How to Go Green: Eco-Friendly Wedding Reception

What better place to show the need to restore the environment than at a public celebration like your wedding reception? There's tons of things you can do at your wedding to be eco-friendly and stylish at the same time. In fact, having a green wedding sets a unique and exciting theme for your guests. For example, you can have the wedding outside in an area surrounded by trees, or near a lake. Setting an earthy and natural theme for your wedding is a great and conscientious decision that will spread the word for a growing, eco-friendly world. Sound interesting? Here's some ideas for making a spectacular, eco-friendly wedding reception that will live on in memories long past the end of the day.

Limit the Driving
Upon turning the engine of a car on, carbon dioxide is released into the environment at relatively high rates, whether you are driving or simply idling. More carbon dioxide in the earth's atmosphere means less heat from the sun can escape from our planet: essentially, we're in an oven that is raising its temperature, slowly but surely. For an eco-friendly wedding, you want to reduce the amount of driving that your guests have to do. So, have them all meet somewhere beforehand and rent a comfortable bus to drive them to the wedding. Or suggest that they carpool in the invitations to match the theme of the wedding. Either way, you want your wedding guests to do less driving to keep just that little bit of carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere.

Help, Not Hurt
Things that may be common at typical weddings, like Styrofoam, soft plastics, or beeswax candles, are not a great idea to have at your eco-friendly wedding. These things don't recycle easily and end up going straight back into the earth after they've outlived their use; however, they can take years to decompose. Instead, you want materials that will have limited to no effect on the environment when you're done with them. For example, at one of my friend's eco-friendly weddings, he used glass and porcelain, instead. While there's a little bit more work and cleaning required, you're doing your part in helping the environment.

Use Recyclables
Recycling, as we all know, is good for the environment, so you want to do as much of this as possible at your wedding. If you can, make all of the materials you use recyclable or easy to disassemble. Maybe, you might want to use eco-friendly invitational cards that have the second purpose of conveying the theme of your wedding. After our wedding is done, you might want to send leftover food to food banks (less production of food means less energy used in the process). You may even want to throw some bamboo into your wedding because using paper (from trees) can lead to deforestation around the world. If you do end up using paper, make sure that you recycle it.

Eco-friendly gifts
After your wedding is over, you want the theme to resonate with your guests. The best way is to give them a gift; whenever they look at it, they'll think of going green. You might want to give out green keychains or tree seedlings (you'll be surprised how many people want to grow one tree that they can look after). Maybe you can hand out small packets of organic tea or pesticide-free herbs, too. Either way, send a concrete message to your guests that going green is of the utmost importance.

Source:
"Green Wedding Articles." Great Green Wedding.