Main photo by micheile dot com on Unsplash
Your upcoming wedding will be a dream, but it may also produce tons of trash. Decorations are an important way to bring your wedding vision to life, whether you DIY or buy them. But what happens to everything when the evening ends? Use these tips to avoid waste after your ceremony and have a green wedding that aligns with your sustainable values.
1. Recycle Paper Decor
A US study showed that couples spend an average of $2,141 for wedding decor, which lets them create the wedding aesthetic they’ve always wanted. It also leads to tons of single-use purchases.
Recycle any paper decor you decide to use to avoid waste after the ceremony. Anyone who’s helping you can grab the paper signs, table markers, fans, and other decorations for a quick trip to your local recycling centre before you jet off to your honeymoon.
2. Use Biodegradable Dinnerware
Renting dinnerware for your reception is a great way to have a green wedding, but it isn’t your only option. If renting is too costly, look into biodegradable alternatives before you turn to disposable plastic. Your plates, cups, silverware, and serving dishes will break down more quickly in a landfill to minimise the lasting waste from your wedding day.
3. Preserve Your Flowers
Flowers are a traditional part of weddings, so you’re likely thinking about using them on your big day. They create bouquets, boutonnieres, and centrepieces that add a romantic touch to any venue. They’re also-single use decorations that require natural resources to exist for that short period.
Consider preserving your flowers to make their environmental impact worth the resources. There are many preservation methods you could choose from, but the quickest is microwaving your flowers. It may sound odd, but the heat preserves your flowers in perfect condition by saving their colour and shape. They’ll look lovely in shadow boxes, frames, and vases for a long time after your wedding ends.
Photo by Jonathan Borba on Unsplash
4. Sell Your Supplies
You don’t have to throw away everything you use for your wedding. Anything you don’t want to keep around your home can fulfil the dreams of other couples. List your decor for sale on virtual marketplaces to give them new life. You’ll get a fraction of your wedding budget back while helping other grooms and brides save money and the planet.
Photo by Annie Gray on Unsplash
5. Rent an Electric Car
Your getaway car can be an essential part of your wedding. It will become the backdrop for some of your portraits and your photographer’s photos as you leave for your hotel. Unless you plan to bike off into the sunset, your getaway vehicle will burn fossil fuels to transport you and your partner.
Avoid that problem by renting an electric car for your wedding. You can use it to pick up your wedding party members and even get lunch while everyone gets ready for the ceremony. After your reception, you’ll avoid adding 8,882 grams of CO2 waste to the atmosphere for every gallon of petrol burned.
6. Donate Your Wedding Clothes
You might not think of wedding outfits as potential waste, but how often will you wear them? Just once – and maybe if you ever renew your vows in a decade or two. That counts as a single-use purchase, along with things like your bridesmaids’ dresses and your partner’s suit or gown.
Ask your wedding party members to donate their clothing with you after your ceremony. Giving them to local thrift stores will keep the clothes from becoming landfill waste. It’ll also help people who can’t afford to buy them at retail price. Everyone deserves a beautiful and fun wedding, no matter their budget.
Photo by Jonathan Borba on Unsplash
7. Buy Local Products
There are endless possibilities for your wedding decorations. You can pick a theme or season and get decorations that bring those things to life at your venue. However, many of those things will come from distant cities or countries.
Transporting and shipping goods requires burning fossil fuels. You’ll have a greener wedding by buying things that come from the area around your venue. Talk with your potential caterers and vendors to see where they source their products. You’ll support the local economy and reduce waste.
Buying local goods skips the shipping process, so you won’t throw away excess cardboard and cushioning materials. Personally pick up your flowers and decorations from nearby artists or get them hand-delivered. Your money won’t fund mass-production processes or pay for single-use shipping waste.
8. Only Buy What You Need
Avoiding waste also means avoiding unnecessary purchases. Sketch your venue to plan the exact decor you’ll need in every room. You won’t have leftover decorations that waste time, money, and natural resources to serve no purpose on your big day.
You can always prepare to donate or sell things later if you’re worried about accidentally getting more decorations than you plan on using. Mistakes happen, but there are always ways to help the planet and take care of waste.
