Tips For An Eco-Friendly Wedding

With a million things to think about when it comes to planning your dream wedding, trying to ensure you aren’t putting too much strain on the environment at the same time, can be tricky. Weddings produce a lot of carbon footprint, so we’ve put together a few eco-friendly ideas to make your wedding day more sustainable.

Wedding planning app, Bridebook, tell us that 10% of couples in the UK considered climate change when planning their wedding in 2019, a figure that appears to be rising year on year.

Whilst an eco-friendly wedding is desirable, it’s important to understand that your wedding can’t be completely carbon-free (yet!) but you can make a few changes to help along the way....

Tree Planting

To offset some of the wedding’s carbon footprint, could your venue plant a tree in their grounds? A wonderful way to leave a lasting memory of your wedding and give back to nature.

Wedding Decorations & Flowers

We suggest hiring your decorations, to save on plastic wastage. And using locally picked wildflowers as centrepieces for your tables is a lovely, natural touch. Some florists only use blooms from local picking sites, of which there are a few in Bristol.

One eco wedding favour suggestion is ‘Bee bombs’- the seedball can be sown in the guests’ own gardens, growing wildflowers focused on “bringing the bees back.” They are based on an ancient method of farming that is less destructive to wildlife and are handmade in Dorset. Each pack contains a mixture of seeds and species of wildflowers, which are mixed with clay powder and soil to protect the seeds whilst they germinate.

Transport

It’s your special day and of course you want all your loved ones there to support you. However, it is important to think about effect traveling to your wedding will have on the environment.

Live streaming of your wedding ceremony is very useful to those who would need to travel long distances, so it will help offset some of the carbon footprint and it helps to satisfy any Covid-19 limitations.

For guests attending in real life, we suggest providing a bus or shuttle service that can pick up all the guests to take them to the wedding which will reduce the amount of petrol used. Similarly, you can suggest the option to carpool and even better if they are electric cars!

The Wedding Dress

The most important decision a bride can make is what they will wear!  And of course, the best thing you can do for the environment is to go for a pre-loved wedding dress. You could share the love from those before and help the environment at the same time. Preloved or Bridal Reloved are both websites that sell beautiful, preloved gowns.

Food and Drink

Seasonal and Local Ingredients

We all know that choosing seasonal ingredients makes for a more ethical meal. So when it comes to deciding on the menu, sourcing seasonal and local products not only tastes amazing but you can reduce transport pollution and help give back to the local community. Some venues, like us, grow their own herbs on site and source beef from the farm next door.

Wines

The reputation for English wines is much better than it used to be and every town now seems to make its own local gin. Choosing these options not only reduces mileage, it supports independent business who could definitely do with a boost in their sales after a difficult year of little trading. Our house wine at Berwick is ‘Three Choirs’ from a vineyard in Gloucestershire.

Soft Drinks

The same can apply to soft drinks. For example, at Berwick we send apples that fall from the trees in our orchard to not-for-profit company in Gloucestershire, Trust Juice. Trust’s ethos is that juice should stay natural so it’s pressed and pasteurised with nothing added to it, bottled by another Gloucestershire independent business, Bushel & Peck, and available to buy and serve at your wedding. Berwick apple juice prevents waste, supports the community (Gloucestershire college students help press the apples with Trust Juice) and keeps the carbon footprint down.

Surplus Food

The geniuses at Too Good to Go have created an app that gives consumers the opportunity to buy surplus food from local restaurants or cafes before its use by date, to prevent food waste. An astonishing amount of food is wasted every day and weddings can be guilty of contributing to this. Another option is to arrange for any surplus wedding food to be donated to a local food bank. See if your venue, like us, is signed up to Too Good To Go, and know that your surplus food won’t go to waste.