Five Ways to Make your Wedding Eco Friendly

Save money and reduce your impact on our precious planet by planning a your wedding with the environment in mind! Here is our top five ways to make sure your wedding is eco friendly plus some essential bride resources to help you plan the perfect green wedding as you go.  

DIY as much as possible

OK so you may not have time or the creativity to make the wedding favours or decorations yourself, and that is why etsy has become so popular, but if you are the type who loves to cut, paste, arrange and create then an eco style wedding will be perfect for you.

The key to stress-free handmade creations is to ensure you plan the decorations early in the piece. They often take more time than you think, and tend to become stressful and unsuccessful when made under pressure!

Reduce, Reuse and Recycle

To reduce is one of main principles of sustainability. When you are planning your decorations, invitations, wedding dress, floral arrangements, catering, transportation and even your wedding and engagement rings think about re-using as much as you possibly can. You will find so much inspiration on sites like Pinterest for unique ways to re-use things like  milk bottles or Ball mason jars for vases and drinks.

Remember to recycle as much as you possibly can to avoid landfill. If you have ever been involved in a wedding you’ll know what an impact it can have on the environment. Everything from paper products to transport to food all begin to add up in the days leading to the big event and on the day itself.
Compost the food scraps by using a Bokashi bin. Use compostable plates to lessen the amount going to landfill. Give away your re-cycled glass vases and drink vessels as wedding favours. Think about everything you are using and how it can be re-used after the festivities. One couple I know used strips of long hessian fabric as their table runners and then re-used them as a weed barrier in their veggie garden.

What about choosing a pre-loved wedding dress? There is such a diverse range of pre-loved wedding gowns, bridesmaids dresses, formal wear, flower girls and page boy outfits and accessories as well as mother of the bride dresses available now days, you've got to ask yourself if it's worth spending such a large portion of your budget on your wedding attire when you only wear it once. Take a look at what's on offer before you make a decision on what you will wear. Once the ceremony is over, you can re-sell it again for another thrifty eco-bride to wear.

Go Local 

Ask your caterer where they source their fresh produce from. If they are an organic catering company chances are they buy local, and local is always best for the environment. It's also a good idea to think about where your beer and wine are coming from. There are so many local craft breweries and organic vineyards these days that it's easy to provide your guests with the best varieties on offer. We provide a list of organic beer and wine on natural weddings to help you find your local suppliers.

Making your own floral bouquets from local growers is easy by visiting the flower markets in your area, or simply ask your green thumbed friends and neighbors if you can buy or pick from their gardens. Keeping it simple is the key to natural wedding flowers these days.

Vegan and Organic is Always Best!

You may not be vegan or even vegetarian, but choosing a menu without any animal products is key to reducing your environmental footprint. Of course you will come up against the usual complaints of 'where's the meat' but if you find a good organic vegetarian caterer, chances are no-one will even notice it's missing. At least try to incorporate some vegetarian meals into the menu. Don't forget about the cake, it too can be a vegan wedding cake without anyone noticing. Make an appointment for a taste test before you rule it out as a possibility.

Ask for Help

Be creative and think out of the box when choosing the style for your natural green wedding and utilize students, friends and family members for their unique skills! Just remember when you are asking friends and family for their assistance, it is important to share the jobs around so that no one person is over-worked to the extent that they don’t enjoy the festivities. Use your imagination and don’t underestimate their crafty talents. 

You can use local high school students for your ceremony music, hold crafting parties to create the wedding decorations, and ask your guests to Instagram your wedding. Friends and family usually love to be involved in making your day extra special. You'll find the more memorable details are not always the expensive ones. 

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Eco wedding – pure beeswax candles

Thank you to Cate at QueenB for sharing this lovely post on lighting up your wedding naturally with  beeswax candles.

We’re pretty spoiled for choice on things to write about at Queen B, but I have to say that one of my greatest delights is when our customers share photographs with us of their events and we can see our hand-crafted beauties doing their thing.

It’s one thing to use candles at a wedding or event, it is another thing entirely to use completely natural beeswax candles with their unique golden light (not to mention that your guests don’t have to breathe in toxic fumes all night)… that simple choice will not just create a special ambiance  but you’re also supporting bees, our beekeepers, the regional communities they live in, jobs at Queen B… not to mention the environment and planet!  One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.  Wedding… becomes eco wedding… luxury wedding… different… special!

While my raison d’étre may be hand-crafting natural, non-toxic, carbon neutral, eco candlelight, we are fortunate that our candles appeal just as much to the luxury end of the market as they do to the conscious or eco consumer… not that they’re mutually exclusive!
Anyway, I thought it might be nice to share some of the photographs from events we’ve lit.  A picture speaks a thousands words (and, often, so do I!).  These photographs are from a wedding held at The Wharf in Sydney.  Flowers by

For this wedding, the candles were used in two ways:

• Ambience – rising to the challenge of creating a warm, romantic, intimate ambience in a huge warehouse space, our 8-9hr tealight candles were placed in mini-fishbowls at each guest’s place setting and dotted along the windowsill around the venue.  NB putting candles into a glass not only provides wind protection but the glass reflects more light… giving you more bang for your hard earned buck.
• Queen B beeswax tealight candles at each guest’s place and dotted along the windowsill of the venue Queen B pure beeswax 8-9hr tealight candles are the longest burning tealights on the market… so the ambience goes on and on.