Avoid Waste After Your Wedding
There are many ways to avoid waste after your wedding ceremony. Green weddings require a bit more thought and planning, but you’ll help the earth without compromising your wedding dreams. Think about what you’ll need to decorate your venue and how you’ll handle everything after your honeymoon to create a sustainable plan for your remaining decor.
Author bio: Cora Gold is the Editor-in-Chief of women’s lifestyle magazine, Revivalist. She has a passion for inspiring couples to plan the wedding of their dreams. Follow Cora on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.
The world of weddings is changing! We asked celebrity wedding florist Larry Walshe some of our biggest, burning questions – and we were thrilled to bits when he replied with such thoughtful insights on the future of weddings.
Credit: Rebecca Searle Photography
Before we dive in: yes, luxury weddings are bound to create more waste by volume. We’re not hiding from that. But no amount of Guardian coverage can stop luxurious weddings from happening; they’ll go on, and they’re already becoming more sustainable. It would be naive to ignore the existence of extravagant celebrations and assume everyone can have a thrifty little micro wedding. Finally, the wedding industry needs its shining stars to set an example: and here’s how that’s already happening.
Credit: Rebecca Searle Photography
Where do you see the future of wedding floristry heading, with sustainability in mind?
I believe that as we all look towards seeking and implementing more sustainable solutions across all facets of our lives, this will equally become more of a leading and prevalent factor in the designs and decisions that we make for parties, weddings and celebrations.
Notoriously, the weddings industry is incredibly wasteful due to the temporary nature of what we create. Transforming a space from nothing into a veritable fantasy for a single day does inevitably come with consequences and I do believe that whilst the scale of what we create will always stay the same, the way we approach design will evolve.
We regularly guide our clients towards more sustainable forms of design, those with more movement, depth and texture in order to create work which is formed without the use of floral foam. We endeavour to educate our clients on sustainable wedding flower options and by driving these choices and making selections available to them, we are seeing more and more couples selecting a more environmentally conscious scheme.
Floristry has the power to totally transform a space into a magical wonderland so I don’t see that changing as visually led social media continues to grow at a rapid pace. I do however feel we will all start to adopt more planet-friendly solutions to ensure we can continue doing what we love for many years to come.
Credit: Rebecca Searle Photography
Credit: Rebecca Searle Photography
Is it possible to have luxe-looking florals and still have a sustainable wedding?
Yes, however certain schemes and styles lend themselves well towards this style of design. Those styles of look which are wild, garden inspired and free-flowing are ideally suited to adopting sustainable techniques.
We must however me mindful that many of these looks need to be made in situ and cannot be pre-prepared. If sustainability is important to you, one should take this into consideration when selecting your wedding venue to ensure that this will be possible for all your wedding vendors. The longer you have to prepare, the more creative you can be!
Credit: Kate Nielen Photography
Could you share 5 top tips on how to sustainably style your wedding with flowers?
- Create designs without the use of floral foam.
- Use flowers which are sourced locally. Design by colour rather than by specific flower type to allow your florist to find the best of what is available for you locally.
- Gift your flowers to guests at the end of the wedding so that they can be enjoyed fully.
- Give your florist the time they need to create sustainably led designs. These do take longer to bring to life so ensure that your chosen venue(s) are able to accommodate this.
- Work with a florist who embraces sustainable practices and has an environmental policy which they are committed to working within.
Credit: Kate Nielen Photography
Credit: Kate Nielen Photography
Credit: Kate Nielen Photography
Credit: Kate Nielen Photography
As a little footnote, I’d like to add to this article that while wedding flowers are seen as creating waste, they’re also a huge opportunity. We need flowers. Our bees, wasps and other pollinators need flowers. Every patch of land where flowers are growing (organically, pesticide free of course!) is a blessing for nature. So while cutting blooms and shipping them off to a wedding may seem wasteful, think of the plants which wouldn’t otherwise be grown, and their benefit to nature. There’s a whole world of wonderful things we could say about British flower farmers and growers and the good they’re doing. Please, do support them if you can!
Credit: And Your Story Photography
Header image by Jaye Peg Photography
Sustainable weddings, to us, means a happy experience and stress free planning. Sticking to a comfortable budget is a huge part of that.
