My Big Fat (Almost) Zero Waste Wedding
Our eco-friendly wedding at Woodend. Photo: Chris Stephens
When I got engaged, I knew my fiancé and I would figure out how to make our wedding day a beautiful, intimate gathering. We were also set on holding a low-waste event. After all, I had just written a book on zero waste living and I had seen the figures—the average wedding in the U.S. produces 400 pounds of trash and 63 tons of carbon emissions.
What we learned at the beginning of 2022—the year of our wedding—is that it also turned out to be “The Year of the (Many) Weddings,” according to the New York Times. This meant we were facing a sellers’ market, with few dates available at many venues and fewer choices on caterers and other services.
Nonetheless, we were determined not to bow to the time pressures and insist on the wedding we wanted—not necessarily zero waste, but as close to zero as we could get it. Along the way, we fell short on a few things but had lots of zero waste wins. In the end, we learned some clear lessons about how to keep a wedding low waste.
Start with the big things: the venue and the food
Planning a wedding can feel like it’s all about the details. But in fact, some of the early, big decisions end up shaping whether there is a chance of keeping it a low-waste event. The two key decisions are where to have the wedding and who will provide the food.
Stay local
The further the venue from your home, the higher the carbon emissions associated with the travel to get there. Worth keeping in mind for destination weddings. We considered an out-of-town destination (the DC area is expensive!), but ultimately decided on a venue five minutes away, the Woodend Nature Sanctuary in Chevy Chase, Maryland. Close to home and to most of our guests. Besides being nearby, Woodend was meaningful. When he was a toddler, my son and I had stomped those grounds and searched for tadpoles in the pond. And just as important, my fiancé, Matt, fell in love with the place.
If you choose a place farther from home, then even more reason why you’ll want to look for more sustainable options for other key decisions.
Pick a caterer who cares
With Woodend came their list of approved caterers. We were relieved to learn that three of the eight vendors on the list were Green Restaurant Certified. This meant they were committed to eco-friendly practices such as water and energy efficiency, sustainable food, and chemical and pollution reduction.
We decided on Corcoran Caterers, a local family-owned business that prides itself on emphasizing fresh, seasonal ingredients.
Don’t be shy about letting your caterer know at the outset that keeping your wedding as “green” as possible is a priority. As Martha Corcoran, Event Designer at Corcoran Caterers, said to us, “Clients who ask questions and show interest in our sustainable practices really give us a boost and another reason to do the right thing. We always like to know what matters to our customers and then adapt our practices if at all possible to meet their needs.”
Choose a low carbon intensity menu
Whether your wedding guests number 20 or 300, your menu selection is one of the best opportunities to keep your event low on carbon emissions. Vegetarian menus are an option. Or, as in our case, menus with at least some vegetarian options. When Matt said he wanted one of the menu options to be steak, I balked. In my book, I include a table showing the carbon intensity of different foods and, not surprisingly, beef is at the very top (see table below). Since marriage is all about compromise, we ended up with buffet options of pork tenderloin (almost 10 times less carbon intensive compared with beef), salmon, and three hearty vegetarian dishes.
Your food menu choices can make your wedding more (or less) eco-friendly. Illustration by Iona Volynets.
Minimize food waste
I spend a lot of time thinking and talking about food waste. When I embarked on my zero waste efforts several years ago, I was shocked to learn how much food waste contributes to climate change. A lot. If food waste were a country, it would be ranked third behind the U.S. and China in terms of greenhouse gas emissions. This is because uneaten food that ends up in landfills emits methane as it breaks down, and methane is a very potent greenhouse gas.
To minimize food waste, caterers must be adept at judging how much food they’ll need for the given number of guests. The good news, according to Ms. Corcoran, is that “weddings, unlike corporate events, are fairly accurate on the guest count making it much easier to predict food quantities.” The challenge is that the last thing a couple or their caterer wants at a wedding is to run out of food. According to Robert Wood, Founder of SuperFd and CEO of EcoCaters DC, many folks “abandon reason when it comes to a wedding,” leaning toward extravagance.
When the vows have been exchanged and the wedding feast is over, it’s important to know what happens to the leftover food. One option: the happy couple and their close guests can take leftovers home. After our wedding, we dined on the leftovers with out-of-town family for a few days.
Another option is so-called gleaning programs. As the name implies, they direct surplus to food banks, shelters and other non-profit organizations. In the case of EcoCaters, they often work with Food Rescue U.S., which matches businesses that have surplus food with organizations that want to receive food. Corcoran Caterers works with Nourish Now, a local food bank.
Many caterers do everything they can to make good use of all the food that does not end up on a plate, including vegetable scraps. As Martha Corcoran says, “Besides making our own stock from scraps, we are always exploring recipe development to use parts of ingredients that typically get thrown away.”
And then there is composting for everything that cannot be consumed, like eggshells and coffee grinds. Composting is important because it avoids the methane gas emitted when food waste rots in landfills.
EcoCaters partners with Veteran Compost to ensure all food waste at weddings is composted.
