Your Sustainable Wedding & Elopement Guide
Tips for couples getting married any way, anywhere.
Sustainability isn’t just for outdoor elopements!
What makes a wedding sustainable?
4 Things You Can Do To Have a Positive Impact
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Don’t just do things because you’re told “that’s the way it is,” take the extra seconds to ask yourself what YOU want & follow your heart
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The sustainable option doesn’t have to take a lot of time, make your life harder, or be more expensive. Instead, it can be as easy as checking one box instead of another!
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Did you know that SO many things deemed “used” are actually in amazing condition?! Reduce waste by purchasing attire & decor that is lightly used (no one will ever know!)
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Trust me, I’m sentimental too. So hold onto a few special things from your big day & pass along the rest to become sustainable options for someone else’s wedding!
Sustainability isn’t about perfection, it’s about making repeatable choices.
A sustainable event prioritizes actions to reduce waste, eliminate single-use plastics & respectfully navigate the environment.
Sustainability must be accessible & repeatable – meaning no one is going to get it perfect all the time, but if everyone tries their best, the world will be a better place! You love the environment - you want to be able to get outside in nature as often as you can, which means we need to protect natural spaces.
Planning a sustainable elopement gives you the freedom to celebrate as big as you want, while also protecting the planet for future adventures.
Traditional weddings produce the same amount of waste in ONE day, as FOUR people produce in a YEAR!
One wedding produces 400 pounds of trash and 63 tons of CO2
Not only is a traditional wedding wasteful, it is an unsustainable trend. More people are having lavish weddings - the numbers simply keep rising every year. To counteract the environmental effect of millions of weddings producing SO MUCH waste, we commend those who break with tradition & choose intentional, smaller, marriage celebrations.
Your marriage begins with a wedding - plan one you’ll be proud of.
Your sustainable elopement & wedding planning checklist
We have broken down your wedding planning into seven categories - each with advice, examples, and alternatives to help you make sustainable choices.
This is just a taste. Once you book us, we will be able to plan your event within these guidelines, and give more specific advice for protecting your elopement location.
Beneath each section, I’ve included a short checklist to help you plan an environmentally- sustainable wedding or elopement.
After you’ve looked through the checklist - contact us!
We will plan the details to your elopement & curate an event plan that aligns with your values.
7 Areas of Positive Improvement
The best place to begin—your wedding impact with be significantly reduced!
Flowers
Tips for Sustainable Wedding Florals:
1) Purchase from a local organic grower, or collect your flowers using sustainable environmental practices.
2) Ensure your florals are not depositing seeds, pollen, or insects during your event - do this by drying, or encapsulating any non-native plants.
3) Have a disposal plan in place to ensure you don’t leave non-native plants at your elopement location.
Flowers and floral arrangements can be one of the most unsustainable aspects of a wedding, if not planned accordingly. Surprised? We were too! When we began to realize the damage that could be done by a single bouquet, we started researching the best ways to have a gorgeous wedding bouquet, without risking the environment we love so much.
The risk non-native plants pose on fragile environments is an insidious one. You won’t witness any damage on the day of your wedding, but come back in a few years and you’ll see a different story. Invasive plants will crowd out native species, pesticides will harm pollinators, and diseases will spread without a natural solution.
2. Food
Tips for Sustainable Food at your Wedding:
1) Have a plan for leftovers. Assign someone to deliver any leftovers to a local food bank, shelter, or ask guests to bring containers to bring home whatever they don’t eat.
2) Call caterers near your location and ask how they plan meals. Do they purchase local produce? Do they plan meals seasonally? Do they have plant-based options?
3) Reduce the number of animal products on your plate. Plant-based diets have a significantly smaller environmental impact than meat and dairy. Even if your guests aren’t vegan, it won’t hurt them to have a meat-free meal at your event.
If food waste were a country, it would be the THIRD largest polluter in the world! The amount of CO2 produced to grow, harvest, transport, and then waste food is abhorrent. Some foods have higher carbon footprints than others, and eating local food in-season is the BEST way to reduce your food waste - but catering meals for a big event can become very difficult, very quickly. If the thought of preparing food for your wedding guests is out of the question - and all you want to do is hire a caterer - we have a solution.
3. Attire
Tips for Sustainable Wedding Attire:
1) Purchase new clothes from companies that do the extra work to reduce their environmental impact. Recycled materials, sustainably harvested materials, and fair payment to workers are important considerations.
2) Buying secondhand, renting, or borrowing your clothes can save you money and you’ll still find clothing in perfect condition - you just have to look!
3) When your wedding is over, considering giving new life to your clothing by passing it along to another sustainably-minded couple planning their own wedding.
Instead of buying new, you can reduce the environmental impact of your wedding attire by purchasing secondhand, renting, or borrowing. If you buy new, search for companies and individuals creating gorgeous clothes from recycled, or sustainably harvested, materials. Before you get on Etsy and purchase an item you found on Pinterest, research the designer! Find out if the manufacturers and sellers align with your personal values.
Unfortunately, new ethically-made clothing is often more expensive than their environmentally disastrous counterparts. Buying secondhand, renting, or borrowing your elopement attire not only reduces waste, it’ll likely save you a lot of money!
4. Stationary & Decor
Tips for Sustainable Decor:
1) Any stationary you DO use can be made from recycled, and recyclable, materials. Don’t laminate or buy plastics. Send emails instead of invitations.
2) Use what you have. The cute figurines, polaroid photos, houseplants, and candles that you already own will make lovely table decor!
