Many wedding couples hire us to help them create an eco-friendly wedding, and today we offer our top 12 tips for making your wedding more eco-friendly.
Eco-friendly weddings come in many styles and don't necessarily have to mean tons of raffia, terra cotta pots, or repurposed things, if that's not your style.
In fact, nearly any beautiful wedding design can be made more eco-friendly with just a few simple tweaks!
Here are 12. If you do even a few you will have already made your wedding more eco-friendly!
1) Have your caterer use local and, optimally, seasonal food. Organic food is often shipped from far away. Local and organic is even better if your budget allows it. For meat entrees, request no antibiotics and/or grass fed.
2) If you use disposable napkins (such as for hors d'oeuvres), use recycled paper napkins (Seventh Generation makes white ones appropriate for nice occasions like a wedding).
3) Use cloth napkins for the dinner.
4) If you use votives or candles, buy soy candles.
5) If you use flower centerpieces, donate them to a hospital or nursing home rather than throwing them away. Or use small vases, goblets, or silver cups to hold only a few amazing flowers each, or consider non-floral centerpieces, such as interesting table statues and flower petals on each table, which will cut down on the number of flowers needed and still look beautiful.
6) Have leftover food donated to a shelter.
7) Donate leftover table menus, invitations, and non-food favors to a low-income school for the kids to make crafts.
8) Have the bartenders pour soda from bottles rather than cans.
9) Recycle any recyclables, including wine and spirits bottles, large soda bottles, and unused paper napkins.
10) Consider electricity use: some of the most beautiful weddings use a dimmer turned about halfway down and votives, candles, or lanterns to lend a magical glow and ambience while cutting down on electricity use.
11) If you're having a destination wedding, you can ask guests to donate to offset carbon emissions sites, which use the money for good works, to compensate for the air travel of getting to the wedding destination.
12) Ask people attending the wedding or your event manager to take care of any donations and recycling so you know it will get done while you're busy with the wedding and/or honeymoon. We regularly prepare food for donation and often arrange for its pickup or deliver it to shelters ourselves, as well as taking care of the recycling from weddings.
Upcoming: How to make your wedding menu more sustainable.
Warmly,
Kristina
Kristina Ríos de Lumbreras, Ph.D.
Director of Sales and Operations/Event Manager
Fandango Catering and Events
(713) 522--0077
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