Our Ecofriendly Wedding
After I got engaged in June, I was shocked to learn how much waste the wedding industry produces.
The average American wedding creates 400 pounds of garbage, and 63 tons of co2.
Even if we ignore the waste for a second, we need to recognize that the average American wedding costs $30,000.
I don’t know about you, but I did not want to spend that much money or generate that much waste on a single day.
So, early on in wedding planning, we decided to try to find as much as possible secondhand. And if we couldn’t find what we wanted secondhand, we would DIY or shop from a small business. There were very few things that we bought brand new from a big business.
Our wedding was almost three months ago. We got engaged on June 24, 2022, and got married on March 25th, 2023, so we had nine months of wedding planning to have an ecofriendly wedding. Planning a wedding in only nine months is challenging, and planning an ecofriendly wedding in nine months was even harder. Because we tried to thrift everything and shop on Facebook Marketplace, it took a lot of time searching for the perfect items and meeting up with people. A lot of items we needed to spend a lot of time cleaning, changing the color, and getting it ready for our wedding.
Venue:
We chose a very non-traditional venue that really just fit us and our style. We got married at the Buffalo and Erie County Botanical Gardens. We have been going there every winter since we started dating to get a break from the snow.
We wanted to get married somewhere that was more special than just a banquet hall. A lot of venues that we saw were very plain, and there wasn’t anything super exciting about them. We were able to get married in the big dome, surrounded by our family and thousands of plants, which was absolutely breathtaking.
One of the first ecofriendly decisions we made was to have our ceremony and reception in the same place to reduce emissions traveling from the ceremony to the reception. We were able to do that at the gardens, and it was just amazing. It was a really cool experience for our guests who were able to walk around the gardens at night when it’s lit up, which is something the gardens only actually offers specific times of the year. We were also able to book the entire gardens for us and our guests.
Catering:
When it came to catering, we recognized that a lot of our friends and family had dietary restrictions or allergies, so we wanted a caterer that could accommodate without making it obvious. We also only had an approved list of five caterers the venue gave us to choose from, so we chose Buffalo Catering Company.
We ended up doing a station style dinner where everything was separate. You basically built your own dishes. So we had a pasta station with several types of pasta and sauces and toppings, a mashed potato bar with all different types of toppings, a salad bar, same thing several toppings and dressings you could pick from. We also had a meat carving station, because I recognized that while my partner and I wouldn’t eat meat, a lot of our guests would. This was what worked the best for our group of people.
People could customize their dishes exactly how they wanted, which also meant people ate everything off their plates, instead of shoving things to the side that they didn’t like.
We had the option for disposable dinnerware and a China set, we chose the China set for a couple hundred extra dollars, so everything would be washed and reused instead of trashed.
Any extra food was packed up and divided out, and we got whole dinners for the next day, and then any sort of scraps were composted which was great.
We also got our bar from them too, and we provided wooden stir sticks with our cat on them which we bought on Etsy, definitely not a necessity, but they were so cute.
Catering was by far the most expensive cost of our wedding, but so worth it. Everyone had such good things to say about the food and loved that they could customize their dishes.
Cake:
We bought our cake and cupcakes from a small business, Katya Cakes, and it was beautiful and so freaking good. We bought our cake topper from Etsy and got a clay statue of waffles from a local artist.
To display our desserts, I bought a cake stand and cupcake stands on Facebook Marketplace and thrift stores and even from our buy nothing groups. I spray painted all of them black and then used food safe black paint on places where food would be touching.
Our dessert table looked beautiful and the stands and paint supplies cost less than $50.
Other Vendors:
As far as our other vendors, our photographer- Rocket Lens Photography, videographer- Seeloff Photography and, Dj – 716 Sound , they were all incredible, none of them had any Ecofriendly things that they needed but they were great vendors and I would absolutely work with them again.
Wedding Mailings:
For our engagement announcements, I printed them at home on recycled cardstock.
For our Save the dates, I took our photo, and printed them at home on recycled cardstock.
For our invites, I designed our whole suite, I’m a graphic designer by trade so I actually designed all of our signage, but then I got them professionally printed from VistaPrint on recycled cardstock for $100 which was so cheap compared to other websites for wedding suites.