Avoid plastic waste
There is good news and bad news on the plastics front. The good news: for such a momentous occasion, most of us will opt for china and other elegant table settings instead of the single-use plastic foodware that other large events are known for.
The bad news: it is very difficult for caterers to avoid plastic wrap to keep food fresh during transport. And plastic wrap is not recyclable. To further reduce plastic, ask your caterer to use tap instead of bottled water, and opt for soda and other beverages in aluminum cans or glass bottles.
And don’t forget to think about alcoholic beverages. Our wonderful local grocer, Magruder’s, helped us select our wine, beer and liquor for mixed cocktails. They also helped us avoid potential waste by offering a full refund on any unopened bottles of wine and liquor.
Sustainable Invitation Options
I am a regular guest on a Minnesota radio show and the host, Al Travis, took an interest in how I was going to keep my wedding eco-friendly. During one show in the early days of wedding planning, he asked me about the invitations. It had not occurred to me that we would consider e-invitations. Why not, he asked? Good question! And so Matt and I created an e-invitation and not once regretted it.
If you cannot imagine your wedding without paper invitations, choose eco-friendly paper options such as recycled, non-glossy paper (glossy is often not recyclable). At his own wedding, Mr. Wood of EcoCaters used seeded paper save-the-dates.
A seeded paper invitation is a more sustainable option than traditional paper invitations and can leave lasting memories for your invitees. Photo: Robert Wood
The Wedding Attire
I aimed to wear a beautiful secondhand wedding dress. As with so many things, sufficient time and planning mean you can usually find what you are looking for. In my case, I ran out of time. Moral of the story: look for your wedding dress as early as possible. I ended up buying a beautiful dress, but it was new. I will, however, pass it on to another bride so at least it will be reused.
As for the rest of the wedding party, consider allowing them to choose their own attire. You can give them some guidance on color or style but the more flexible you are, the more likely they will find something they love and use it again.
I told my side of the wedding party—my sister and sister-in-law-- to wear anything they wanted. As it turned out, they decided to coordinate and both wore fuchsia dresses. Other than the color, the dresses were completely different and suited each of them perfectly.
A sustainable solution on the groom’s side is already a tradition for many weddings: renting tuxedos or other formal wear.
Sustainable flowers: is there such a thing?
It turns out that flowers can be one of the most unsustainable aspects of a wedding. They are often imported (read: massive carbon footprint) and treated with pesticides and other harmful chemicals.
I thought I had avoided some of these problems by choosing just a couple of flowers I loved-- peonies and ranunculus-- that were in season in May, the month of our wedding. We also decided to minimize the number of floral arrangements, keeping to just small bouquets on each dinner table and wedding party flowers.
The problem is that peonies and ranunculus are in season locally only at certain times in May. Two days before the wedding, the only peonies available were shipped in from Argentina. Had I thought this through, I would have given my two close friends, who generously offered to arrange the flowers, more ideas that could work and were locally available that week.
Realizing how unsustainable flowers can be, my friend’s daughter, Izzy, has opted to forego fresh-cut flowers completely at her upcoming winter wedding. Although Izzy described this as a “difficult decision,” she and her fiancé are opting for lanterns with candles and some dried flowers. In making this choice, Izzy realized “there are really cool aesthetic choices that are challenging to justify from an environmental perspective, but there are also really cool aesthetic choices that are more sustainable.”
Gifts That Keep on Giving
While Matt and I were planning our wedding, we were also still grappling with the merger of two households. The last thing we needed was more stuff. Our wedding planner—my niece, Lara—informed us that even if we indicated we wanted no gifts (which we did), many guests would still want to give us something (which they did).
We decided that for those who asked, we would direct them to a favorite charity of ours, World Central Kitchen doing great work around the globe to fight hunger. In addition to generous donations to our selected charity, we were thrilled to receive other gifts in the form of experiences. These included gift cards to restaurants and tickets to concerts. More than three months later, we are still enjoying our newlywed dates made possible by our wedding guests.
Of course, there is nothing wrong with receiving wedding gifts in the form of things. In fact, when a couple is building a new life together, the generosity of family and friends is something to be treasured. It turns out gift registries are a sustainable solution in that they allow the new couple to receive things they truly need and want, making it less likely that gifts will be sent to the landfill.
As for our own gift giving to thank family and friends for their wedding help, we also looked for opportunities to gift experiences: a restaurant gift card to my sister and brother-in-law and a gift card to my favorite masseuse for my maid of honor.
For out-of-town guests staying at a nearby hotel, we filled kraft paper gift bags with some welcoming treats: a couple of apples, some mixed nuts in a beeswax bag, a bar of organic, vegan chocolate, a visitor’s guide to DC and metro map.
Ideas for eco-friendly wedding favors. Photo: Stephanie J. Miller
Unless a couple elopes, all weddings take a lot of planning. With a bit of attention on low-waste options, any couple can achieve a celebration that is sustainable. Just stay flexible and engage with your service providers. After all, weddings should be about lasting memories, not mounds of waste.
