How To Have an Eco-Friendly Wedding

Your wedding is meant to be the best day of your life. A day you and your partner will remember forever. We know the planning can take forever and it might be hard to think about being green when it feels like you have a million and one things to do! But ensuring your special day has as little environmental impact as possible means you can go into your future knowing you did your best to ensure your day didn’t harm the planet.

We know it’s difficult to think of where to start so we have written 5 steps you can take to plan a more environmentally friendly wedding!

Invites

 If you want to host a greener wedding ceremony and reception, the best place to start is at the beginning. When creating your invites think about how you can distribute these to your guests in a sustainable way. Perhaps you can go paperless? Canva has lots of templates that are available free of charge! We know that many people like to send physical invitations so if you really want to do this perhaps you can find a company that uses recycled paper like paper culture. Or go one step further and check out Botanical paper works who sell beautiful, seeded wedding stationery that grows! So your invite can turn into a wildflower, herbs or even vegetables.

Venues

Think when booking your Norfolk venue and creating your invitation how you can encourage your guests to travel, encourage walking, car sharing or if your venue is near a train station let your guests know!  If you can, try to have your ceremony and reception at the same location to cut down on carbon emissions from your guests making two trips.

Are you able to embrace nature and have an outdoor wedding? Are you supporting a venue that does good for the environment? Perhaps they have lots of beautiful gardens with many flowers for the bees! Or perhaps the Norfolk wedding venue is also a small organic farm producing local food that could even be used for your wedding meal! Ask your venue what part they play in the environment. We are extremely lucky with our Norfolk Wedding venues that we have plenty of choices when it comes to beautiful green spaces for wedding ceremonies.

Wedding items and Suppliers

Try to book wedding suppliers that are local to your venue, so they are not traveling too far and racking up carbon emissions. This might be easy for some things, but it depends on how niche you want to be! If you live in Norfolk don’t forget to book us as your local wedding Videographers!

Confetti is awesome and looks beautiful in our videos! We love it! But when choosing your confetti try and choose confetti that is biodegradable or use dried flower petals. We know a Bride who dried thousands of rose petals herself over the course of a year! A great excuse to ask for flowers from your partner!

Everyone loves finding a little special gift on their table just for them so they can remember the day for years to come, why not provide a favor that does a little bit of good for the planet too? Perhaps some personalised seeds for the bees? Or recently we found these cute heart-shaped flower bombs on Etsy. Perhaps you have found someone local to you that can make something? Or maybe you can make something yourself? Or if being creative is not your thing then, Norwich is a haven for creative independent shops and stalls. See what you can find at Norwich Market or in one of the many shops in Norwich lanes.

The Food

Food is one of the biggest parts of your wedding day! Why not make it good for the environment too?

Probably the most important part of the day after the ceremony in our opinion is the food! We love to shoot all the deliciousness. When planning your food think about the environmental impact your meal choices may have, and try to choose venues or companies that use local produce to reduce carbon emissions.  Eating a vegetarian diet is also one of the best things you can do to reduce climate change – it’s also delicious and loads of fun!

Everyone likes to take some wedding cake home, or for munching on in the taxi or on the train on the way home. Why not provide Wax paper for taking cake home instead of plastic? It’s a good way of wrapping cake and can be washed up and used again encouraging your guests to use less plastic in the future.

Your Honeymoon

And relax…While planning your wedding is important and exciting don’t forget to have fun planning your honeymoon too! After the stress of all the organising, you will no doubt need some time afterward to relax and enjoy each other's company as newlyweds. 

To plan an eco-friendly honeymoon, you can feel good about, think about following a few key steps.

Travel closer to home

By traveling closer to home you will be reducing your carbon emissions, and you might find it less stressful straight after your wedding to not spend too much time traveling. Spending time waiting at the airport and traveling on a plane might not be exactly what you need right after your big day.

Consider Glamping

Glamping can be a more environmentally friendly option for your honeymoon! It can also be super fun as well as helping you to relax by connecting with nature. This experience can allow you to rest and restore your energy, ready to begin your newlywed life together!

your purchases and excursions

Consider the treatment of animals in your destination.  When you’re on your honeymoon, make decisions that don’t harm, exploit, or otherwise negatively impact animals. For instance, its much kinder to splash Elephants than to ride on them. Please also never buy products, such as souvenirs, made from endangered animals or that impact their vulnerable ecosystems. If you are not sure, do some research before you buy.

So that’s it! Hopefully, this blog has given you some food for thought on some steps you can take to create an Eco-Friendly Wedding. We are sure there are lots more ways out there!

When you’re on your honeymoon, make decisions that don’t harm, exploit, or otherwise negatively impact animals.