We bought damaged boxes of envelopes for all of our mailings, and then I got forever stamps on Etsy for half the price of what the post office charges.
For our RSVP cards, I wanted to do some sort of postcard, so we bought damaged packaging post cards on Amazon, and included them with our invites, but also gave the opportunity for people to RSVP on our wedding website. Almost all of our guests RSVP’d using the postcard which I was surprised about, i thought more people would do it online.
Rings:
Quinn picked out a beautiful, sustainably and ethically sourced engagement ring with an opal main stone and small diamonds on the sides. I never wanted a main stone diamond, and I always wanted an opal, so he did good.
For our wedding bands, we shopped from small businesses on Etsy. Quinn picked out this tungsten steel ring from a small business that will honestly probably last forever.
I actually picked out two rings. My first wedding band is a silver twist, and I got it engraved with our wedding date, but once I put it on with my engagement ring I was not sold. It didn’t quite fit with my stone, so after some more searching I found my half sun band that fits absolutely perfect. Both bands are moissanite and were about $100 each. I wear the twist band when I’m looking for something simple and not wearing my engagement ring. I wear the sun when I’m wearing my engagement ring.
Groom’s Look:
Quinn got his entire outfit brand new, and from Men’s Warehouse. The reasoning behind this is that he didn’t have a black suit and it’s a wardrobe staple that he wanted to have, so we chose high quality pieces that would last a long time. We got it perfectly tailored so it would fit custom to him.
He also bought a new pair of dress shoes because the ones he had didn’t really fit right.
He picked out a bow tie and matching vest, and wore black socks and a belt he already had.
Bride’s Look:
As for me and my look, I wanted to wear a secondhand dress. The wedding dress industry is not very sustainable, But it was really important to my parents that they could take me dress shopping and buy a dress for me. We didn’t have any secondhand bridal stores around here, so we chose a smaller business and went to Bridal Chateau where I found my dress, which is actually a dusty lavender with white on top, so it was pretty unique.
My mom did all of my alterations. I did get the dress professionally cleaned and preserved afterward.
I ended up buying a new pair of purple Birkenstocks to wear on the wedding day, I wanted to be comfortable and they were shoes that I would wear after the wedding day, because if I bought white, I wouldn’t wear them again. I actually wear them pretty regularly now, so it was a great purchase.
I did not wear a veil, or anything like that, I really just didn’t want to, so instead I found a beautiful floral headpiece on Etsy from a small business, it fit our wedding colors perfectly and gave me an extra something for my hair.
All of the jewelry I wore, I already had so I didn’t buy anything new.
Wedding Party:
We went back and forth for weeks about what we wanted to do. We both have big friend groups and didn’t want to pick and choose, and big immediate families that we wanted included. It would have been like a ten person each side wedding party, and it would’ve been a lot. People would’ve needed dresses, suits, ties, flowers, jewelry, honestly it would’ve added a huge cost for us and our friends who are also our ages, around 25. We didn’t want to ask anybody to spend money for our wedding. So we came up with an alternative, an I Do Crew.
All of our immediate family had roles to play in our wedding. My brother officiated, my other brother was our lord of the rings and presented the rings during the ceremony, my brother in law read a short passage, our niece was the flower girl, and both of our sisters were our official witnesses and stood up front with us.
We asked all of our I Do Crew, which included our friends, our siblings, parents, my cousin and our niece to pick something to wear that was in our color palette. Most people had something in their closets that fit already.
Ceremony Details:
For our flower girl, I thrifted a white basket, and used actually an extra table runner to fill the inside of the basket and this February for Valentine’s Day, my partner bought me roses, so I dried some of them out and those were our flower girl petals.
For our Ring box, we just used the box that my husbands wedding band came in, and I cut extra slits in it so both wedding bands fit.
All of our friends during our ceremony did something I’ve never seen done before and we decided to do last minute. They lined our bridal aisle. So my parents and our siblings were in our processional, and all of our friends lined the aisle, and then filled in the space and got a close up front view for the ceremony. It was so emotional when those doors opened, seeing all of our friends with big smiles and I’m pretty sure every person that walked down started crying.
Quinn, who said the whole time leading up to the wedding, that he wasn’t going to cry, was crying after seeing all of his friends and walking down. It was absolutely beautiful and one of my favorite things about the whole day.
