Sustainable and eco-friendly wedding doesn’t mean that your wedding needs to be plain and boring, it’s just need you to spare more time to plan ahead for a more eco-conscious wedding. Here are some of the tips that you can consider in contributing to save the earth while granting your dream of a pretty wedding.
Invitation Cards
It’s ordinary that invitation cards to be in paper and sending out to your friends and family. Nevertheless, it’s a huge waste and pressure on the forest! You might not get to connect to your friends or relatives that doesn’t reside local, the invitation card that you prepared will be waste at the end of the day. In today’s electronic age, invitation card can be in digital. On top of the tradition invitation card, electronic wedding invitation allow you to give more information to your wedding guest. For example, adding your pre-wedding photo gallery (can choose 1-2 or more photos), music, the love story of your journey and the itinerary for the day. Head over to https://withjoy.com/wedding-website/ to create your unique invitation!
If you insist to provide the invitation cards to your close friend or relatives that you can connect locally, using eco-friendly or recycle paper can be an alternative way to be more conscious to the earth and forest. Magic Seed is a product brand under Moms Village Venture that provides eco-friendly gifts while giving value to People, Planet and celebrations and most importantly they provide plantable wedding invitation card to be give to your friends and family!
Plantable invitation card sources from Magic Seed’s Instagram
Wedding Favors
The utilize of the wedding favor shall be in consider when we think of sustainable wedding favor to be giving to the guest. Here’s are some ideas that you can consider as your wedding favors such as giving your guests a little succulent for them to grow and zero-waste essential (eg reusable cutlery). You may also give some support to the local small business, ordering handmade vegan soap which you can make arts on the soap at your preference or soy scented candles. Soy candles is more eco-friendly compare to the common paraffin wax candles. You may consider Succulent Shop and LooLoo Soap for these sustainable gift ideas. LooLoo Soap is very cautious on selecting their raw ingredient to ensure their product are safe to be used and its sustainable. Royale Culture is a good choice for zero-waste essential product. Royale Culture is a brand-child of an accredited Social Enterprise called Komuniti Tukang Jahit (KTJ), also known as Tailors Community of Malaysia. In conjunction of Plastic Free, KTJ present the Tiffin Set which includes a lightweight tiffin carrier bag, a convenient cup holder and a matching utility pouch or face mask.
Last but not least, donation in lieu of favor is a popular trend that emerging among couples. Instead of paying bill for favors, you can donate an amount on behalf of your guests’ name to the charitable organization or you may pick out a few charities and poll every guest that way they feel like they want to be part of the process.
A good gifts of hope can be found here:
Decoration
Weddings can generate a lot of trash especially when comes to the part of decoration. As the decoration of each wedding is unique, so that the request will be different and it will generate a lot of single-use decorating items which is not sustainable. Instead of buying all those one-use props, you may choose to rent or buy a used props from couple that had just finish their wedding. Just Rent It is a local props rental shop that can fulfil most of your wants. Heads over to their website https://www.justrentitmalaysia.com/ to search for props that you want and place order!
In addition, you can reuse your home item such as glass bottle for flower vases or decorative elements, fabric for the furniture and aisle. Paper signboard can also be replaced with chalkboards or acrylic glass paintings for an elegant and eco-friendly touch at the wedding reception. Besides that, the food menu cards on the table can be replace with a QR code or an iPad for a table can save the use of papers and make your wedding more modern.
Flower
There is no doubt that flower arrangement is important part that bring color for your special days. But how can we be more eco-conscious when comes to flower arrangement? You can consider that seasonal flower that are grown locally. This will reduce waste and travel requirement to ship fresh-cut blooms from overseas and give support to the local farmers and boost the local economy. Alternatively, you may also mix your flower arrangement with fresh florals and artificial flowers or dried flower as this flower can be reuse for the next event or you may bring home for your home decoration. Additionally, you may reuse the flower from the ceremony at your reception to save some cost on flower arrangement. The flower arrangement from Huo Hua Florist provide mix of dried flower and fresh flower for the decoration.
If you are not considering to bring the flowers home, you may consider to donate it to a local charity or you may find a farmer who will be happy to compost your wedding blooms. Flawer studio is a wise choice for you to donate the flowers after event. Flawer studio has pledge in the Zero Waste Pledge Certification programmed organized by Zero Waste Malaysia. Unlike the most ordinary florist, their aim is to be sustainability by transforming or upcycle the unwanted flowers into art pieces and give a second life to it.
Food & Drinks
Besides from the single use decoration items, the leftover food is another huge waste for a wedding. No one wants to run out of foods at their wedding reception, and in fact, no one wants to even come close. But even with careful planning, some unexpected situations are hard to take in account. You can work closely to your caterer as they might already have connection with the local organization that they often donate to. Alternatively, you may search for a local organization; homeless shelter; or food bank station that is nearby to your event venue. You can make plans ahead of time for someone to send over this food or have someone from the organization to pick it up. The couple can put effort
on the welfare of our environment by donating the leftover food to What A Waste, which is an organization that built to reduce Malaysia’s food waste.
Food warrior organizing the leftover food from a wedding