The sea of beeswax candles created a lovely light feature table for this eco luxury wedding created a beautiful impact

Create a sea of beeswax candlelight with the clever use of fishbowls, hurricanes, plinths, tealight holders, votive glasses etc
Creating a candle feature at your eco wedding or event is a high impact way of creating instant ambiance 

A sea of candlelight feature table – our bride wanted to create a sea of candles as a feature at the event.  This was cleverly achieved on a budget by using large fishbowls, glass plinths, tealight holders and votive holders along with various sizes of candles to create the look.  The flickering of the flames reflecting off the glass holders of different sizes and shapes created the look of hundreds of candle flames.

A few tips for creating this look:

• most good florists will have glassware that they can lend/hire to you for the evening rather than purchasing it.
• if you’re having an event at home or not using a florist for your event, hire glasses (lowballs or highballs) as another cheap way of creating this look without breaking the bank
• otherwise, most thrift stores have a huge range of glassware for sale… I’ve lit an event before where I bought over 150 glasses for 50c each and then dropped them back the next day.  That’s a win win!  And the different sizes, shapes and heights of the glasses create a beautiful look… if that’s the look you’re going for!… it’s not the luxury eco wedding look, but it is a lovely look!

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Large Functions in Australia Contribute to 1.3 billion Tonnes of Food Wasted Each Year!

An Australian wedding calls for large-scale preparation of food with lavish menus being the order of the day, which can also result in large amounts of food wastage. When planning large scale events, whether it be for a wedding, private function or corporate event, choose a restaurant, function centre or venue that considers food waste, and reduces it where possible.

By working closely with caterers and event staff, your celebration can also be a an environmental success by reducing the waste simply by asking them to provide the leftovers to OzHarvest, Second Bite,FareShare, Food Bank or other organisations that support the homeless by distributing surplus food.

Planning food volumes with your caterer makes them aware of your concerns and together you will be able to minimise the amount of food wasted. It's important that you factor in the number of guests attending and communicate these details properly to your caterer. That way, they can get the number and quantity of food as close as possible.

A good caterer will know how to minimise portions not options. Most people can't eat more than 500g of food for dinner. A buffet with too much variety means that people can't sample everything whereas an a la carte menu can mean less wastage as the portions can be controlled and the options are limited.
When planning your menu consider sourcing lower environmental impact food choices, for example, you can use the Australian Marine Conservation Society’s Sustainable Seafood Guide.

Some other ideas are to plan your menu around what's in season at the time of your event and use local produce as much as possible which will help reduce the packaging and transporting the food vast distances.

Think Eat Save is an anti-food waste and food loss campaign that encourages you to reduce your foodprint. According to the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), every year 1.3 billion tonnes of food is wasted. At the same time, one in every seven people in the world go to bed hungry and more than 20,000 children under the age of five die every day of hunger. Think Eat Save encourages people to become more aware of the environmental impact of the food choices they make and take informed decisions. Think Eat Save provides great advice on their website on how to reduce your food waste.

Another great resource is Love Food Hate Waste.

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Eco Friendly wedding dress

Eco-conscious brides-to-be will know that when planning a natural wedding, there are several issues to address, but the wedding dress will most likely be one of the biggest considerations on their list.

Here are some fun and somewhat green wedding dress ideas from natural brides who have taken the plunge down the aisle.

This 'natural bride' is a fashion designer. She and her 'natural groom' had joked over the years that they’d get married once they collected enough bread tags to cover a dress, a feat which prompted family and friends to join in the collection to speed things along. The multicolored green wedding dress was made of 10,000 bread tags collected over ten years. 

Treating the tags like scales, she created an overlapping pattern, which also disguised the stitching. The 10,000 plastic tags were sewn with her sewing machine onto a cotton base fabric with a corset underneath. All in all, the fifteen pound green wedding dress only cost $36 but took her hundreds of hours to make. Each tag bears a “best by” date, bringing back memories of their time together over the years. Now that's commitment!

Talk about popping the question!

This Canadian bride wore an eco friendly wedding dress made out of 13 feet of bubble wrap as she walked down the aisle. The green wedding dress used over 13 meters of re-used packing material that was put together by pupils and parents from her school for a fashion show featuring recyclable materials. This green wedding dress is made from sheets of carefully stitched bubble wrap, attached to an inner cloth lining, and finished off with white foam packaging material.

The bride remarked "There was quite a lot of popping as I walked down the aisle, I was very nervous, but having the bubbles to pop, really helped calm my nerves".

 Wool you marry me?  

Little Bo-peep would be jealous of this dress.

When this breeder of rare sheep, decided to get married in a green wedding dress made of the wool from her beloved Lincoln Longwool sheep, she wanted "to prove that wool is not just something for knitting baby booties, and that native breeds can have just as big a presence today as in the past."

This green wedding dress took a spinner and dressmaker 67 hours to make. "But it was worth it", said the groom who wore a wool waistcoat. In keeping with the theme, she had a shepherds crook, and the ring cushion was made of fleece. They are obviously a tight-knit couple.

Follow the paper trail

This amazing green wedding dress was made with only toilet paper, tape and glue inspired by "Gone With the Wind" and Japanese Origami.

It's clear to see that you can be as creative as you like when creating your green wedding dress but the most popular choice when planning a natural wedding would be to find a pre-loved dress.

Don't forget to create your eco friendly gift registry at Biome Eco Stores so you are sure to receive eco friendly gifts that you actually want and that are useful to you.

For more info on how to create an eco friendly wedding dress visit www.naturalweddings.com.au

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