I Do Crew Gifts
I also worked with Everly Candles which is a refillable candle company, who gifted me thirty of these beautiful candles, with a custom label with our wedding date, to give to our I do Crew as a little thank you for being part of our day. We got so many compliments on them and people are still sending me photos of them burning them, so I was so glad that I had them. They smell so good, and look beautiful.
Flowers:
During the wedding, to recognize that our family and friends were part of the crew, I DIY’d 30 sola wood flower boutonnières with dried greenery.
I bought my beautiful wood flower bouquet secondhand on Facebook marketplace for $150. I absolutely love my bouquet, it’s reusable, and it was beautiful. To make Quinn’s boutonnière, I pulled out one of the flowers from my bouquet so it would match, and it was perfect.
Wedding Program:
I designed our wedding program on Indesign and printed them at home on recycled cardstock. I also recognized our I Do Crew inside the program.
Wedding Decor:
A perk of getting married at the gardens was that it was so beautiful, we didn’t need to add any additional decor or dress it up in any way. There were lights throughout, and we got so lucky, the weekend before our wedding is when all of their spring flowers were installed, so for our wedding we had tons of spring flowers blooming everywhere so the gardens smelled so beautiful.
Side note, to be more sustainable, the gardens sells their bulbs after they remove them so we were able to buy a bunch of them to put them in our gardens for next year, so we’ll always have the flowers in our gardens that bloomed during our wedding. So beautiful.
As far as decor which I’m going to kind of loop everything else in, we had a few main sections that we needed filled.
We had two tables in one hallway that held our in memory of table, our guest book, our card box and some other stuff.
So for those two tables, almost everything was thrifted or from our buy nothing group.
Our card box was from our Buy Nothing group and we painted it black.
Our guest book is actually an old picture frame from a thrift store that I bought a new mat for and then put a picture of us in the middle after the wedding. So all of our guests signed it, we bought some new sharpies for it.
I made this little library card and thrifted a frame for it, it was printed on recycled cardstock.
All of the frames on both of these tables were thrifted we didn’t need to buy any new.
The Advice box we bought on Facebook marketplace, and we bought some new pens for it.
All of the little signs on those tables like love you to the moon and back, and all of those were thrifted.
The candles on these tables were on display in our home that we just borrowed for the wedding.
The second area we needed to decorate were our dinner tables and sweetheart table.
Our caterer rented the table cloths, but we bought dusty rose table runners on Facebook marketplace. They were used throughout the venue on all of our tables and just tied everything together.
We bought 120 silver chargers from someone on Facebook marketplace.
Our photo frames were bought secondhand on Amazon, We had a hard time finding frames that were double sided, and we couldn’t find them anywhere else. We wanted to stay away from gold and stick with silver so that made it harder to find.
Quinn 3D printed our table numbers with bioplastic. For our centerpiece succulent bowls, I thrifted the bowls and grew the succulents myself from our mother plants at home. The little wool bees and flower picks were bought with damaged packaging from Amazon.
My parents bought custom cookies from a small business to go on each charger plate.
Each table had a few votives with candles in them. I thrifted every single one of them, and they were all mismatched and it was so cool. A lot of them were really unique and looked beautiful on the tables.
For our wedding favors, almost everyone took them which doesn’t always happen at weddings. We made honey jars, which we did buy everything brand new for and sanitized them in our dishwasher before we filled them.
Our tables were beautiful, not overcrowded so people could still set their stuff down.
Our sweetheart table had all the same things, but I added a thrifted Love sign, and this eucalyptus greenery.
Our champagne glasses were borrowed from my parents. They’re the ones they used for their wedding, and then we did a toast with them when we bought our first house, and then at our wedding.
The other thing I wanted to mention was that a lot of people on wedding TikTok recommend buying these clear tubs with plastic lids for each of your tables. You don’t need them. We brought everything in cardboard boxes labeled with a sharpie on one side and it was fine. We just saved our cardboard before the wedding and we had plenty of boxes and no issues at all with using cardboard.
I also made this giant crosswords and cocktails frame for people to fill out during cocktail hour, just something simple and fun, and it was filled out within a few minutes. I thrifted the frame, and then made the crossword myself on indesign, and got it printed. We used a dry erase marker that we had lying around and it was fun!
