Less is more; there are plenty of ways to re-use, recycle and donate to ensure environmentally and ethically friendly weddings. Some of the below hints will leave you with that warm feeling, after the well wishes and celebrations have finished, those feelings that comes from giving.
Start your ‘happily ever after’ with a positive tick!
- Wedding favours; your guests are at your wedding to celebrate; they don’t need a gift to take home to remember your wedding day. Perhaps you would like to enable someone less fortunate has their wedding dream come true too? Consider donating the money you would normally spend on wedding favours to ‘My Wedding Wish’ who help a terminally ill brides & grooms get married.
Display a sign letting guests know you’ve made a donation to a meaningful cause in lieu of favours, or pick a few of your favourites and let guests choose: Set out information on each charity, designate it a colour, and allow guests to read up on them all and decide which organization they’d like you to donate to on their behalf.
- Wedding flowers; give to aged care or local hospital to brighten up the patients. A little note to say you had a wonderful wedding and wanted others to enjoy the flowers as much as you did on your special day. Table centrepieces can also be given as a thank you to those who have helped you on your wedding journey!
- Wedding dress; don’t trash the dress; Love me Twice allows for pre-loved and upcycled bridal dresses to be worn down the aisle again. You could consider donating your gown to ‘Angel Gowns Australia’ who lovingly create gowns for babies that have passed away.
- Wedding invitations; save paper; go digital. Or if you are a traditionalist and love to receive mail; only post the actual invitation and make it with ‘seed paper’. Perhaps you can have a wedding website to keep everyone updated; ‘Paperless Wedding’ allows you to cut the paper out of your wedding.
- Wedding rings; go to 2nd hand shops that sell jewellery, grab a ring with a stone you want to wear and redesign it. That gives new life to an old, once loved piece and often is cheaper than buying new. Antique or heirloom jewellery that is handed down to you is special – if it doesn’t suit your style, have it dipped to change the colour of the gold or incorporate into your new design.
- Wedding food; left overs can go to a local food bank or homeless shelter.
You probably won’t use all the ideas on this list, but the fact that you are reading this means you are more conscientious than most! Just choose one or two points that leap out at you and start there. You can’t do everything, but making a difference to other people with your wedding day will mean more than you can know.