The one good thing that came out of the pandemic is the downsizing of weddings since usually they happen to be an extravagant affair. There’s tons and tons amount of waste that is generated and amongst all the rush, it gets overlooked almost always. The pandemic has somehow made people a little accepting of having smaller weddings with close friends and family which otherwise included a fairly large number of people. While the amount of waste has gone down, it’s only a matter of time till we start having lavish weddings again with tons of waste to deal with.
Here are a few tips which will can help you plan a lot more eco-friendly wedding without making you compromise on your dream wedding –
1. Use compostable or recyclable dinnerware
While most weddings have glass plates for dinner, most of the pre-dinner dishes and other snacks are served in plasticware – bowls, plates, cutlery. One of our community members on Instagram also pointed out how toothpicks are wasted in large numbers too and we couldn’t agree more. To reduce this waste, you can switch to more eco-friendly alternatives options made with banana leaves or bamboo. It’s always a good idea to source them from a local vendor but if you can’t find one around, you can buy from amazon too.
2. Pick wear-again clothes
Most weddings are not a one day affair. They come with multiple celebrations that last for days. Pick outfits that you can wear again in everyday life rather frequently instead of buying something that will just end up lying in the closet for years. For more fancier ones – renting out can be an option too. A relative of mine who recently got married, rented out 5 outfits for her wedding shoot. She got her dream shoot done and also made it more sustainable since most of those gowns would have just ended up in the closet later if she had bought them.
3. Use handmade or recycled paper for invitations
A lot of people have switched to digital invitations especially due to the pandemic but if you’re still sending out physical invitation cards, use recycled or handmade paper. There are multiple small businesses making extremely beautiful handmade paper invites and envelopes such as kaagaz. In fact, you can also use seed paper for it. You can also get them handwritten by calligraphy artists. Simran (The Calligraphy Raven) is someone I know personally – attended one of her workshops and she’s an absolute delight to work with. This way you not only make the invites more sustainable, you help support a small business too! Win win!
4. Be mindful of your decorations
In case you’re picking your own decor, choose items that you can reuse at your home later. It is also said dried flowers are more sustainable compared to fresh ones however there are also arguments against it since the they can be heat-treated, chemically bleached and coated with plastic. A good idea would be to source them from a local artist who uses more sustainable techniques. Another idea is to use cloth fabrics – they can be folded into beautiful patterns and come in hundreds of beautiful colors and are of course reusable.
Image Credits: Castle & Coasters 
Image Credits: Destination Wedding Planner 
Image Credits: AASH Studio
5. Choose eco-friendly gifts for your guests
Ditch the regular gifts and instead gift your guests seed paper, small potted plants or herbs. Another option is to gift some locally grown consumables such as coffee, tea, honey, etc. It’s super eco-friendly and super unique – they will definitely remember this for a long long time. Additionally, make sure not to use plastic packaging.
Image Credits: With Love, Nilma 
Image Credits: With Love, Nilma
6. Plan ahead
It’s always good to plan ahead with the different stakeholders involved in the process such as your caterer, decor designer, supplier, etc to decide things such as what to do with leftover food, how and when to segregate of waste – send wet waste for composting and dry waste for recycling, where to source the decor material from, etc. A lot of times there’s surplus food left which can be donated to a charity or an NGO – you can contact an NGO such as the Robinhood Army in advance and tell them there might be a possibility for you to donate food. You can also put up some cute sign boards near the food counters encouraging your guests to not waste food.
Still not sure it can be done? Here’s Madhuri Balodi and Aditya Aggarwal’s super cute and super sustainable wedding story for some inspiration.
Image Credits: Madhuri Balodi 
Image Credits: Madhuri Balodi
Also a quick reminder that while there’s a lot you can plan to make your wedding more eco-friendly, it is also the collective duty of all us as guests to make sure we use the resources judiciously too. It’ll be super nice to develop the habit of using the same plate for snacks and dinner instead of picking up a fresh disposable plate everytime we try a new dish, bring gifts wrapper with reusable wrapping paper or just even a newspaper and so on.
Let us know if you have more eco-friendly wedding ideas and we’ll add it to the list.
Have an interesting sustainability story to share? Please write to us at hello@projectkive.com. To stay updated with our latest stories, follow us on Instagram.