3) If you want to give out favors, don’t wrap them! Search online any number of ideas for party favors and you’ll see options ranging from food to plants to digital artwork. I guarantee, you can come up with something that requires no packaging.
The list of things that end up being thrown out from a wedding can get long, fast. From the first “Save the Date” cards to the packaging around party favors, there are many opportunities to choose alternatives that will reduce waste without reducing the impact of your celebration.
5. Location
Tips for Choosing a Sustainable Location:
1) Reduce your physical impact on the local environment. Ask guests to pick up after themselves, stay on trail, and follow Leave No Trace ethics.
2) Choose a location closer to your guests, to reduce the impact of excess travel. Encourage carpooling. If you want to have a destination elopement, reduce the number of people you’re inviting.
3) Check local laws & abide by them! Public lands are notoriously underfunded. If you’re getting married on public lands, support the governing body by purchasing permits - your support keeps these lands available to use.
Choosing your location - especially for an outdoor ceremony - is one of the most important decisions you’ll make in the wedding-planning process. Your location will determine what you wear, how you decorate, possibly what you eat, and how far your guests will have to travel. Aside from the travel implications of destination weddings - which deserve multiple pages to properly address - the location you choose to host an elopement can be significantly impacted by the choices you make there.
6. Guests
Tips for a Sustainable Guest List:
1) Ensure the land you’re on can handle the number of guests you invite, and plan for their impact accordingly. More guests means more food, more space, more feet on the ground, and more bathroom breaks.
2) Have a plan to donate food waste, and rent a porta-potty if there are no facilities.
3) Traveling by car or plane can add up the CO2 emissions of your wedding footprint quickly. If your friends or family planned to take a vacation this year anyway, encourage them to stay after your destination elopement and explore that part of the world. Reduce flights and drives ONLY for your elopement.
As much as you may try - you’re not in control of the actions of your guests at your wedding. Your wedding is YOUR day, and the last thing you want to do is harp at your guests to stay on trail or stop dropping food crumbs as they wander around, drink in hand.
Basically, it’s entirely up to you who you invite and how large your wedding is. But, to have a sustainable wedding you’ll need to consider the impact attendees might have on the environment, and make an effort to mitigate any waste generated by a larger group.
7. Activities
3 questions to Determine the Sustainability of Your Wedding Activities:
1) Is this the right season to recreate at this location?
2) Are you and your guests prepared to be safe?
3) What do you really want from your wedding experience? Be honest with yourself. If you want to party and throw confetti, great! Just, don’t do it in a fragile environment.
What do you want to do on your wedding day? Do you want to climb, hike, ski, drink, swim, or...? The possibilities are endless, but so are the possible impacts. You’ll want to be sure that the environment is in the right season, and you are in the right place, to make your dreams come true without harming the environment around you.
For an Extended Version of this Sustainable Wedding & Elopement Guide - Download our Sustainable Elopement Checklist
A Few Last Things to Keep in Mind:
Leave No Trace
LNT ethics are the seven basic principals of outdoor recreation.
When followed, they allow visitors to have a minimal negative impact on public recreation lands. LNT ethics provide the framework for sustainable recreation, which will leave our lands healthy and safe for future generations.
Unfortunately, there are outside factors BEYOND our personal choices, which are destroying our environment. Big polluters, unethical companies, and destructive forces make our efforts to stay on trail seem pointless - especially when the trail goes between swatches of forest that have been logged, or you can see the shattered face of a hill in the distance. But, don’t loose hope. There are still many reasons why LNT ethics matter, and by implemented them into your wedding plans YOU set an example as leader in the fight to protect our environment!
LNT ethics matter
because we deserve to protect the lands that are still healthy & to ask for further protections to keep those spaces safe for the future.
If we don’t protect the lands that mean so much to us, how can we expect others to care? Our public lands exist for YOU! Protect them, and you’re protecting your future outside. Choosing to begin your marriage outdoors is making a statement: You do things differently, because you care more about authenticity than tradition.
Personally, I’ve always preferred the term “leave it better than you found it,” over “leave no trace.” The reason for this - I believe in the power of community to make a positive impact. We all fail sometimes, and I can only hope someone else will pick up the slack when I fall short. In the outdoors, I don’t want to simply tiptoe through campsites and leave no trace of myself – I want to pick up any mess left behind by other campers who weren’t following LNT guidelines.
The purpose of this guide is to prepare you prior to your elopement. You have all the knowledge & have shared all the knowledge – your day can be spent enjoying this place you’ve chosen, together.
You’ve shared your love without compromising your values. Your example is a ripple in the wave of change we are making in this wedding industry, and your friends will notice.
I’m inviting you to consider a sustainable elopement over a traditional wedding because I want to leave the wedding industry better than we found it.
The affect of your choice to elope is farther reaching than the waste you saved on YOUR day; you’re setting an example that could exponentially save waste from traditional weddings-turned-elopements for years to come. Please, join me and take a stand for the environment. Your marriage deserves nothing less than an authentic wedding aligned with your most sacred values.
Plan a sustainable elopement & choose an eco-friendly celebration over a wasteful party!
Let’s plan your elopement!
hello@wildcoastphoto.com
+1 (831) 227-1442
You deserve a wedding that is a culmination of your hopes & dreams, not an exception to them.
We are experts on planning sustainable outdoor weddings & elopements, and we want to help YOU plan an authentic celebration that aligns with your values.
Would you join us as we replace wasteful wedding traditions with sustainable true-to-you experiences?
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