Weddings can get pretty excessive pretty quickly. In a way, it’s easy to understand, what with it being one of the most important days in your life and the whole “growing up dreaming of a wedding fit for a princess” thing. At the same time, it’s important to know that even a wedding that exceeds your expectations doesn’t have to adversely affect the environment. Here are a few ways to ensure that your wedding is more environmentally conscious (and perhaps a little less costly, as well!).
Re-think the Traditional Invitations
Everybody loves the fancy invitations that go along with the wedding and planning process, but there’s a number of drawbacks to go with this traditional practice. For one, it’s costly. The high quality paper, postage, and customization makes for a pretty big expense. The more pressing thing, though, is that it can just be kind of wasteful to print a few hundred invitations that will mostly end up in someone’s trash, no matter how pretty they are. E-invites can get the job done at a fraction of the cost and without any of the waste.
Don’t Waste That Food
Another area where weddings can get pretty wasteful is that of the food. It’s very difficult to not only get a handle on how many guests are actually going to be at your wedding (why can’t people just return those RSVPs?!?), but how much they’re actually going to eat, as well. And since nobody wants to run out of food and have people going hungry at their wedding, what do you always do? Order more food than you need. So in that case, why not donate the excess food to local organizations who could use it? You can also provide recyclable boxes for guests to take leftovers home with them.
Gowns, Party Favors, and More
Other quick ideas for a more sustainable wedding include donating your gown when you’re done with it. Sure, it seems kind of…wrong to get rid of your gown, but let’s be honest: it’s just going to sit in your closet. Unless you plan on actually passing it down to your daughter one day or something like that, seriously consider providing it to someone who needs it.
Another easy tip is to choose a cute, sustainable party favor. At some weddings, couples have given away fun, easy to care for plants as party favors, which is a very cute idea. There are a million different puns you can make about a plant growing as your relationship has, to boot.