Getting Married in a Green City: Tips for a Sustaniable Wedding

The other bloggers suggested that I share my good news – I’m getting married in the summer of 2011!

As a person that supports sustainability in my daily life, I had a question about how to transfer that experience to the wedding planning. I started with these three big items that often result in waste and pollution (and these can easily be transferred to a holiday celebration or other big party that you are planning – that is not wedding related):

1. Decorations: My maid of honor got me a good book to start thinking about this topic; Eco-chic Weddings. One of the biggest details that the book recommends is choosing a location that doesn’t require a lot of disposable decorations (flowers, candles, etc.). So that is where I started; trying not to buy things that will just get thrown away.
2. Travel: how do we get our out-of-town guests and locals to the wedding location? We are having the ceremony and reception at the same location (to reduce travel). We looked for a location on a bus line, but couldn’t find one that we liked, so we are going to use a local company to offer a carpool. EcoShuttle uses clean fuel vehicles (including a renovated school bus which runs on biodiesel) that can cart around the wedding party!
3. Gift registry: to cut down on the amount of gifts we receive (and all of that wasteful packaging) we are registered through a local company that collects our gifts and lets us pick them up = just a walk from home to pick up those things, all in one box! The other option that we’ll offer is for our guests to donate to a charity instead of purchasing us another thing for the house (although it is hard to decide on which charity to select).