Plan an Eco-friendly Wedding in 14 steps.
Your ultimate guide to having an eco-friendly wedding.
What we give out to the environment comes back to us. Therefore, it’s vital that we establish a healthy give and take relationship with the environment for how we treat the environment is how it treats us back.
Indians love weddings! The idea of a Big Fat Wedding is often appealing to us all but have we ever thought of how much abuse we cause to mother nature when we choose to have one? We can’t ignore our ecological responsibility and this is where our Naturopath Couple comes in.
Meet Zeal and Guillermo:
Zeal, 30, and Guillermo, 34 met at the ‘University of Austin Texas’, fell in love, and decided to have an Eco-friendly Wedding.
Below, we’ll look at the steps that they undertook to have a successful Eco-friendly Wedding:
1. No Printed Invitations
Zeal (An Indian) and Guillermo (A Mexican) wanted to set an Eco-friendly tone for their wedding hence they decided to go digital with their invitation cards instead of printing them. Not just their invitation but their wedding videos and pictures are also digitally saved.
To quote Guillermo: “So no, we didn’t print them. We have mostly digital pictures. I do recall, when I was in India, we went to one of Zeal’s friend’s house and they had a recent wedding, and so, they were going to bring their albums and they bring these two big bags down. I was like, “What is this?” I thought they were moving out or something. But it was photo albums. So, there are some very serious photo albums for weddings in India. And so, we decided not to do that. And it’s also for practical reasons. I mean, my parents went back to Mexico (Zeal and Guillermo had their wedding in Surat, India) and we also had a lot of friends in other parts of the world. It just didn’t make sense from a practical reason, but also from an Ecological perspective, right? We’re not printing on paper, and we can always look at these pictures and videos.”
2. Planted a Sapling for every guest — 600 Saplings to date
About two months before the wedding, once they had a headcount of the guests, Zeal and Guillermo ended up planting a sapling for every guest that were to attend their wedding. They planted about 600 saplings (One for each guest) that they hoped would grow into trees to reverse some Carbon Footprint. They then decided to gift each of their wedding guests a tree that they planted in their honor.
Zeal and Guillermo hope to continue tree-planting and replace ‘Consumerism’ with ‘Conservatism’ to give our beautiful planet a clean breathing-aid now and for generations to come.
3. Food and organic matter donated and composted
Zeal and Guillermo ensured that the food that came to their wedding supported the local economy and the crockery and cutlery used were recyclable. They also made it a point to either donate or compost the leftover food. All of these measures offset the carbon footprint that an extravagant wedding generates.
4. Flower decor minimized and composted
Composting is basically taking a mixture of decayed organic matter (In this case, decayed flowers and dried leaves from Zeal and Guillermo’s Wedding) and using it to Fertilize and Condition a piece of Land. Composting helps in growing plants when added to the Soil.
Zeal and Guillermo ensured that the Flowers and Decorative materials used in their Wedding were minimized and the leftover ones were also either donated or Composted.
5. Single-use items avoided
To quote Guillermo, “Zeal was on top of things and really doing things that are hard to do like verifying and validating Vendors. You know, like, “Okay, which vendor are we going to go with? And how can we verify that they are going to be complying with, for example, the use of water bottles to be glass and not these very small plastic bottles that they use in most weddings out there, where you have two sips and you throw it away.
Then, we were very conscious of the kind of materials that we were using. So, no single-use items were used — they were avoided as much as we could — we were using glass or any other kind of recyclable or organic materials wherever possible. Like, even clay glasses to drink water out of glass bottles and glass plates.”
6. No Fireworks
Fireworks consist of heavy metal fallout and ozone formation that contribute to not just Air and Noise Pollution but also in worsening our lung health. As tempting as it is to light fireworks, we should all make it a point to minimize their usage or even better, completely stop using them for there are healthier ways of celebrating the big moments of life.
Zeal and Guillermo chose to not have any Fireworks at their Wedding. They just decided to have one shot of an artificial firework to go out and even that was electric-generated. we’re already taking notes, Zeal and Guillermo. *Wink wink*
7. Minimized Sound Pollution by capping at 100 decibels
Zeal and Guillermo also tried to look at noise pollution because that’s something that often gets overlooked at a wedding. You have loud music, you have the procession or the ‘Baraat’ for the wedding day that really likes to be loud — and so they kept the sound at 100 decibels as the World Health Organization kind of put out the framework for the number of noise levels that is healthy for the human ear and so, they ensured that they abide by the framework.
