Eco-Friendly Wedding Ideas for the Sustainable Bride
By Caitlin Hoare
Weddings can be both magical and wasteful, but with thoughtful planning, couples can create celebrations that are stylish, meaningful, and environmentally friendly. From choosing preloved or ethically made wedding dresses and sourcing decor from secondhand markets to using living plants instead of cut flowers, there are many creative ways to reduce waste. Digital invitations and custom wedding websites can replace paper invites, while encouraging eco-friendly travel and using carbon footprint calculators help manage emissions. Additionally, sustainable menu choices, such as plant-based or locally sourced options, along with strategies to reduce food waste, further lessen the environmental impact of your big day.
Weddings are magical celebrations of love, but they can also generate a surprising amount of waste. However, with a little creativity and conscious planning, you can have the wedding of your dreams while minimising your environmental impact. From preloved wedding dresses to locally sourced catering and digital invitations, there are endless ways to make your big day stylish, meaningful, and sustainable. Whether you’re going all out with a fully eco-conscious wedding or just looking for simple swaps to reduce waste, this guide will help you plan a celebration that’s kinder to the planet—without compromising on style!
As we’re faced with the reality of what over-consumption is doing to our beautiful planet, more and more couples are looking for ways to reduce the environmental impact of their wedding celebration. There has never been a better time to start doing things more sustainably, and as a bonus, you might even save some money! If you're the kind of person who likes to shop local and fancies making their own confetti out of flower petals, then this is the guide for you!
Sustainable wedding ideas
Sustainable weddings come in all shapes and sizes - you can easily make eco-friendly choices and swaps without walking down the aisle wearing a hemp sack. Sustainability is a buzzword right now, and unfortunately, that means there’s a whole load of greenwashing going on out there, so we’re here to cut through the marketing noise and give you some practical tips on how to make your wedding more eco-friendly.
Eco-friendly wedding decor
Recycling might sound like a load of old rubbish, but hear us out - we’re not talking about crafting your toilet rolls into table centrepieces! A quick search through Marketplace or eBay will show hundreds of people selling all kinds of wedding decor, from vases to faux flowers and table runners to hand-painted signage. Before you make any decor decisions or invest in anything new, check the secondhand marketplaces to see what’s on offer. It's also worth asking your wedding venue what they can provide - some might have things like candle holders and vases already on site.
When it comes to floral arrangements, living plants and flowers are much more eco-friendly than cut flowers. You could cluster small pots of succulents together or use potted herbs for a fragrant green centrepiece; then, once the fun and festivities are over, you can give them away to friends and family to enjoy at home as a little token of your wedding day.
Choosing a sustainable wedding dress
We all know fashion has a questionable sustainability record, and wedding fashion is no exception to that. The good news is that there are plenty of eco-friendly and ethical options out there for the discerning bride!
The secondhand clothing market is big business these days, and that goes for wedding attire too. Whether you’re looking for a vintage wedding dress or would prefer something more modern, apps like Vinted and Depop are great, whereas you might want to try something more exclusive like Vestiare for used designer wedding outfits.
We know a pre-loved wedding dress might not be everyone’s cup of tea; it’s completely understandable if you want to treat yourself to something shiny and new for your wedding day! New wedding dresses can be sustainable if they’re handmade rather than made in a factory and if they’re made from organic, biodegradable or recycled materials. Unfortunately, these features can come with a hefty price tag, so if you want ethical without the investment then it’s worth looking into wedding dress rental.
Your wedding day carbon footprint
It’s pretty much an inescapable fact that everything we do as humans has a carbon footprint, but the size of your wedding day's carbon footprint will depend on the type of wedding you’re going for. Planning an intimate celebration somewhere relatively local will always be better for the environment than flying 200 guests out to your destination wedding. Still, we know not everyone wants a tiny local wedding!
Depending on where you choose to get married, you can address the carbon footprint from the start by encouraging your guests to lift share or travel by train or bus. However, if this isn’t a possibility, then luckily Mindfully Wed have got you covered with their wedding carbon footprint calculator. Once you’ve calculated your footprint, you can easily offset it online.
Sustainable ideas for your wedding menu
Gone are the days of mushroom stroganoff being the only vegetarian option on the menu - plant-based food has had a massive glow-up in recent years. If you don’t mind ditching the meat then your wedding is the perfect opportunity to show just how good vegan or vegetarian wedding food can be, bonus points if you use seasonal local produce! We know that planning a meat-free wedding menu isn’t for everyone, so if meat is non-negotiable, you can always support local farmers and go organic and free-range!
It might not be the first thing you think of when you think about planning an eco-friendly wedding, but food waste is a big issue in the wedding industry! Let your caterer know you want to minimise food waste, and if there are any leftovers, consider donating them through an app like Saveful or Olio.
Choose a wedding website instead of paper invites
Whilst paper invitations might look lovely, they aren’t the most eco-friendly, even if they're made from recycled paper. From the paper production to the environmental cost of delivering them, ditching the paper wedding invite might be the easiest win when it comes to the sustainability of your wedding. And if you’re wondering what to do instead, then look no further - a custom Say I do RSVP wedding website has all the functionality you’ll need to invite your guests and keep them up to date with all the information they need to know.
In addition to being more eco-friendly, a wedding website offers a much more streamlined experience than a traditional paper wedding invitation, and not only can you easily build a unique wedding website, but you can also send digital wedding invitations, collect RSVPs and menu choices, and send thank you notes!
We know there will be some traditionalists out there, so if you want to make your paper invitations more sustainable, then why not use seed paper to print them on and choose a printer who uses sustainable practices like using soy inks, a more eco-friendly option that has been gaining popularity recently.
There are so many ways to make your wedding more eco-friendly; we’ve really just scratched the surface. We hope you’ve come away inspired, knowing that all it takes are a few swaps in the name of sustainability, and suddenly, your wedding has much less of an environmental impact!