Your wedding day should be one of the most beautiful days of your life. But unfortunately, it can also be a day with lots of waste and not-so-green practices. To help, we’ve assembled 5 easy green wedding ideas for eco-friendly weddings.

photo by Rachelle Duggan

This is a collaborative post. Information is meant to educate about eco-friendly wedding practices.

Congrats, you’re engaged! And double congrats if you are trying to figure out how to have a green wedding. Today’s brides tend to focus on eco-conscious and sustainable wedding ideas, which is important if you are looking to have a green wedding theme.

What is a green wedding? If you aren’t familiar, it is being purposeful in reducing waste and being environmentally friendly in planning and implementing your big day. Having an eco-wedding is a great way to reduce your footprint and make a difference with your wedding, so be sure to take a peek at our ideas on how to plan a green wedding.

Green Wedding Ideas for Eco-Friendly Weddings

Go with eco-wedding stationery.

Although a gorgeous save the date and stunning invitation might seem great in theory, it also means tons of paper products used and the recycling of those products becomes out of your control. Instead, choose one or the other to send.

Our advice would be to send out a save the date made with recycled paper. Include a link to your wedding website, where your guests can also RSVP for your wedding. This will not only cut down on paper, but there’s a good chance you’ll receive answers much faster!

Of course, your green weddings could also include the opposite. Send a digital save the date, and mail out a saveable, paper invitation. Either way, you are helping the planet and keeping your green wedding theme.

Ensure that your jewelry is ethical.

One of the easiest ways to go green on your big day is to wear 100% ethically sourced jewelry. From your earrings to your classic engagement ring, going conflict-free is not only good for our earth, but it will leave you with peace of mind.

A lot of people don’t know that the only way to be entirely sure that your diamond jewelry is ethically sourced is to go with lab-grown stones. The exact same as their mined counterparts, these diamonds are just as beautiful but come with a lot more benefits. Not to mention, they can be up to 40% less expensive! This leaves you some extra budget for some of the other “green” wedding ideas that might be a bit pricier.

photo via Clean Origin

Include composting in your green wedding theme.

Although it might be a bit on the more expensive side, using compostable flatware and plates will cut down majorly on the water usage it would take to clean all of the plates and silverware everyone used throughout the day. If you’re an avid gardener, you can even bring it home with you, add it to your compost and use it to help re-plant your flowers!

How to plan a green wedding that is especially friendly? In addition to purchasing compostable dinnerware, also commit to having a plastic-free wedding. No single-use water bottles, no plastic plates or flatware, no straws…the list goes on and on, but this is wonderful advice on how to have a green wedding. Oh, and compost leftover food, too!

Carpool from the wedding to the reception.

If your ceremony and reception are at different locations, make sure you think about how people will be getting from one to the other. If they are far apart, it might be smart to offer transportation to cut down on driving. This will also help if there is limited parking. If the two are close to one another, encourage your guests to walk or carpool.

Having both the ceremony and reception at the same place is the best-case scenario in terms of eco-friendly wedding ideas. However, it can still be helpful to provide some sort of transportation for guests, especially on the way home if people will be drinking. There are tons of cute options to choose from, such as a trolley for your eco-wedding guests.

photo by Mario MB Photographie

Recycle flowers after eco-friendly weddings.

What is a green wedding without adding a bit of recycling into the mix? Flowers are SO expensive and the majority of them often get thrown away! You can cut back on this by doing a few things.

• Don’t only use traditional flowers. Add greenery and other ‘household’ plants to mix things up. Succulents are extremely popular right now and can easily be given out as gifts at the end of the night, or taken back to live with you and your new partner as a memory of your eco wedding!
• Donate any leftover flowers to a retirement home or children’s hospital. The flowers will have a nice home and you’ll feel much better than if you threw them out.
• Use plants or flowers that can be replanted. Green weddings often – and ironically – include a lot of the color green in the form of plants.

Wedding days are super important, but so is our planet.

Help make your wedding more eco-friendly with these five eco-friendly wedding ideas. Do you have any additional ideas on how to make your day especially easy on the environment? We’d love to hear your green wedding ideas!

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