The only other decor we did was our welcome sign and our table seating chart.
For our welcome sign. The week before the wedding I realized we probably needed one so we went to a local goodwill and picked up a giant mirror. I used my cricut to label it.
For our table seating chart, we bought a mirror off of facebook marketplace with a brown gold border. So I used junk mail and newspapers to tape off the mirror and I used matte black spray paint to paint the border, it was so easy and didn’t take long at all. Then I used my cricut for the vinyl, and printed our arrangements on recycled cardstock. I am so happy with how this came out, it was even better than I envisioned.
I bought easels to hold the mirrors secondhand on Facebook marketplace.
Wedding Registry:
Now, this was kind of controversial, but we did not have a traditional bridal shower or a wedding registry. Honestly, it would’ve created a lot of waste, and I wasn’t comfortable with it. We’ve lived in our home for two years and we’ve been slowly upgrading a lot of our things. When we moved in I had a lot of cheap college stuff, so as things broke we replaced them, and I couldn’t justify adding a bunch of new things to a registry that I didn’t really need just to have a registry. So we didn’t have one.
We also did not have a honeymoon fund or house fund or anything like that, I didn’t want people to feel like they needed to contribute, so we left it very open ended, and it was the best thing we could’ve done. We got some really cool gifts from our friends, and we even had people who donated to the botanical gardens in our name which was super awesome.
Thank You Cards:
Our Thank You Cards actually came from my buy nothing group, We needed 68 of them and someone was giving away a box of 73, so it was perfect. We hand wrote all of them the week after the wedding, but also included a postcard with a QR code to our wedding album, and another QR code to a shared google folder where guests could upload photos they took during the wedding. I wanted to share our memories of the day but I also wanted to see everyone else’s too, and it worked so well. We also took photos with each table, and included a few photos in each card. One of me and Quinn, and any photos that we had of each guest, so their table photo, or if I got a photo with them throughout the night. We got so many compliments on doing this, people loved it and are still talking about it, two months later.
Pre Wedding White Outfits:
Also, for every pre-wedding event, I was not about to shell out $100 on brand new white outfits, but I found so many options at my local thrift stores. I found a white shirt with flowers to wear to our bach bash ( we did a combined bachelor and bachelorette game night so it was pretty casual ) and a white and black dress for our rehearsal and rehearsal dinner. It worked out so well, and it was less than $20 total.
What Did We Do With Everything After The Wedding?
Now you’re probably thinking to yourself, wow that’s a lot of stuff. You are correct. About a month before our wedding, our dining room became our wedding central, where I finished up our DIY projects and got everything ready for our big day. By time the wedding passed, I wanted my house back.
I probably could have sold everything on Facebook Marketplace and made some of our money back, except the stuff I got from my buy nothing group because reselling is not allowed, but who knows how long it would’ve been in our house for while I was waiting for sales. We made the decision to post everything on our local buy nothing group. I started posting things on Monday, and by Wednesday night, everything had been picked up from our home.
Pretty much everything went to people who had their own weddings coming up, so it worked out really well.
I still have my bouquet, I don’t know what I want to do with it yet. I got my dress cleaned and preserved. Quinn has his whole suit and outfit still. Our guest book is on our dresser. We purchased a box from Michaels to keep our momentos from the day which also has all of our cards from the wedding, engagement, and things like that.
That’s all that’s left from our wedding in our home, I wanted to continue to be minimalist-ish, so I asked our photographer and videographer to capture literally everything so we have digital keepsakes of our day, instead of keeping everything in boxes. We’re also going to print a bunch of our photos to hang around our home, and I want to get a Christmas ornament of our wedding cake, which was beautiful, and maybe one of my bouquet as well.
Planning a wedding in nine months was hard, and planning an ecofriendly wedding in nine months was even harder but I wouldn’t change a thing. Our day was absolutely magical, and better than what we even planned.
If you’re planning an ecofriendly wedding, remember that not every single thing you do needs to be 100% eco friendly. We did all of that but yet I bought a brand new wedding dress and Quinn bought a brand new suit. It was what we wanted to do and it’s about progress over perfection.
