Tips to Make Your Wedding Eco-Friendly

We live in general heightened awareness about how our daily decisions affect the environment. With all of the hype surrounding environmental problems, it can be difficult to feel like anything we do as individuals will have a substantial impact on the worsening state of our world. Fortunately, with your big day approaching you have countless opportunities to make eco-conscious decisions that will have a lasting effectas your guests take part in the “green” wedding you create using these simple tips:

Planning:

Use local vendors, including an organic caterer who uses all local ingredients. This will reduce carbon emissions and support your local economy. Green wedding planners are also growing in popularity throughout the country.

Rent or buy instead of using disposable dishware and linens. If your organic caterer does not provide this service, this is another small way that you can make a huge impact.

Recycle everything! This includes mailing out wedding invitations printed on recycled paper, buying gently used wedding items and a used wedding dress, and exchanging rings made of recycled gold and fair-labor gemstones. You can take this a step further and create a wedding website with everything from invitations to directions and photos that all of your guests can access without wasting any paper!

Ceremony:

Peruse your local farmers markets or organic florist shops for potted plants to add some natural color to your ceremony. When the wedding is over, give these plants away as wedding favors!

Give wedding favors a new spin by letting each guest choose an environmental charity you will donate to in their name.

Share your love in the splendor of a natural setting that highlights just how beautiful our planet is. Consider having your ceremony at the beach or a park.

Honeymoon:

Register for a green honeymoon with an ecotourism site like www.elevatedestinations.com. Feeling guilty about all of those carbon emissions you will use by flying to your honeymoon? Your guests can offset them by planting a tree in your honor! Just visit www.carbonfootprint.com

Post-wedding:

Keep a digital wedding album. Most photographers use digital cameras nowadays and you can keep up the green trend by reducing the amount of prints you buy and keeping all of your special moments on a computer. Nervous about not having hard copies? Back up your files with a flash drive, DVD, or even create a website for just your pictures!

Not only will you feel great about throwing a HUGE party with such a small environmental impact, but your guests will take the lessons learned from your wedding and implement them elsewhere. Let’s “pay it forward” with eco-conscious living!