Zero Waste/low-impact Wedding Tips

We are trying to stay as local as possible. Our venue is a local farm that provides catering using their ingredients and other locally sources ingredients as much as possible. We are using cut flowers from a small local flower farm. All of our decor so far is from FB marketplace.

View quoted message Oh it was amazing! Thank you! Wished I was able to share photos (since I tried and it would not load ☹️☹️). Oh yes, it’s amazing and love every part of it. It’s so good to not get caught in the expensive wedding ideas, when you can save soooo much!!

Great concepts for a low eco way wedding day celebration to have and everyone will enjoy themselves as there will be things to do and enjoy the day at the park.

There can be ways for a low eco weddings on other basis where couples can enjoy if outdoors is not their thing. Indoor weddings with most of the venue set and just having centerpieces rented and flowers artificial would give the same effect as real can have that great feeling to not waste.

View quoted message That's awesome Kelly! Happy to have you aboard the low-impact wedding train! I plan to share insights, lessons, creative ideas throughout our planning season. Best of luck with your planning season

I don't have any suggestions, however thank you for posting this, I am going to look at ways to do the same for our wedding

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Lol it's strange to hear that, because I always feel like I'm missing something. I have terrible overthinker syndrome, but thank you, you're too kind

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Awe your DIY flower arrangements sound absolutely lovely! I'll admit we have a growing collection of bottles in case we decide to do cut flowers. Thank you so much for sharing! It's cool that the low-impact wedding concept caught your attention

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Sounds like you triple checked all the angles. Glad to see you're on top of everything

Oh wow, this is so cool!
Never heard of this or thought much of it to this extent. I do love the idea of thrift shopping, as I’m big on thrift and second hand shopping. Sorry I won’t give much ideas since I never thought of it. Hahaha.

For decor, I decided to DIY our wedding — used wine bottles and spray them gold. I did roses and greenery for them for the tables. So I really did not put much money into decor which was very good for us.

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Hi Hank,

thank you so much for your thoughtful reply! You raise some really great points! The renting route is definitely one we will be taking at many turns because, like you say, it's more environmentally and financially sustainable.

And to your point about food in August, thank you for bringing that up! I should have mentioned this in the main post but we do have plans for keeping food fresh on the day of (I actually catered events for many years so food safety is a big concern of mine). As for catering, side-by-side to food trucks restaurants still do create quite a lot of waste, what with transport from the brick-and-mortar to location trip as well as over-preparing food which results in a lot of food waste. Luckily there are carbon neutral food trucks in our area who will happily forego disposable serving options (and use what we provide) at an event like a wedding. Funnily enough, there is parking just a few paces away from the dining area which is awesome.

In all honesty though, I'm very open to different catering options! We are looking to make the most sensible/environmental/cost effective decision when it comes to serving food on our wedding day, and the way to get there (I believe) is just this, discussing the pros and the cons of different options. So I thank you for raising all the points that you did.

Renting vs buying is one that comes to mind. A lot of decor do not need to be purchased and renting can be more cost effective than buying even second hand. You're also supporting a local business that way.

One concern I have is the potential for food-related illnesses at your event. Self-prepped food being outside for many hours in non-refrigerated temperatures can pose serious food safety risks, especially if people are bringing food with easy to spoil ingredients like diary and mayonnaise. And August can get quite hot, especially if there are forest fires in the region raising temperatures even further.

Have you considered using a local caterer instead of food trucks? Food trucks have quite a high carbon foot print - they must constantly run the truck while operating and unless your spot in the park is adjacent to a parking spot, they'll either be quite a trek for your guests to get food or will require the truck to be stationed on a piece of natural ground, potentially damaging the plant life. They also serve food using disposable/single use plastic utensils, which generates quite a bit of garbage.