Want to have a Green Wedding? Here’s How…
Monday, April 14th, 2008
Exchange vows outdoors, in the morning or afternoon. The sum replaced electric light, and if you choose a temperature time a year-often May, June, September or October-you may also avoid the need for energy-usage o air-conditioning or heating. Do be prepared to artificially warm or cool a tent if the weather does happen to change on your unexpectedly. At an evening wedding, consider keeping artificial light to a minimum. Instead, use softly glowing soy or beeswax candles, which, unlike those made of paraffin wax, come from a renewable source.
2. Think small: An intimate event requires fewer resources almost across the board. But even if you can’t cut your guest list, there are ways to duce your consumption. Try a cocktail reception, in which revelers mix and mingle while nibbling hors d’oeuvres. Since not everyone will sit down to eat at once, you can use fewer two and four person cocktail tables instead of many large banquet tables. The result: not as many tablecloths, meaning, not much water and detergent to wash them.
3. Cut down on paper: It’s still not easy to find a huge selection of nice invitations printed on recycled paper, especially formal ones. But even if you ask guests to attend your nuptials using traditional stationary, there are other ways to save trees. When you register, make a note asking that gifts not be wrapped. Cut down on the unwanted catalogs and credit-card solicitations that start arriving as soon as you get engaged by asking the stores you register with not to sell or rent your address.
4. Keep events near each other: If you plan your reception close to where you wedding is it will help save you and your guests on gas and you can also make the walk a fun one from one place to the other. If may even be better to hold the reception a few feet from where you were wed. If this is the case then using the trees as part the decoration would be a great green addition to any “green wedding.”
5. Pay it back: At least some of you friends and family will have to travel to attend your nuptials. In order to offset their carbon waste, buying carbon offsets from a company, you can help guests with their carbon waste. There are companies that use proceeds to fund cleaner, renewable energy projects, such as wind fans. Buying carbon offsets won’t magically erase the globe-warming carbon dioxide your event will add to the atmosphere, but it’s similar to a one-time donation toward a cleaner future environment. You can even donate in a guests name for an added perk.
6. Go local: Food and flowers grown nearby require less transportation-and thus as a bonus as generally fresher. If they’re organic and pesticide-free, all the better. The availability of locally grown produce varies by season and location; choices tend to be most abundant in the summer or fall. Use local vendors for other wedding services such as videography and music. Take advantage, too, of the decorating and tabletop items your venue has on hand, rather than having specialty items trucked in.
7. Give earth-friendly favors: Skip the throwaway tchotchkes in lieu of donations in guests’ names to an organization such as World Wildlife Fund or the Rainforest Alliance. Or, if you like your guests to go home with a small keepsake, try tiny potted herbs, tree seedlings in biodegradable containers, or edible gifts such as fair-trade coffee or organic chocolate.
8. Recycle: Yes, you should ask you caterer to separate bottle and cans as the reception and to ferry the leftover food to a shelter. But there are so many other unexpected-and beautiful-ways to reuse items. You can recycle some of the decorations to use in your own home, wear your mother’s gown, or get a vintage dress rather than buying a brand new one and you can repurpose your flowers as well. After the ceremony is over totally, think about donating your arrangement to some place such as Flower Power Foundation in New York City. They will pick up your arrangements and deliver them to the sick and elderly. Besides the feel goof bonus of re-gifting beautiful flowers and benefiting the environment, you get a tax write off. Check for similar charities in your area or call you local hospital or nursing home for suggestion on how to donate them yourself. (Source: Martha Stewart Weddings 2008)
*Natural and Sustainable Living Tip: Make a compost able toilet at your own home; a garden hose box or any box similar will work, a new toilet seat made out of wood, 5-gallon bucket with a tight fitting lid, which sits inside the hose box, plus sawdust that goes inside the 5-gallon bucket.<