8. No animal use for the Procession (baraat) or Entertainment
Just like Human Cruelty is not okay, similarly, Animal Cruelty isn't okay either. did you know that a lot of these animals used in baraats starve all day and therefore are at the risk of being malnourished? In worst-case scenarios, they’re also often mistreated by their owners and THAT, under any circumstances, shouldn't ever be allowed, let alone encouraged.
Our Naturopath Couple understands that animals have rights too and that they need to be treated with nothing but love and care. Hence, they decided to not have any animal be a part of their Wedding Procession.
Going against the Norm. Now, don't we love that?
9. Everything Vegetarian on the menu
The devastation that the meat industry causes to the environment is enormous and that’s why Zeal and Guillermo decided to have an all-vegetarian menu for food.
Vegetarian food helps with reducing River, Stream, and Water pollution. It also prevents the slaughtering of innocent animals and therefore, saves a lot of animal lives. Hence, we can all agree that having everything vegetarian on the menu was a wise call.
10. Re-use the wedding dress
With Fast Fashion on the rise, it has now become more important than ever to commit to and practice Slow and Sustainable fashion. The kind of fashion that uses biodegradable fabric that would eventually return to the ecosystem after its usage and then can be re-used and re-cycled.
Zeal understood the gist of ‘Reduce, Reuse and recycle’ really well and so, to quote her,” We made sure the wedding dresses or even the dresses that we were using were not just a one-time kind of dress that you use and you forget about. We tried to make it so that we can reuse them for different events.”
Now that’s who we call a true Nature-lover. Even though the Wedding dress was re-usable, it didn't make Zeal any less Beautiful.
11. LED lights use less power
LED lighting consumes less power per-unit (lumen) of light emitted. This reduces greenhouse emissions from power plants. Carbon dioxide emissions for LEDs are also low. Roughly, one LED bulb will minimize greenhouse gas emissions by almost half a ton. Now, isn’t that amazing? This is the reason why Zeal and Guillermo decide to go use sustainable energy for the lighting of their wedding.
12. Minimalistic decor
It’s as simple as, “More decor means more waste generation”. There were re-usable glasses used for Zeal and Guillermo's Wedding and not one-time use plastic as decor which is not only really difficult to recycle but also plays a huge role in contributing to the worst kind of eco-waste generation. There was also a lot of wood used in the decor so that it can be used for other purposes after the wedding. Zeal and Guillermo basically incorporated more Flora and natural decor and less artificial materials in their wedding decor. Now that’s thoughtful, isn't it?
13. No plaster of Paris decor, reusable items
To quote Zeal: “Apart from that, we have decided to reduce or even eliminate waste as much as possible considering how the coveted big fat Indian wedding can be a lavish and wasteful affair. Wooden bamboos were used instead of ‘POP’ decor. They also used Clay pots for the decor.
14. Saying no to gifts and putting charity boxes to collect monetary donations for the underprivileged and marginalized populations
And then, in the end, they said ‘no’ to gifts and we put charity boxes and we were collecting monetary donations for underprivileged and marginalized populations. Rather than boxed gifts, they will ask their guests to donate to sustainable and eco-friendly non-profit organizations.
Guillermo: “I think the wedding turned out great and, in the end, it was a great event that really showed that you can have this sort of in-the-middle approach, right? No need to have a zero-waste be on one side of the spectrum or have a completely excessive wedding where you have 50 types of cuisines, like weddings like to do. But you can meet in the middle and it can go really well.”
Zeal and Guillermo’s wedding was the first ecological wedding in the city. They got married in Surat, India.
Like Zeal who said,” There has to be a compromise because we also want them to experience the Indian culture and what Indian weddings are about, but in a way that is nicer to the environment”, we should also partake in having a #ConsciousWedding.
Loved Zeal & Guillermo’s story? Listen to the stories of real-life couples overcoming insurmountable odds in their pursuit of love only on Love Without Borders. It’ll make you want to fall in love again.
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