Fandango Catering Offers 5 Tips to Make Your Large Wedding or Event More Sustainable

Whew! After our recent events we are just finally catching up.  Today we want to share with you some tips for making large events (over 200 guests)--whether a wedding, corporate event, or other large event--more sustainable.

Large events in particular need to be made more sustainable because their use of the Earth's resources is much greater than that of small events. 

For Randy and Lucy, whose wedding had 350 guests and who are both nature lovers and active in causes, increasing their large wedding's sustainability was important to them.

Here are some of the ways we made this wedding more sustainable, and which you can also use to make your large event more sustainable.

• The menu emphasized more sustainable choices--The couple changed their menu from beef to chicken; beef uses many more of the Earth's resources than chicken or fish.  The produce was local, as was the chicken.  We choose all the produce by hand from the Restaurant Row farmer's market, and it was so large and lush!
• Only compostable disposable plates and cutlery were used--we used bagasse (sugarcane) plates and cutlery and 100% recycled paper napkins.  Because the wedding was more fun and casual than formal, this worked very well, and bagasse would also work well at large corporate events such as a large cocktail party.  Bagasse plates now come in round, square, and even triangle shapes.  And if you're in a hurry you can even buy them by the case at Whole Foods--done!
• The food tables were decorated with "natural" flowers from our organic community garden source--these included passionflowers, trumpet lilies, calendulas, baby's breath (and even some wonderful wild mushrooms), which we coupled with our mod metal dessert towers for a "romantic and mod" design as the couple wanted.  Since these flowers are grown anyway by our master gardener instead of being grown for sale and shipped from far away, their decoration of the food tables was a more sustainable choice
• The cascading fruit display decorating the dessert buffet was taken down in the last hour and put on decorative trays and the guests, especially the children, enthusiastically ate all the fresh fruit.  Often fruit from fruit displays is just thrown away after an event.
• The groom provided boxes for our bartenders to recycle wine and beer bottles and designated some friends to take charge of taking the recycling boxes to a recycling facility after the wedding. 
• Leftover food was donated to a shelter the next day--The couple's family took home some of the leftover food and the rest was donated so no food was wasted

We hope these tips will help you with ideas for making your large event more sustainable :)

Warmly,

Kristina

Fandango Catering and Events
www.fandango-catering.com