If you haven’t been following our sustainable weddings series, you might want to check back or bookmark our recent months’ features:
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- Weddings & Planet – don’t let your day be about ‘stuff’
- Weddings & mental health
- The elephant in the room: weddings’ carbon footprint
- Finding (or being) a sustainable wedding supplier
Let’s talk about wedding budgets
Today we wanted to talk about budgets. The wedding media focus way too much on ‘average wedding budget*’ figures (which we believe are massively distorted) – and this can put pressure on couples to spend more than necessary. This has an impact on mental health, on carbon footprint and on waste at weddings. Why? Because budgets dictate the size of a wedding. If you’re constantly told that a figure of £xxx is normal, you’re likely to be influenced by that in some way.
(In a very subtle way, we all compare ourselves to what’s normal. If you’re a thrifty couple or great at budgeting, perhaps you’ll subconsciously aim to spend about half of the ‘normal’ figure. If you’re both high earners, maybe you’ll think you’d probably spend 30% higher than ‘normal’. But here’s the rub: if someone behind a desk at a wedding magazine is deciding what ‘normal’ is, why should that figure mean anything at all?)
Let’s try something: with your partner, without showing each other, write down what each of you thinks your wedding might cost. Reveal your figures, compare and have a chat.
We’re guessing if one of you has been reading about weddings on websites, blogs or magazines, your figure will be higher.
If you have very different ideas about your wedding budget, there’s a lovely article on Green Union about how to compromise while planning your dream wedding. Working things out together so you’re both on the same page with budgets will help your wedding planning go smoothly. It’s something to do as a team, so agreeing what you can happily afford is really important.
Enough about what you should or shouldn’t spend. Weddings aren’t about money or budgets. Weddings are about celebration and fun – and that’s FREE.
Whatever your budget, high or low, it’s super important that weddings should be
- Common sense spending – the key to keeping things stress-free
- Save first. Give yourselves time and put money in the bank
- Include a buffer ‘just in case’
- Don’t borrow
- Accept any financial gifts with grace (and caution – no strings!)
- Block out pressure to overspend
- Plan as a couple
- Don’t buy wedding stuff just cos it’s wedding stuff! A wedding should be unique and about you
- Full of personality. Make your day about YOU (two)!
As a part of the wedding media in the UK, we want to use our voice to bring a little balance. No one should feel pressure to aim their wedding budget towards a level of spend dictated by the press. Especially with the cost of living crisis we’re in right now, no one should even feel pressure to have a wedding at all. (Elope! Elopements are amazing. Or live together in love – married or not – weddings are optional!)
We want to be a part of a thriving industry which gives couples choice. That feels like a sustainable future for everyone.
And the key to a more sustainable approach to wedding budgets? Focus on personality. Plan and style your day around who you are – not what you see in the wedding media.
It’s all about being YOU. And for most of us, hiring a stately home for a weekend probably isn’t you. (Let alone booking a function / conference room in a hotel for a day.) Right from the start, try not to be swayed by perceptions of what a wedding ‘should’ be. Being yourselves might mean booking out your favourite pub for the afternoon, or having a party at home…
Starting points to help you frame some key wedding decisions around your personalities:
Credit: Jaye Peg Photography, Cumbria
- Think about your venue: where do you like to spend your time? Pubs? Camping? Airbnbs? Abroad? Countryside? With the use of an independent celebrant, could you have your wedding there?
- Photographer: how important are photos to you both? How knowledgeable are you about photography? What style of photos do you love? Perhaps photography isn’t that important to you – and that’s fine. Our recommendation would be to hire a pro if you can afford one, but do shop around, and within your budget always choose based on quality and personality – not price!
- Catering: forget standard wedding food! If formal dining and a sit down meal isn’t your thing, how about a vegan pizza van, picnic baskets, banquet or family style dining?
- Styling: There are so many options from DIY, hire, having all of your family helping, or just using your venue’s own style. Making your wedding ‘you’ could mean splashing out on flowers, or spending on your outfits and keeping decor minimal. Or it could mean a picnic on hay bales at a local farm. Think about your home, and your friends’ homes. Could you grow lavender in little pots for a year and use that for table styling? Plants are super sustainable for wedding decor if they live on after the big day!
