly to have a dreamy honeymoon. If you are completely set on an international honeymoon, maybe consider offsetting your carbon emissions online. 

There are so many romantic places to explore in the UK: the rugged coast of Cornwall, the picture book villages in the Cotswolds, the wild mountains in the Lake District, even the expansive Scottish Highlands. You could take a road trip together, or enjoy a city break in Bath, Manchester, Edinburgh or London.

The Eurostar could also be a great option. It can get you to Paris in just over 2 hours, using a fraction of the emissions that flying would. The Eurostar now also goes to Amsterdam, Brussels and even Disneyland Paris!

Your wedding day is a celebration of love and unity, and you can plan the day so that it beautifully reflects the style of yourself and your partner. Hopefully you can use some of the tips here, and extend your love back to the Earth on your special day, by having a more sustainable wedding. 

We hope this helps!
Love, Amazing Space Weddings x