Top Tips to Plan a Sustainable Wedding
Did you know? Reports suggest that 4910 tonnes of non recyclable plastic was left behind at British weddings last year - the equivalent to 47 Blue Whales! Here at The Barn on The Bay we’re working hard to reduce our carbon footprint, but what can you do to play your part in reducing this.
Rent your outfit
There are so many different companies that offer suite hire/dress hire. Buying your wedding dress or suit can be expensive, especially when you may only wear it once! There are other options you could look into, for example Bridal Reloved Morpeth is a local boutique that specialises in high end second hand and ex-sample dresses, be sure to check them out if you are still searching for your dream dress!
Wedding favours
We get asked quite often if it's necessary to give wedding guests favours and the answer is no! Don’t feel that you need to provide them if you don’t want to, quite often favours end up left behind at the end of the night. Wildflower Seed Favours are a lovely alternative that aren’t too expensive but will give back to the environment and also support charities. We even have a space here at the farm where guests can throw them as part of your ceremony.
Transport
If you are planning a day only wedding ie your guests won’t be staying on site at your venue, you could look into transport options to make your day more environment friendly. For example if you have lots of guests returning to the same hotel or home area it would be so much better for the environment to use a bus to take everyone back instead of numerous taxis.
Rings
Deciding on your wedding bands is a big decision, there is so many different types to choose from befre you even get started at looking at the ethics of diamond sourcing. The Jewellers Guild are a local family owned business who can provide sustainably sourced rings, pop them a message to see what they have on offer.
Styling your wedding
Once you start to add up the price of table runners, placemats, vases, tealight holders, table numbers, the list goes on and on! It can start to get very expensive to buy them all separately and what do you do with them once the wedding is over?
It may be worth exploring if your venue offers any in house styling, this could save you so much time and money in addition to being much better for the environment as there will be minimal waste!
At The Barn on The Bay we offer a styling service to our couples which involves an extra coordination meeting with our team to go through all the elements we have available in our ‘prop shop’ to play around with table layouts and décor to find a style they love.
The worst wedding offenders
The three worst offenders to the environment in the wedding industry are sometimes overlooked as they do make lovely decorations but can be very harmful to the environment.
Balloons - due to our ceremony site being situated on the dunes and fly away balloons can be so harmful to sea life we don’t allow balloons in the dunes or on our arches or facilitate any kind of ballon release. If you’re having a balloon arch indoors we encourage you to look at more environmentally friendly ballon companies like Balloonista.
Chinese lanterns - although these look beautiful they are notorious for causing fires or injuring animals when they land. We have barn owls living on the farm so these are strictly a no go here.
Confetti - you’d be surprised at how much plastic coating can go onto paper confetti, and water soluble confetti can take months to properly break down. Real petal confetti is the most environmentally friendly and doesn’t take years to decompose but choose a source from the UK if possible so flowers haven’t been flown over.
Ecologi
Finally if you wanted to go the extra mile towards planning a sustainable wedding day you could sign up to something like Ecologi. As a venue we signed up to Ecologi to offset the carbon emissions of our team. You can check out the work we have contributed to here.