- Your outfits: Balance dressing up and wow factor with feeling comfortable. (We’re not just talking about dresses!) A white dress and hire suit are NOT your only options! (Until the 1980s, people just wore their best outfit to get married in. They didn’t buy new, let alone spend £££ on a dress to wear once!) So think about your culture? Charity? Borrow outfits or just be creative. Most of all be You
- Guests: the size of your wedding has a big financial impact. Micro is cool now. Be comfortable rather than showy – smaller weddings generally have more personality!
We’re huge fans of sustainable wedding website Green Union, and we wanted to share some words of wisdom we found on there:
Go through your wedding planning list to see where you could make savings. Eco-friendly favours are a great idea, as is using sustainable decor, including many items you might have around your home like books. Making some changes will help you limit waste, and can help you get better value for your money too.
By making some eco-friendly changes to your wedding, you can enjoy savings that can be put towards other elements, or even your honeymoon. Even making small changes can make a big difference, allowing you to have your dream wedding knowing you’ve done your bit to help the planet too.
More on Saving money while making your wedding eco friendly
Your wedding will be your best day ever.
Remember “Happily ever after” includes the day after your wedding, and the last thing you should be feeling is bogged down in debt as you start married life
A note on those ‘average wedding budget’ figures. I was Googling for something entirely different and came across three separate ‘average’ figures, all quoted by The Guardian, ranging from £7,500 in 2015 to £21k in 2010 and £15k in 2009. It’s not the dates that affect the statistics: it’s the source of the information.
I’ve added these stats to the bottom of this article, because I really, really didn’t want to include numbers at all. Please, take these figures as proof that no one knows what the average wedding budget is. All the research is done by insurance companies and banks, wedding blogs and magazines… they’re all asking VERY different groups of people and that’s how the figures are always so wildly different. ~ Claire
Your wedding day is probably going to be the biggest and most exciting day of your life, but with so many options to choose from when planning your big day, it can easily become one of the most wasteful too. If being sustainable is important to you as a couple, read on to discover some top eco-friendly wedding tips from Entertainment Nation that will not only help save the planet, but will also be kinder on your purse strings!
All images in this blog post are by Becky Harley Photography. See Ayron & Scott’s Coltsfoot wedding here
1. Plan Your Wedding Locally
Save everyone some petrol money (they’ll definitely thank you for this!) and keep carbon emissions as low as possible by choosing a venue that’s close by to as many of your guests as possible. When booking live entertainment, think along similar lines. If you can find a band you love who live just down the road, they won’t have to travel across the country to reach you so you can reduce their carbon footprint and also save money on their travel expenses. Win win!
2. Choose a Sustainable Dress
It’s such a shame when so much effort and energy has gone into creating a stunning wedding gown for the dress to only be worn once then stored in a cupboard for the rest of time. On top of that, many wedding dresses are not made using environmentally-friendly materials or processes. It’s becoming a popular choice among planet-conscious brides to either choose a gorgeous second-hand vintage gown or a dress that is produced by a sustainable supplier. Before buying a new dress, contact the designer to find out if their production process aligns with your values. Even better, you could choose a non-conventional outfit that you love and know that you’ll wear time and time again. It’s a much more ethical decision and you’ll remember your wedding day every time you wear it!
3. Choose Any Flowers Wisely
Flowers are an integral part of any wedding and there’s no reason they shouldn’t be included in an eco-friendly celebration. There are factors to consider when choosing your flowers if you want to make the most environmentally-friendly choices. Firstly, make sure that you choose flowers that are in season at the time of your wedding to ensure they don’t have to be imported or grown using harmful pesticides and plastics. If you’re unsure, ask your florist what they’d recommend. If you have your heart set on a certain bloom that isn’t in season, dried flowers not only look incredible, but will last up to three years after your big day. No wonder they are such a popular choice! Finally, you could always create your own flowers out of fabric – a sustainable idea that will last a lifetime!
