How to Plan a Green Wedding

Gone are the days where the word ‘eco’ means hippy, tie-dye and poor qual­ity. Hav­ing a low-impact wed­ding is a great way of sav­ing a bob or two, while at the same time tread­ing lightly on the planet. A ‘green wed­ding’ means that con­sump­tion, sus­tain­abil­ity, cre­ativ­ity and care­ful sourc­ing are at the fore­front of decisions.

Pick a sus­tain­able wed­ding venue

Get mar­ried in a venue that truly reflects your eth­i­cal stance. Look for a place that serves local, sea­sonal, organic food, which will reduce your food miles and sup­port the local econ­omy. And while you’re at it, go for a venue that has invested in renew­ables to help off­set its car­bon foot­print. This may be through a wind tur­bine, bio-mass or solar pan­els on the roof. A good eco-venue will be well insu­lated and har­vest ‘grey-water’ to flush the loos. Makes sense, doesn’t it?

What’s more, there are plenty of gor­geous venues that run as char­i­ties so your hard earned cash will carry on being spent for good causes.

The Wed­ding Dress

It’s ludi­crous to think of the amount of money spent on white dresses with a shelf-life of one day. Instead, buy some­thing absolutely beau­ti­ful that you feel stun­ning in and can wear again. Besides, white isn’t for every­one. So choose a dress in a color that suits you best and makes you feel utterly won­der­ful.

Make it personal

Savour every mem­ory of your wed­ding day by mak­ing a scrap book of the day. Ask your guests to include poems, draw­ings, mes­sages, pho­tos and anec­dotes for a keep­sake you’ll trea­sure for­ever. This book should be made of some­thing pure and nat­ural in keep­ing with your green wed­ding; the pages should be hand­made, it should be fairly traded and made out of some­thing sus­tain­able. Not only will your money will go towards keep­ing the ancient craft of paper­mak­ing alive, but your book will tell a story with­out words.

Dec­o­rate your wed­ding venue with green flowers

Most flow­ers are shipped over from Kenya or Hol­land, which is a trav­esty con­sid­er­ing all the bright and beau­ti­ful flow­ers grown right here in the UK. Opt for locally grown bou­quets, grown sea­son­ally. These flow­ers will no doubt be freshly picked to order, which as you and I both know, is just what you want in a bouquet.

Why not ask your guests to for­age a bou­quet from their gar­dens and hedgerows? You’ll have a beau­ti­ful array of flow­ers picked with love, which will have far more sen­ti­men­tal mean­ing. Also, there’ll be prac­ti­cally no flower-miles in the mak­ing of your beau­ti­ful venue. Alter­na­tively, there are plenty of sup­pli­ers of British, sea­sonal flow­ers who can pro­vide eth­i­cal bou­quets for your wed­ding day.

Eth­i­cal wed­ding favours

Show your appre­ci­a­tion to your guests by offer­ing wed­ding favours with an eth­i­cal twist. They could be some­thing that sup­ports sus­tain­able liv­ing, made of plants, fairly traded, local or recycled.

For some­thing a lit­tle dif­fer­ent, how about bestow­ing each guest with a love bomb? Sim­ply make up the ‘bombs’ with the seed mix­ture pro­vided and chuck them at any area of earth that needs bright­en­ing up with a burst of colour­ful forget-me-nots. These kits are loved by all ages – no green fin­gers nec­es­sary.

Gifts with a difference

Let’s face it, you don’t need another toaster, you’ve got plenty of photo frames already and you don’t need any­thing more to dust. So instead, set up your wed­ding gift list in a place that will have a pos­i­tive impact on the planet. There are plenty of char­i­ties where your guests can buy gifts that trans­form lives around the world from £5 onwards. You’ll feel great know­ing that you’ve made a real dif­fer­ence. Have a look at Oxfam Unwrapped for more details.

Or maybe ask for gifts that pro­mote eth­i­cal liv­ing. The Eden Project care­fully source their prod­ucts to fit their tight eth­i­cal buy­ing cri­te­ria, and money spent here goes into their edu­ca­tional char­ity. Set up a wish list on their web­shop for a choice of gifts for the home and gar­den. Your guests can even donate a lit­tle extra to off­set the car­bon emis­sions of delivery.

Do it your way!

Remem­ber that if it’s not your style to wear a big white dress, organ­ise ice-sculptors and harp quar­tets – then now is not the time to become that per­son. Your big day is about enjoy­ing your­self, mak­ing sure you feel relaxed, com­fort­able and can sim­ply con­cen­trate on the won­der­ful years of mar­riage ahead.

This guest blog post is by Har­riet Wild on behalf of The Eden Project. Do have a look at their wed­ding favours (there are loads of gifts you can buy online which would make fan­tas­tic wed­ding favours) and read more from Har­riet here about plan­ning a green wed­ding.