Image: Kuperberg Weddings

You don’t have to live and breathe environment to have an eco friendly wedding. Before you go to a meeting with a potential vendor, figure out what the things are that you care about – local origin? Carbon footprint? Organic? Make a short list of the things you want to ask your vendor about, and couple each item on your list with a one sentence explanation of why it is important to you as well as a definition of what the heck it means! For example, say you are concerned about food waste with your caterer. You may say, “I am interested in learning what happens to food that is prepared for our event and is not used. Do you have any way to reduce food waste or donate unused foods? We are trying to make our event as sustainable as possible, and finding ways to keep our food scraps out of the waste stream is something that is important to us.” 

Also, be realistic about the answers your vendors will be able to provide, especially at first exposure to these types of questions. For example, our conversation with our awesome baker led her to brainstorm out loud with us about the different local suppliers she knew of, and what she knew had to be shipped into the state during October. We didn’t expect her to be able to offer up a sheet calculating the percentage of organic ingredients in our cake or the carbon footprint of shipping raspberries across the continent. Not that it will be far from your minds while you are trying to make the most of your wedding budget, but remember that these guys are operating businesses too. If there is something that you would like a vendor to do, but that is going to cost the vendor a bundle or take too much of their time for them to oblige, try to meet them half way. Going back to the food example, if they can’t offer to deliver compostable material to a farm, ask them to simply bag up the food waste, and do the legwork yourself finding a local farmer who will accept it. Then, the day after the wedding, get one of the slightly wobbly groomsmen to cart the materials there. 

From Sara and Dean's wedding, courtesy of Samantha Warren Weddings