Talking About Green

Weddings can be hard on the environment. Have you considered how much energy it costs to keep those beautiful tropical flowers fresh for your ceremony – let alone the energy costs in bringing them to your town? Not to mention the volumes of trash left over after a wedding reception – if you’ve ever stuck around to help clean up, you know what I mean.

For many couples, however, a wedding is no excuse to be wasteful or harmful to the world around them. They want the wedding of their dreams, but still minimize the impact they have on the world around them. Here’s how they’re doing it:

Recycled Wedding Accessories

Rather than buying everything new, brides are hunting second hand shops to find great deals on amazing items for their weddings, and they’re finding them! Secondhand wedding dresses and bridesmaid gowns are being tailored and tweaked to bring new life to them and a fresh, new personality. Brides are using second hand items to create their own centerpieces. They’re even using mismatched silverware, glassware, and other items for the tables. Remember, “something borrowed, something new” doesn’t mean everything has to be new!

Green Centerpieces

You don’t have to pick “green” as one of your wedding colors but some nice, living plants make gorgeous centerpieces for your wedding reception. It doesn’t even have to be a flower- there are a variety of plants in a variety of different colors you could use to “spruce” up your ceremony. Give them to your guests, friends and family and ask them to take these plants home and plant them in their gardens – what a beautiful metaphor for your new marriage.

Rent Dinnerware

Whether you are serving dinner at your reception or just drinks and light hors d’oeuvres, why not class-things-up with real glasses, plates and silverware? Although this can be more expensive than paper plates and plastic cups, using real dinnerware has a conservable impact on the amount of waste generated from your reception.

Serving Local Treats

Weddings with large guest lists take a lot to feed, and when it all needs to be shipped it, it can be disastrous for the environment, not to mention expensive. Many brides are now choosing to serve local produce only, or free trade organic foods, to their guests. As an added benefit, these trends support the people in food production who need it most, the food arrives fresh, and the choices available create delightful, summery meals.

How do you make your wedding more environmentally-friendly?

Monique Trulson works at eInvite.com, an online stationery retailer that offers a diverse collection of eco-friendly wedding invitations and other paper products.