It's a nice day for a GREEN WEDDING

There are so many of you that are thinking of having a “GREEN” wedding but is it possible? After some research, I discovered that any party that involves food, drink, or travel means that you, and your guests are increasing your carbon footprint. Let me put it this way, if you spend about $25,000 (which according to statistics is the average spent on a wedding), you have significantly increased your carbon output more than your average dinner party or even you doing a pub crawl with 20 of your friends. Don’t fear, there are ways to make this smaller and over the next several weeks I’ll give you some tips.

Get rid of the non-necessary things.
You’ve been to weddings before right? Do you honestly remember the little ‘take-a-way’ that was on the table? Did you truly drink the ‘wine’ that was in the pretty bottle? If not, then you can save your guests travel footprint by skipping it completely. What you would spend on that little knick-knack, donate that money to the http://www.terrapass.com or http://www.carbonfund.org to offset their travel to your event as well as your event itself.

Recycle a tree
Where every possible use recycled paper for your invitations. You know that really cute little piece of tissue paper in some more ‘formal invitations’, you really don’t need it. It was a custom established a long time ago to prevent invitations from leaking – remember that was the time when each invitation was written by hand with a quill pen. I don’t think you’re going to do that…are you??

Eat locally
Especially if you are having an outdoor wedding, do everything you can to use organic or locally grown food and wine. Even if you’re not, ask your caterer to see if they can what kind of food they are using. Remember it costs a lot less to get locally grown veggies than something that has to travel from a different state or the other side of the country.

Remember 27 Dresses??
Times have changed and bridesmaids’ attire has gotten a lot better. I’m sure that every woman now has a ‘little black dress’ so why not allow your bridal party to wear something they already own. The guys can wear a dark suit. That saves stress as well as money.

Flowers and other stuff.
Instead of hothouse flowers and other flowers that have been covered in preservatives, and shipped from across the planet, look for local and seasonal flowers. That will absolutely save you money as well as they will follow your theme.

Look, it’s not impossible to do it green, you just have to really think about it. No matter what you do, I’m sure you’ll have your family and guests GREEN with envy.

Until next time…