Kathryn and Chris’ naturally ethical wedding

“A real wedding, not masked by expensive things or fancy stuff, just love and then a good knees up at the local village hall!”

Why was it important to you to have an ethical wedding? Was it important for your fiancé as well?

Having an ethical wedding wasn’t something we sat down and spoke about or said out loud or really planned for to be honest. We try to live our day to day lives as ethically as possible and so the wedding reflected that. We were also conscious of spending far too much money (it is easily done) and a lot of ethical principles are often cheaper ones! At least in terms of using recycled materials. A lot of the other stuff is just common sense, like car pooling or asking your cake-maker cousin to make a cake for you. Having said that it is ‘common sense’ for me (BSc Ecological Science) but not for a lot of people — hence I can see your market for ethical wedding planning.

“We try to live our day to day lives as ethically as possible and so the wedding reflected that.”

Which values were most important to you?

It was important to me that we sourced food locally. The wedding was in the small town where I grew up and so I knew of a lot of the suppliers including the catering and the local breweries. There was also the fact that I wanted to show off the local food to Chris’ Scottish family ;). It was easy enough to source the food and I wanted to support local businesses wherever possible.

Reducing waste was also important. All of the decorations that we borrowed were returned, all the ones we upscaled or bought were gifted to people at the wedding.

There was a lot of food left over from the wedding, which we anticipated would happen. We knew that everyone would still be in town so we organised a big family get together (my side) at my parents house for the day after, we ate all of the left overs then. I also gave out big sections of the wedding cake there, the bits that were not eaten at the wedding itself. It was really fun to catch up after the wedding! it was almost like a second wedding day.

In what other ways was your wedding ethical?

I mentioned we up scaled a lot of decorations. An example of this is a few old green bottles, we got some spare string and burlap and used my mum’s old wedding dress to transform them. We put one or two flowers in these and used them as decoration. At the evening reception I gifted these to friends and family and I use a few of them as decoration in our conservatory. I would say nearly all of our decorations were upscaled bits and bobs.

Burlap and my mum’s wedding dress went a long way actually. We made decorations for the top table and some hanging circles to go on the outside of the venue. All of the bunting and fairy lights were borrowed. Anything we did buy was at a local country baskets and passed on to relatives after the wedding.

We suggested car pooling for people travelling down from Scotland. We also linked people up in the evening to a minibus to share rides home (as opposed to individual taxis). We did think about having a ‘taxi share’ board in the entrance where you could write your name under various different destinations for the taxi home and then link up with those people. In the end we didn’t need to do that as people talked and did it themselves, or had already booked in advance.

All the food was locally sourced. My Cousin made a cake for us. The main beer on tap at the venue was from the local breweries and I encouraged people to drink that where possible, it was also very cheap compared to the other drinks so it was the drink of choice for many people.

The band was local, so there was no travelling involved for them. We used the local village hall and all of their tables, chairs, table cloths,plates, cutlery, cake stand, table plan stand etc etc etc. Got married in the local church — 5 mins from the hall.

We got flowers from the local florist, we just told her the colour scheme and asked for in-season flowers. She got the flowers from the local market.

We also kept it simple… No chair covers, no favours, no outside games or sweet tables or violists etc. We had three main things we wanted to be excellent and the rest we didn’t care about really. That was 1. Good Food, 2. Good Ceilidh Band 3. Cheap Drink. We knew that if we had those three, then everyone would enjoy themselves!

Electricity is something we thought about (we both work in the energy industry). We were lucky because it was a bright sunny day at the reception. So we didn’t need any main lights. We then used candles and low watt fairly lights for the evening. The band was acoustic for the most part, I think only the caller had a microphone. I guess this is quite a small thing and maybe I’m starting to over think things now!

Was there something you did not manage to source ethically?

The outfits were not ethical at all. For example my dress, Chris’ kilt. We both got those locally (Chris at a kilt maker in Edinburgh, mine in my home town), but I did not make an effort to consider where the materials came from. The fact that a lot of our guests flew to get to the wedding was also pretty bad for the carbon footprint, but how can you get around that? I couldn’t ask my sister to sail across the Atlantic with a one year old in tow. My sister did stay for a while tying the trip in with other things so that she did not have to make a return trip for a long time.

Which ethical choice are you most proud of?

Marrying an ethical man!

What were your challenges when making ethical choices and how did you overcome those?

I guess because we didn’t really set out to make the wedding completely ethical it is hard to answer this. The challenge is considering ethical choices in the first place. You have a million and one things to do, a million and one things to think about, keeping your mind in line with your morals is actually pretty difficult. It could be very easy to get carried away with the whole ‘white wedding’ thing… By the way, I went to a wedding fair and it was truly my idea of hell.

“You have a million and one things to do, a million and one things to think about, keeping your mind in line with your morals is actually pretty difficult.”

Did your guests know you were trying to make ethical choices? How did they react?

They were not aware I don’t think. I guess they just thought we were trying to keep the cost down, that we wanted something simple, traditional and fun. We got quite a few comments after the wedding, saying it was really fun and not awkward or unnecessarily expensive/extravagant like other ones they had been to. A perfect example is a message from a family member: “A real wedding, not masked by expensive things or fancy stuff, just love and then a good knees up at the local village hall!”

I guess we didn’t set out to have an ‘ethical wedding’ but in hind sight I think it turned out to be pretty ethical in a way. I guess it all depends on what you consider to be ethical or not. It is about finding that balance for individuals and what is important to them. We had the perfect day for us, and that meant making a few ethical choices where possible, but not letting that control the whole day.