Our Sustainable Wedding
Jesse and I have been partners in crime since 2009. Over the last 12+ years, we have tackled this wild world together, growing and changing along the way. Together we have gone to college, moved across the country, and bought a house. While we’ve had some support from my grandparents, at the end of the day we have made all of these things possible ourselves, thus taking on the financial burden that comes with these decisions. Because of the massive debt we have taken on to invest in these assets we are very mindful of what is worth paying the price for.
Jesse and I have had joint bank accounts since we moved in together in 2011. We are completely open and transparent about our finances and we are in it all TOGETHER. We’ve always acted like a “married couple” and never felt the need to actually get married. And, because of our experiences and financial situation we could never justify paying for a wedding.
In 2019 we decided to get married in order to take advantage of all of the legal benefits, like tax breaks and health insurance. Ultimately, nothing changed about our relationship. We decided to have a small and simple wedding to give our families something that they wanted but we also mostly focused on not spending too much money or creating too much waste.
Jesse and I have been married for almost 2 years and we’re grateful for the decision we made to spend so little on our wedding. We have not experienced any financial stress as a result and have instead been able to focus on paying off our student loans, rather than wedding debt.
Weddings can be financially wasteful but also ecologically wasteful. We have made many sustainable swaps in our daily lives, ranging from metal straws to plastic-free cleaning supplies, so it only made sense for us to tackle our wedding with the same mentality. Here is how we were able to have an eco-friendly and minimal waste wedding.
Reducing Wedding Waste
The problem: The average wedding costs roughly $28,000, for what amounts to a six-hour event. (That averages to around $4,667 per hour.) During those six hours, a wedding produces roughly 400-600 lbs. of waste– that’s based on a guest list of roughly 100-120 people. [1]
Our solution: We decided to keep the guest list small, not only to have only our closest friends and family with us, but also to reduce the unnecessary waste and financial impact of a single day. Including Jesse and me, there were 24 people who attended.
Cutting Out Paper
The problem: Paper accounts for 25% of landfill waste and 33% of municipal waste. With all the paper we waste each year, we can build a 12-foot high wall of paper from New York to California! [2]
Our solution: A modern-day wedding could include ‘save the dates,’ wedding and shower invitations, RSVPs, programs, name tags, thank you cards, etc. We felt that this is all too unnecessary and wasteful. We made our invitations from FSC-certified, 100% post-consumer waste manufactured with wind power. And, we had no programs or seating cards, and our RSVPs were purely digital.
DIY Decorations
The problem: The average wedding produces 400 lbs of garbage and 63 tons of CO2. With an estimated 2.5 million weddings per year, that’s about one billion lbs. of trash and as many emissions as approximately four people would produce in a year. All in just one single day. [3]
Our solution: All of our decorations were reused, re-purposed, thrifted, or borrowed. We made the floral arrangements out of dried homegrown flowers, pinecones, and acorns we collected over 6 months. We even saved cat food cans and used them as tealight holders. After the wedding was over, we either composted all of our decorations or reused them in our home.
Plastic-free Party Favors
The problem: 50% of the plastic we use, we use just once and throw away. Traditional wedding favors are plastic and fall into this category. [4]
The solution: Watch love grow! Our wedding favors were plantable seed paper, biodegradable eco-paper that is made with post-consumer materials (no trees harmed for this paper!), and embedded with seeds. When the paper is planted in a pot of soil, the seeds grow and the paper composts away. All that is left behind is flowers.
Just Enough Food
The problem: Each year Americans throw away more than 50 million tons of food. That’s more than 20% of all municipal garbage, and the largest contributor to landfills. [5]
The solution: We decided that we’d wanted food that’s suitable for leftovers rather than fancy meals that’d create table scrap waste. We were fortunate enough that my dad has a culinary background and was able to cook for everyone on the BBQ. The leftovers we had were manageable enough to take home and eat later that week. And we also had close to no food waste as we provided manageable portions and snacks to satisfy any remaining hunger.
No Gifts, Just Growth
The problem: More than 91% of couples register for wedding gifts. The average amount spent on a wedding gift is in the $70-$100 range. $19 billion per year is spent on wedding gift registries alone. [6][7]
The solution: We have everything we could ever want and need. We try to limit the amount of “stuff” that comes into our home because it may just end up in the landfill or sent to a charity shop. We thought it’d be a more practical and sustainable solution to have guests contribute to updates in our home rather than another pot or bedding set.
The Makings of a Sustainable Wedding
Adding it all up, we produced less than one bag of trash and spent under $1000. I want to share the cost breakdown in case you were wondering what a per-person cost could look like for a zero-waste wedding.
COST
- Invitations – $122 (This was one of our biggest splurges that we were comfortable with)
- String Lights – $70 (These remain up at my grandparents house)
- Partyware – $25 (We kept a few of the plates we got but were able to sell back the rest.)
- Folding tables – $100 (We needed these for around the house anyways.)
- Food – $360 (This includes all snacks, drinks, meat, and veggies.)
- Strudel – $68 (Rather than a traditional cake we got two apple strudels, which ended up being one too many. So, we sent the second one home with a guest.)
- Seating and tables – Free (We either had everything or found it on the side of the road.)
- Lucy’s outfit – Free (My wedding dress was a hand-me-down that seemed just right for the day. I wore boots and socks from LL Bean that I already had.)
- Jesse’s outfit – $150 (Yes, Jesse’s outfit was more costly than mine. However, he doesn’t own very many “nice” clothes so it was a good opportunity for him to add something to his wardrobe.)
- Rings – $85 (This was a last minute decision so that we could include the exchange of rings into the ceremony. We bought a complimenting set from an Esty shop so that we supported an artist and the designs were just our styles.)
- Venue – Free (We were fortunate to have our ceremony at my grandparents’ house, in connecticut. They had the perfect amount of space and it was the right setting for our event.)
- Music – Free (We didn’t hire a DJ; honestly I didn’t even think about music until my brother brought it up the night before the wedding. Thankfully he swooped into the rescue and pulled together an amazing playlist that included some very special songs.)
- Photographer – Free (We had a decent camera which my sister used to take a few nice pictures of the day. All photos in this article were taken by her.)
- No alcohol
- No save the dates
Total: $980
With 22 Attendees, this came out to $25 per person. This is just for the food and invitations, everything else was an investment in items that we kept.
Spreading the Love
Altogether, we successfully created a sustainable, zero-waste wedding that was not only super affordable but also incredibly memorable. We didn’t need to spend thousands of dollars to express our love to each other or try to impress our guests with fancy decorations or anything.
We shouldn’t be making weddings all about spending the equivalent of a downpayment for a house in a single day, all on a party. Weddings are about celebrating love and togetherness, and we honored that ideal to the fullest on our special day and made it a beautiful experience for everyone and the planet.
[1] https://www.huffpost.com/entry/the-secret-waste-that-weddings-leave_b_1439118
[2] http://www.theworldcounts.com/stories/Paper-Waste-Facts
[5] https://www.thedailymeal.com/eat/10-mind-blowing-facts-about-food-waste-america
[6] https://www.snipp.com/blog/2018-06-06/tying-knot-consumers-evolving-landscape-wedding-registries/
[7] https://www.tripsavvy.com/wedding-statistics-and-honeymoon-facts-1860546
