Getting married? Here’s how to ensure your big day has a small footprint

Getting married? Congratulations! You’ll want your ‘big day’ to be a special one. You can spend as little or as much as you want on that.
Getting married itself is pretty affordable – the notification required by the State costs €200. A ‘wedding’, however, is a different story. Couples opting for ‘the works’ spend an average of €36,000, according to wedding industry estimates.
The venue, invitations, outfits, food, music, flowers, favours, fireworks, vintage cars, balloon releases – it can be hard to know when to stop. What’s enough to make your wedding day your big day?
One way to stop yourself hurtling headlong towards weddings-ville excess is to set an intention for your wedding early on and for that intention to be a green one. You’ll save money, yes, but it’s not about being tight, it’s about making conscious choices, not sacrifices.
When planning your wedding, expect some providers to push an ever-expanding list of extras. Just know that when the music has stopped and the last guest has gone home, most of this is headed for the bin or to landfill: discarded courtesy flip flops, ‘disposable’ cameras, place cards, order-of-service booklets, plastic fans, photo props, glitter, bubble wands, wedding favours, wilting out-of-season flowers.
Beef or salmon? Over half a kilo of food per person gets wasted at the average Irish wedding, says Irish environmental charity Voice. Vegetables, potatoes, meat and bread are the most discarded items – yet some 87 per cent of it is still edible.
A study by UK supermarket Sainsburys found that a tenth of all wedding food ends up in the bin. Some 15 per cent of people only eat one of the three courses and 15 per cent of newly-weds end up throwing some of the cake away.
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A single wedding can produce up to 20kg of plastic waste and almost four in 10 guests don’t eat the edible wedding favours, according to a guide to sustainable weddings by ring seller, 77 Diamonds.
Couples seeking to have a more environmentally friendly wedding, however, can make conscious choices around having fewer guests, using electronic invites, keeping the celebrations local, organising group transport and renting wedding attire.
Five wedding venues in west Cork are pledging to do things differently. Dunmore House, Fernhill House Hotel, Camus Farm, the Celtic Ross Hotel and Dunowen House have come together to offer couples an alternative to wasteful weddings.
Their Green Wedding package supports couples to make their big day a environmentally friendly one. The initiative is part of the Waste Not, Want Not programme from Voice.
They are offering choices that will minimise food waste and the wider footprint of your wedding. They have set themselves a target to reduce wedding waste at their venues by at least 50 per cent by next year.
All offer seasonal and local food, sourced from local producers whenever possible. They offer a vegetarian option as a main alongside meat and/or fish. They are using strategies around portions and servings to reduce food waste, and they will use local flowers.
They are also exploring using green energy sources, enabling guests to pre-order food and offering green wedding favours. The package will appeal to lovers who are thinking beyond their big day to the legacy of that day.
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