Planning an Environmentally Friendly Wedding

I promised a few of you a post about planning my wedding, so here it is. Please note that this post is very photo heavy.

After E proposed I had 18 months to plan our wedding. We had a few key criteria that were very important to us:

  • The wedding had to have as little impact on the environment as possible
  • We had to keep the wedding under $10,000
  • We wanted to keep the wedding as small as possible (which is difficult with a large family)

So keeping those points in mind I began planning.

I didn’t want the traditional sit down reception and I wanted the wedding to be as intimate and personal as possible.

To do this I enlisted the help of family and friends for different aspects of the wedding.

The wedding car was driven by E’s grandfather, and the cups for coffee and cake were supplied by E’s grandma and mum. His grandma also made the wedding cake and one of my friends and I baked all the cupcakes that were served.

Photo (c) Doug Quine Photography, November 2011
Photo (c) Doug Quine Photography, November 2011
Photo (c) VSL, November 2011
Photo (c) VSL, November 2011

I made my own bouquet with roses from a friends garden.

Photo (c) J. Sanderson, November 2011
Photo (c) J. Sanderson, November 2011

And my step father, Uncle and Aunty played the music during the ceremony.

Family and friends all kicked in to help set up the hall and the ceremony site (E’s grandparents backyard) the night before the wedding.

I know not everyone has the ability to accept help from family and friends but if you can it is a great way to make the wedding more personal.

Considering the criteria I outlined above I decided that as much as possible the items used in our wedding had to be recycled, reused or reusable.

The following items were recycled:

Decorations for the hall were made from scrap paper I made into origami hearts and strung up

Photo (c) J. Sanderson, November 2011
Photo (c) J. Sanderson, November 2011

I made my own veil, using some netting I bought and left over material from the alterations of my wedding dress

Photo (c) Doug Quine Photography, November 2011
Photo (c) Doug Quine Photography, November 2011

Reused items in my wedding included:

My necklace was my great grandma’s, the brooch was E’s grandma’s (see photo above for both).

My wedding dress was an Op Shop find that fit perfectly, the only alterations were changing the sleeves from big bows to simple cuff sleeves.

Photo (c) Doug Quine Photography, November 2011
Photo (c) Doug Quine Photography, November 2011

All the boys suits (apart from their tie, which was their gift from us) were one’s they owned themselves.

Photo (c) Doug Quine Photography, November 2011
Photo (c) Doug Quine Photography, November 2011

As mentioned previously, the wedding car was E’s grandparent’s car,

Photo (c) Doug Quine Photography, November 2011
Photo (c) Doug Quine Photography, November 2011

and the cups, saucers and cake plates (all Royal Vale) were from E’s mum and grandma’s kitchens.

Photo (c) Doug Quine Photography, November 2011
Photo (c) Doug Quine Photography, November 2011

Even my engagement ring was reused (it was my great grandmother’s ring)

Photo (c) Doug Quine Photography, November 2011
Photo (c) Doug Quine Photography, November 2011

The majority of the things I had at my wedding were reusable (including most the things I’ve already listed above):

For example, since the wedding I have already reused my veil as a hair clip by pulling in the veil part to form a puff around the rose. I’ve also reused all the jewellery I had at the wedding.

All the gifts we gave our bridal party and our guests were reusable. As mentioned above the boys got the ties they wore at the wedding, and I know I’ve seen them all wearing them again since then. The girls received a tote bag from Vistaprint with their name, the wedding date and our wedding bird on the front. In the bags were a necklace and the clutch that they held instead of a bouquet.

Photo (c) J Sanderson, November 2011
Photo (c) J Sanderson, November 2011

The gifts for the guests were the glasses that they used at the reception (stemless wine glasses) and for people who helped us out the picnic baskets and blankets from the reception.

Photo (c) VSL, November 2011
Photo (c) VSL, November 2011
Photo (c) Doug Quine Photography, November 2011
Photo (c) Doug Quine Photography, November 2011

I bought the book I used as the reading at the wedding so that I can share the story with our children in the future (or re-read it myself when I wanted to). It’s a beautiful story and I’ll share it in another post.

Overall, our personalised home wedding ceremony and picnic reception made the day memorable; not only for us but for many of our guests as well, some of whom still bring it up today.

Photo (c) J. Sanderson, November 2011
Photo (c) J. Sanderson, November 2011

Have you planned your own wedding, or are you at the moment?

Let me know if there is anything you’d like to hear more about in regards to our wedding and the planning process.