I decided to put this page together to inspire other couples to "go green" in their wedding preparations. There is so much we can do to keep minimising our impact on the earth.
Caspar and I wanted to make our wedding as "green" as possible. We also saw it as a great opportunity to educate and stimulate our guests and inspire them into thinking "greener" in their lives too!
So every decision we made we thought about whether it was the greenest option.
What else could we do to reduce our footprint here?
Some of the things we did:
- We handmade our invitations which were made from 80% recycled card and paper, we used recycled envelope and postcard style reply cards to reduce a second envelope.
- We emailed maps, directions, and other useful information to our guests rather than use more paper.
- We had an Eco-Fund on our invitations where we asked guests if they wished to give us a gift to make it money that would be used to help us purchase: solar panels, a green as possible washing machine, curtains to keep the heat in, recycled materials to renovate our house in the coming year etc.
- With the scraps and off cuts from our handmade invitations we made the table placement cards, our menu cards, and a beautiful sign for the gifts table, continuing the theme from our invitations!
- We kept our reception and ceremony at the same place and encouraged guests to share taxis to and from the reception.
- We hired as much as possible.
- Our menu was all vegan, as we are vegans ourselves we decided the menu should reflect us and we thought if we could make it as tasty as possible, nobody would notice no meat or dairy products! After all, meat and dairy have such an impact on the earth in so many ways; from deforestation, to grain feed lot animals, methane from grazing live stock, to waste and resource issues such as water usage and pollution as well as transportation. We love all animals!
- All our food was local and organic if possible; we discussed with our caterer how important this was to us.
- From the money we received as gifts we also funded, and Caspar planted 120 rainforest trees; one per guest and one for those guests who could not make it to our wedding. See www.rainforestrescue.org.au to buy your trees to be planted and looked after by Rainforest Rescue for the first 3 years.
- My bouquet and some of our flower arrangements & decorations used greenery and some flowers from our very own garden (and friends garden’s of our florist!) to limit the use of commercially grown flowers. Friends gathered frangipani’s the morning of our wedding which were placed at the base of each step leading up into the main room, simple but so effective and cheap too!
- We used locally grown peaches for our peach bellini’s and my families wine grown in Victoria.
- For our favors we bought fair-traded, organic dark chocolate bars, and re-wrapped them in recycled paper that we photocopied photos of us together over the 11 years and on the back stated all the above. They looked great on all the tables, they were personalised and barely made it out the door!
- Our cake was organic, gluten free and used locally picked fresh gardenias.
Making your Wedding as GREEN as possible
Tips to make your wedding GREEN:
- Create a menu from locally grown and organic vegetables and reduce or eliminate your choice of meat/fish/dairy on your menu.
- Use acoustic musicians to cut down your power consumption.
- Hire equipment and use second hand furniture or decorations, get creative!
- Consider decorations that are reusable or that you can give to guests as a thank you or as favours.
- Use organic fruit and or vegetables and flowers from your own garden to create beautiful centre pieces for your tables.
- Get creative with you decorations, use fabrics, cushions, candles, collect candelabra’s, vases from op shops and create wonderful and unique atmospheres by using your imaginations and involve your creative friends, it’s amazing what you can come up with!
- Use green karat diamonds and fairly sourced gold and other precious metals.
Links to offsetting , green suppliers and inspiring websites:
Green Wedding Guide - Make your wedding as Green as you can!
www.greenweddingguide.com
www.climatefriendly.com - for offsetting your wedding, flights etc
Natural Weddings
www.naturalweddings.com.au
greenKarat
www.greenkarat.com
Of The Earth
www.oftheearth.org/
Biome
biome.com.au/
Handmade Naturals
naturals.com.au/
Green Pack
greenpack.com.au/
If you know of a business or website that might be relevant to greening weddings, please email me at: anthea@antheaamore.com
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