(Near) Zero Waste Wedding – How I Did It

So a lot of people have asked me how I did our wedding last October “Waste Free.” Answer – I’d call it 80% waste free – pretty good with a $3,000 budget (that included the honeymoon!).

How We Did It (The breakdown)

1/ I found my daughters flower girl dress at one of our local op shops for $8, it was a little big, but a friend of mine who is a seamstress took it in as a wedding gift to me, free of charge.

2/ My sons outfit was collected over a 3 month period – He was adamant that he wanted a suit jacket with tails (adorable) so I searched and searched – as I was about to give up, I found one for $1!!! Local op shop, definitely a homemade job, but he loved it – success!

3/ My shoes were from the local oppy, $4.

4/ My husband wore the one good pair of shoes he owns for business engagements – we did purchase his sports coat new – but we chose very carefully so that he can use it on a weekly basis for work – I consider a coat like that a good investment.

5/ We hired the tent/chairs for our wedding day. Turned out to be well worth it as it thunder stormed right throughout our ceremony.

6/ We had platters made by the local chef of the area who sourced everything locally, and the very little that we had left over she kept for us to eat the next day.

7/ We provided the drinks – in glass – so that it all could be recycled.

8/ We requested no gifts – some of our lovely family gave us money towards life after the wedding. We had just purchased a home (the week of the wedding it settled and we moved in, crazy right!)

All it took was a lot of thought and asking myself the ever present question “how can this be done Zero Waste Style?” And most of the time, the answer was relatively painless and affordable (haha).

I encourage you with any event to ask that very question – you’d be surprised by the answers you receive.