4. Scrap Excess Stationery
Save the dates, invitations, itineraries, placeholders, table plans and more – the list of wedding stationery is needlessly long when technology is available that can relinquish the need for it all. Video emails are so much more personal than save the dates and are also a lot more fun! In place of an invitation, why to set up a wedding website (there are plenty of free ones available) and send a link to all your guests? They can reply online and you can provide them with all the information they need about your big day. The best thing about it? It doesn’t involve any paper or the postal service. If you need to use paper for place cards etc, make sure they are made of recycled materials and that you recycle them afterwards of course!
5. Go Vegetarian
Reducing the amount of meat you consume is the single biggest way to have a positive impact on the environment according to scientists. So it makes sense that having as little meat on your menu as possible is going to be great for the planet. Providing a vegetarian or vegan menu is an option more and more couples are choosing these days. If you want to provide meat for your guests, choose free range chicken or locally reared pork over beef or lamb, which have a much higher carbon footprint. If possible, choose your own food suppliers so you can check that they use sustainable produce. Always try to avoid having a buffet. They’re always over catered so there’s bound to be a lot of food wasted at the end of the night.
6. Choose Eco-Friendly Wedding Favours
There are so many cute sustainable wedding favour ideas! Seeds are a great choice as your guests can grow their own plants or flowers and have a lasting memento of your day. Succulent plants are a cheap and planet-friendly idea and will also act as a lovely souvenir. If food is more your thing, try homemade jams or marmalades or buy them from a farm shop and support local business.
7. Choose An Environmentally-Friendly Cake Maker
Choosing sustainable ingredients for your wedding cake will not only be better for the Earth but it will taste better too! Check that your baker is able to source fairtrade ingredients and ask them to use in-season fruits to ensure your cake is as eco-friendly as possible.
8. Honeymoon In The UK
The UK has some of the most breathtaking scenery in the entire world. With so many beautiful places to holiday on your doorstep, your carbon footprint can remain low and you can have a fabulous honeymoon!
9. Book Your Entertainment Through An Environmentally-Friendly Agency
We’ve already talked about how you should book musicians who live locally to reduce carbon emissions, but did you know that Entertainment Nation goes above and beyond helping you find an amazing local band? We donate a proportion of every booking towards projects that help to plant trees and offset carbon around the world thanks to our partnership with Ecologi (https://ecologi.com/entertainmentnation). It’s great to know there are companies out there who are having such a significant positive impact on the environment. If you’re in the market for a wedding band, musician or entertainment, head over to www.entertainment-nation.co.uk to check out our incredible selection!
WE have many more ethical wedding tips in our sustainable weddings series – from looking after your mental health while wedding planning, to our top 60 tips for a more sustainable celebration.
Weddings with plastic and waste are on the way out. It’s time for the industry to catch up: a mini revolution is on the way, and this time it’s not just about trends.
As redundant as polyester chair covers and barbie tiaras, single-use wedding items are starting to sit uncomfortably with couples and suppliers these days. We’re all looking for planet-friendly alternatives, and there are plenty if you just know where to look!
Image credits: Clare Randell. Stationery by Chloe Ainsley Creative – Styled shoot and full credits here
Did you see our 60 simple tips for a more sustainable wedding? Tap here to discover them all!
Wedding suppliers in every sector are looking to be more environmentally aware in how they work. Visit the right wedding shows and seek out sustainable wedding planners, and you’ll soon discover a network of amazing folks ready to create an incredible – and ethical – wedding for you.
We’d love for the majority of wedding suppliers to take huge steps in minimising their impact on the environment. We need the tables to flip; so most wedding brands are sustainable by default! It hasn’t happened yet… but in the next decade it will, and it can’t come fast enough for us!
Why the shift to sustainable wedding suppliers?
We picked the rather glorious brain of lovely Gwenda at Green Union for her thoughts.
“Changes in everyday life are a key thing. The majority of couples I know who have embraced sustainability on their wedding day have done so because they are already doing so in their everyday lives to some degree.”
And of course, with every supplier you choose you’ll want to ‘click’, to have things in common – from your photographer to your florist and cake maker. If you’re all about living minimally, and their showroom is full of plastic and bling, it ain’t gonna work out! If you meet a wedding supplier over a coffee and their lifestyle mirrors yours, you’re onto a winner.
