Weddings mark one of the most important days in our lives, but for many, it also marks one of the most expensive. In addition to your pocketbook, weddings can also be hard on the earth. Planning a wedding that fits your budget—but doesn’t compromise on your environmental values—doesn’t have to be difficult. Find inspiration and resources below, from picking a healthy wedding dress to planning a less-wasteful reception.
Plan an Eco-Friendly Wedding
Natural Nuptials: Eco-Friendly Weddings
Plan an eco-friendly wedding with these green tips from Michelle Kozin’s Organic Weddings: Balancing Ecology, Style and Tradition.
Your wedding will mean more—to you, your community and to the earth—if you put extra effort and creativity into making it a green event.
Easy Tips to Plan a Green, Earth-Friendly Wedding: To Love, Honor and Cherish the Earth
A couple celebrates their union in keeping with their values.
Get Married with Mother Earth Living
This podcast episode from Mother Earth News and Friends brings together a few brilliant minds of design to discuss planning eco-friendly and sustainable gatherings, specifically weddings.
Flowers
Sustainable, Local, Pesticide-Free Flowers: The Bride Carried Green
Locally grown, organic blossoms speak of your love for one another and your love for the earth.
Conventional flowers can harbor pesticide residue. For your wedding, pass over the pesticides for organically grown blossoms.
Flower Fixes: How to Keep Flowers Fresh
Keep your bouquets beautiful for the big day with these tips!
Invitations
Homemade Invitations with Block Printing
To save money and impress guests, try making homemade invitations using DIY block printing.
Wedding Story
Natural Home‘s Editor Jessica Kellner encountered many obstacles on her way to planning a green wedding. Learn from her trials and benefit from her searches for local flowers, eco-friendly bridesmaid dresses, biodegradable dishware, sustainable wedding decorations and more.
Jessica talks about abandoning conventional wedding traditions in favor of saving money and resources, creating a more sustainable wedding.
Eco-Friendly Wedding Resources
Jessica shares her running list of eco-friendly, green and sustainable wedding items, including dresses, invitations, flowers and more.
Finding Eco-Friendly Engagement and Wedding Rings
Jessica searches for eco-friendly engagement and wedding rings and explores a variety of sustainable options, including conflict-free diamonds, recycled diamonds, recycled gold, recycled jewelry, alternative wedding rings, Canadian diamonds and cultured diamonds.
Reception and Decorations
Handmade, Vintage and Secondhand Wedding Décor
Jessica discusses the eco-profile of soy candles, recycled glassware, recycled-content paper and vintage and handmade wedding decor.
Biodegradable Wedding Reception
Using recycled giftwrap as a table runner makes for an easy, inexpensive and eco-friendly DIY wedding decor project.
Wedding Dishware: Biodegradable Cups, Sustainable Disposable Plates
Jessica provides resources for biodegradable cups and sustainable bamboo plates for her green outdoor wedding.
Dresses
Battle of the Bridesmaids Dresses
Jessica discusses her difficulty in locating eco-friendly bridesmaid dresses made from sustainable materials.
The Hunt for an Eco-Friendly Wedding Dress
Jessica discusses her hunt for an eco-friendly wedding gown and explores options from handmade wedding dresses to high-end, couture eco-friendly wedding fashions.
• Eco-Friendly Wedding Dresses Part 1: Adele Wechsler, Flora
• Eco-Friendly Wedding Dresses Part 2: Adele Wechsler, Sunshine
• Eco-Friendly Wedding Dresses Part 3: Adele Wechsler, Magnolia
• Eco-Friendly Wedding Dresses Part 4: Adele Wechsler, Sierra
• Eco-Friendly Wedding Dresses Part 5: Lea-Ann Belter, Sabrina
• Eco-Friendly Wedding Dresses Part 6: Puridee, Rebecca
• Eco-Friendly Wedding Dresses Part 7: Puridee, Sarah
• Eco-Friendly Wedding Dress Part 8: Puridee, Danielle
The Grand Finale
Jessica offers a sneak peek of her biodegradable wedding, which featured recycled glassware, handmade decor, recycled paper table runners, biodegradable plates and cups and soy candles.
Enjoy this podcast episode pulled from Mother Earth News and Friends!
Image credits (clockwise): Photo By Geekly/Courtesy Flickr; Photo By Lindley Ashline/Courtesy Flickr; Photo By Claudio Perez Vidal/Courtesy Flickr.
