Attempting a zero waste wedding

When thinking about "the most important day of our life," my husband Aaron and I started by reflecting on our values. For him, it was being in nature, and being resourceful - saving the grand gestures and budget for the honeymoon travel. For me, it was dancing with my dear friends and family and practising conscious consumerism - not letting excitement get in the way of sustainability.

Weddings can generate a significant amount of waste, but with some thoughtful planning, I was able to create a celebration that was meaningful, memorable, and mindful of the environment. Though these decisions took more time and care, they were (usually) better for the budget. When I looked around on my wedding day, every element brought me joy and gratitide for the love and sweat that went into it's preperation. This feat would not have been possible without the tireless effort from our parents, family and friends, who spent days helping set up and pack down- and suffering through my Notions, Pintrest boards, spreadsheets and Trello planners.

It certainly wasn’t faultless, but we did our best. Here’s how we approached a zero waste wedding:

The venue

A naturally beautiful setting reduced the need for setting up decorations.

Woodhouse Activity Centre in the Adelaide Hills is stunning all year round, full of trees and blooms all year round. Why get a singe-use arbour created for us, when we could exchange vows underneath a stunning tree?

The venue supplied the wooden benches, and I borrowed the hallway rugs from Aaron's great-aunt's house. And there we had it, the perfect cermony set-up!

The table settings

My friends, cousins, mother-in-law and I spent months before the wedding curating 100+ mismatched china dinner plates, silverware, drinking glasses, and photo frames to hold menu cards that I designed on Canva. Each plate was unique, and my mum even did her best to match the plate to the name card. Not only were they unique, they were reusable! I sold the full set after to another bride who was delighted to avoid the pain of driving around town to collect them.

The namecards I made on canva, and my dad printed them out. On the back of them, was a QR code to a link a Google Photos album for crowd-sourced memories.

As for the holders for the namecards, Aaron made them all from a stick he picked up in the park around the corner that fell down during a storm.

But the favourite would have to be the napkins. I knew I wanted to avoid single use paper napkins - even if they were compostable. I picked up 50 second-hand fabric napkins in the exact sage green colour I wanted from, Facebook Marketplace, but we needed 100. So my mother-in-law Agnes took some leftover white material from her mother-in-laws stockpile and hand-sewed over 50 white napkins! Re-purposing leftover material, while also reducing the need for us to purchase new items AND they were reusable! Our future Christmas and birthday parties will never be the same again.

My good friend Ellie got up early on the day of the wedding to cut some fresh olive and eucalytups branches from her front garden, to lay ontop of the white table runners that my good friend Gemma let us borrow from her party hire business.

The guests didn't have to wait long until the main table decoration arrived.... their dinner! We served family-style, with sharing plates served along the middle of the table, so guests could help themselves. Allowing guests to serve themselves reduced the inevitable food waste and disappointment of alternate drops.

All the tables, including those for the ceritifacte signing and cake serving, all came from the Woodhouse Manor. I didn't mind the rustic vibe.

I hired the mismatched wooden chairs, which were strangely almost as expensive as the white matching ones... I guess the vintage vibe is trending enough to influence supply and demand.

The cake

Wedding cakes can often be one of the most expensive and extravagent things you'll ever eat. Luckily, I have a mother-in-law who loves making delicious cakes! Tasted better than anything I could have paid for.

You'll also notice in the background that instead of organsing floral decorations for the bridal table, we just thrifted some fancy crystal vases and displayed the bridal bouqets. Woodhouse also let us cut one of the magnolias from their tree - the largest in the Southern Hemisphere!

We asked guests to minimise waste by offering "wedding favours" as gifts. This meant we had extra helping hands and some incredibly thoughtful additions to the day! Many of our "suppliers" were also close friends, including the celebrant, the MC, the musicians, the DJ, the bartender, hair and makeup artist, and the event coordinator.

The bar

We live in one of the best wine regions in the world, which means you can't go wrong with the wine! We opted to bulk-buy local wine which came with optional custom labels. We served it in borrowed wheelbarrows full of ice - easier to carry the leftovers home.

Our friend's sister took a night off from her bar work to make espresso martinis to keep our guests dancing through the night. There wasn't any waste of those, because we only served what was ordered, and we took all the unopened mixers home.

My waste warrior

I knew it was unavoidable that some waste would be generated on the day, so I wanted to make sure we could at least seperate, compost or recycle as much as possible. I mobilised my cousin Bec, who is a professional sustainability and waste specialist - who was also our MC for the night - to bring in adequate bins, bin liners, and educational signage to help guests.

The venue had landfill, paper recycling, mixed recycling and 10c container return facilities, but we had to take our own compost home. It wasn't elegant, but we made sure any food prep and organic waste was put into our bins and taken home to feed our compost.

The dresses and suits

I wanted to make sure my bridesmaids were comfortable and feeling confident, so we found a website where they could find dresses of the same colour, but with the fabric and style that suited them. We also agreed to try and use accessories we already had, and splurged on some classic matching piece that we knew we'd wear for the rest of our lives.

I might have bought myself 3 outfits for the day, but I've worn the white silk pyjamas all year and even pulled out my reception jumpsuit for a Eurovision party already. When the wedding dress is eventually back from the dry-cleaners, I'll re-list it on "Still-White" for a future bride-to-be!

The boys - ever efficient - opted for off-the-shelf suits. They brought their own belts, shoes and shirts. Aaron wore a white silk tie he has had since school (who knows why he had one of those...). A sales-person at a suit store tried to convince me that if they wore different shirts, then the collars wouldn't match and all our photos would look off... Can you tell?

Virtual Disposable Cameras

One thing I wanted to replicate from my parents wedding, was giving the guests disposable cameras - to capture the night from their perspective. But how to achieve this without being so wasteful with single-use electronics? I found an app called POV, which simulates a disposable camera on the phone of every guest. They had:

• a finite number of shots for the night
• a 'vintage' filter
• and they couldn't view the photos they'd taken until they were 'developed' the day after the wedding.

In some of the guest photos below you can see a few other sustainable touches like the thrifted guestbook and pens, chalkboard signs I borrowed from my cousins who hand-made them for their own wedding, the thrifted golden welcome frame, and the photo-boards of Aaron and I we used to decorate the tea & coffee room. Also pictured bottom right are my talented friends Mary and Adam who sang for us during the reception and canapes! Walking down the aisle to my friend's voice was unforgettable.

DIY lights....

In hindsight, we should have just hired these festoon lights and gotten someone professional to install them. But I have to admit that watching my uncles and cousins and my friend's boyfriends climbing up ladders and trees to set up our lights the day before the wedding was as fun as it was exhausting and terrifying.

We did splurge on some things...

I started by hand-making the confetti for our aisle exit. My friends and I sat down and chatted while we hand-punched hundreds of leaves they collected from their morning walks. But after 4 hours we weren't even halfway through. I eventually I gave up and just ordered some that someone else made on Etsy. Still no plastic, but I did have to live with the delivery emissions for that one.

We also splurged on sparklers for our exit, but I can't regret that one either:

I'm sure there's much more we could have done to go truly zero waste, and plenty of things I didn't get to mention in this post. But I hope this can at least give some ideas to reduce the impact of your next party, event, or celebration!

Here's a helpful guide to get you started:

https://www.greenindustries.sa.gov.au/driving-the-circular-economy