Suppliers know weddings need to catch up!
“Wedding professionals are all too aware that we operate in in the realms of luxury and excess, and collate a multitude of industries which are amongst the most polluting and wasteful in the world into just one day”
That’s why we’re aiming for change. Leading lights we’ve featured on English Wedding include several of our members: Sarah Hoyle Photography, and vegan wedding planner Sian at Amethyst Weddings for example. We’ve showcased ethical bridal designer Sanyukta Shrestha over the last three years because we LOVE what she stands for. And our members are independent wedding brands, those small businesses whose creativity is huge and whose carbon footprint is tiny when compared with the big names of the wedding industry.
We’re focused on YOU – and you’ll change the world!
Gwenda says, “Representing 30% of the world’s population, Millennials are the target audience of most wedding businesses today and they just happen to be the most concerned generation when it comes to environmental sustainability. Millennials are the first generation to have grown up in a world where climate change became a reality…”
Having the internet at our fingertips makes it even easier to find ethical wedding suppliers, via websites like the Sustainable Wedding Alliance and the Natural Wedding Company blog.
Our top tip for finding ethical suppliers to create your dream wedding is to keep looking until you find just ONE amazing supplier. They could be your photographer, your venue, a wedding planner or vegan cake designer. And then ask them who they know.
The wedding industry in the UK is a wonderful little web of connected businesses. Somewhere between instagram and the whole pandemic thing, folks came together and in every town, city and county there are little networks of likeminded wedding suppliers.
Trust us: the most sustainable wedding businesses in your area know each other. They’ve worked together, they’ve had coffees and chatted about weddings and sustainability, and they’re doing everything they can to find clients just like you, who share their values.
The 2020s made us all stop and think
“It cannot be denied that so much of the wedding industry has long been associated with extravagance and excess – which equates to huge amounts of waste and a whopping carbon footprint.
“One silver-lining of the pandemic has been the rise, albeit by necessity, of the intimate wedding… the fact is that is most cases, the fewer the guests, the lower the carbon footprint of travel, the less waste etc etc. The job losses and uncertainty about the future have further curbed excess. Combine this with couples becoming more environmentally aware, sustainability, by a combination of accident and design, looks to become a key feature of weddings.”
The pandemic certainly didn’t pass wedding suppliers by unscathed: it had a massive, devastating impact on thousands of wedding businesses. Everything stopped, and we saw a shift in the makeup of weddings. This triggered all kinds of changes for suppliers, not least a new focus on sustainability.
How to begin a sea change in your wedding business
Gwenda writes about wedding businesses, “There are 2 key areas in which you can become more sustainable – the first is in your lifestyle and at home, the second is of course in your professional life – and both intertwine, especially for those of us who work from home.
“But when you do so, just be honest – no one needs any more unethical ‘green washing’. Absolutely states what you are doing, but also what you’re working towards if you’re not there yet, or what you’re unable to do and why. It’s absolutely ok not to be perfect and not to have all the bases covered – progress is better than standing still.”
Let’s start today.
“Honestly, until every supplier is making more conscious choices in regards to their products and services, there will always be room for more! But it’s important to celebrate all the little moves in the right direction; Anne-Marie Bonneau’s famous quote about how “We don’t need a handful of people doing zero waste perfectly. We need millions of people doing it imperfectly.” rings just as true to me if you replace ‘zero waste’ with ‘sustainable weddings’. In that eternal balance between budgets and ethics we must all find our place, vendors and clients alike.”
Gwenda has been part of the wedding industry since 2012. “I started off as a floral designer – and I’ll admit to not always having been the most eco-conscious one (no room to grow myself and limited local resources made for a heavy reliance on imports, however seasonally I chose). As the years went by, it bothered me more and more – the result was that in 2019 I switched to dried flowers which could be sourced predominantly from the UK, or better still, gathered fresh and dried myself from close to home. In a fortunate stroke of serendipity, at this same moment I was offered the opportunity to take over the GREEN UNION wedding directory and blog, which (thanks to both coronavirus and arthritic fingers) is now my full-time wedding industry baby!