Happy Earth Day! Eco wedding ideas to make a difference

Happy earth day everyone!  Getting into the swing of things, I thought that today’s post would be appropriate to have a look at how you can consider making your wedding more eco-friendly.

Eco ideas

Why you should consider an eco-wedding?

Nowadays it’s wonderful that attitudes have become more caring and less critical about being green for the environment.  It is hard to watch even the news on any given night without seeing some environmental issue being investigated and quite simply, more people are realising that we must care for our earth.  The main reasons for having an eco-wedding are:

* to save energy, decrease likely emissions and reduce your carbon footprint.

* to limit waste and the possibility of it going into landfill.

* to educate and inspire others to realise that they too can make a difference

* to help green businesses and to encourage more bridal businesses to become greener in their practices

* to make a difference!

It all sounds lovely, but how can I actually have an eco-wedding?

An eco-wedding is much easier to achieve than expected, and contrary to some extremists, you won’t have to walk barefoot in a sack with daisies in your hair either!

Think about a traditional wedding and what causes the biggest carbon footprints…

1. Travel: airline emissions are generally the number one drain on the environment, followed secondly by car emissions.

You could reduce this by:

* having the wedding in a central location so people don’t have to travel far

* think about having the ceremony and reception in one place to avoid travel during the wedding

* have a local honeymoon

* don’t use bridal cars, instead walk to the wedding, hire a horse and carriage or ride a tandem bicycle (which is a big wedding trend at the moment).

* use hybrid cars as wedding cars

3. Accommodation / Reception Emissions: lighting, heating, air conditioning, long hot showers

You could reduce this by:

* selecting a time of year where air conditioning and heating would not be needed

* Not hiring DJs with expensive flare lights

* Providing reminders to guests that this is an eco-wedding and if possible, to get in the spirit, can they keep their showers to a minimum and turn off all appliances when not in use.

3. Reception emissions: The actual reception – from the DJ, temperature control, lighting, catering

You could reduce this by:

* As mentioned above – asking the DJ to only play the music and leave the lighting effects off.

* Asking the reception staff to turn off the temperature control

* Getting the catering to use minimum resources by providing food such as organic local food and salads.

* Ensure all leftover food is given to a charity or recycled to feed animals.

* Buy organically grown flowers, rather than those that have been grown with pesticides and under synthetic conditions.

* Instead of having electrical lighting everywhere, have candle centrepieces to cut down on power.  Ensure that the candles are made from beeswax or palm oil though as the regular paraffin candles are made using petroleum which can increase carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere.

* The bride may even consider a recycled dress or one with recycled cotton, silk or bamboo as the material.  The jewellery can also be fair trade.

* Ensure that green vendors are chosen wherever possible.

The last word on eco-wedding invitations…

And of course, many would say that a great way to reduce a carbon footstep in a wedding is with the wedding invitations.  And we could not agree more!

You could decide to ask your guests to RSVP via an online wedding website or to your email.  A wedding website is also a great way to tell your guests about additional wedding information too.

And maybe it’s because I am personally a stationer, or maybe a traditionalist at heart, but I have always loved receiving a beautiful wedding invitation.  It sets the tone for the wedding, it shows that you are special to the bridal couple and it is a beautiful keepsake.  For this reason, I don’t think paper wedding stationery will ever become passe, but you can make sure that you choose environmentally sound stationery vendors like I Will Invitations who take great pains to make their businesses as environmentally sound as possible.

If you would like to see how I Will Invitations actively practice eco-friendly practices, please click here: I Will Invitations Eco-Wedding Invitations.