Recently, according to a social media post on X, the big day of a couple in Chennai followed a sustainable and eco-friendly approach.
In that low-cost wedding, the families involved used blackboards instead of traditional plastic banners; and opted for minimal, foam-free decor.
The blackboard said in wide, cursive letters, “Welcome to the low-cost wedding of Bala and Kajol- 19 February 2024.”
The welcome drinks were served in reusable glasses, and the guests were served food on banana leaves, and given steel glasses and other biodegradable.
These items were then collected separately, including the leftovers. The two-day wedding had zero plastic disposables, and they avoided the use of 800 plastic bottles.
The best part was that they sent 238 kg of biodegradable waste for composting.
Do you love Kajol and Bala’s idea of a sustainable wedding?
Overall, there are cost-savings aspects about the way the entire event was conducted, that we could pick up our lessons from.
At present. Especially post-Covid, with the increasingly unstable, and uncertain world, people opt for more small, intimate weddings featuring environmentally sustainable methods. According to wedding experts, this is a positive shift, which in most cases, is started by the couples themselves.
This came with increasing awareness of things around us. With smaller, eco-friendly, ‘no-waste’ weddings, couples can focus on things more important to them, and save money for the corpus needed to start their new life together.
Also, it’s easier to execute ideas especially when the scale of weddings is small. You could incorporate sustainability with things as simple as choosing local flowers, potted plants, or banana leaf plates.
Says Parthip Thyagarajan, CEO and co-founder, WeddingSutra.com, a bridal media brand that gives wedding information, “When it comes to eco-friendly weddings, one of the cost-saving ways is not printing invitations and minimizing use of flowers. When it comes to food waste, it’s important to have as many live counters as possible, though that may not be cost-effective. Also, you can have water in cartons which can be an alternative to glass as well as plastic bottles. More and more entrepreneurs are coming up with innovative solutions, targeting couples who are looking at having a very environmentally-conscious and who want to reduce wastage at their wedding.”
According to experts, you must start by creating a list of ways to have an eco-friendly wedding. You can always, use cane and jute for your wedding decor.
Moreover, you can reduce decor elements for your different wedding functions in a creative way. Of late, there are weddings where the couples have used reusable fabric for their mandap decor, which was used post-the-wedding as compost.
“The other option is to have a vegetarian wedding today. There are a lot of caterers specialized in really good vegetarian food, innovative food, and they are preparing dishes with mock meat,” says Thyagarajan.
You could also rope in local vendors and materials for your wedding decor. While this gives opportunities to local business people, it also reduces cost for you and reduces waste and the overall carbon footprint of the wedding. For example, try to use locally grown flowers from your neighborhood florist or nursery.
If you cannot manage every element of your wedding to be reusable, you could always opt for biodegradable materials. You could use plants instead of flowers for a green wedding.
“Another way to have a cost-effective green wedding, if you cannot manage by yourself, hire a waste management company, which would again cost you money, If you are looking at sending excess food to some homes, that too comes at a little extra cost, because there’s transportation, there‘s a need to ensure that the food reaches on time. So do not look at green weddings as a way to save costs. If anything, do your bit for the environment, and for other less-fortunate people, by giving extra food,” adds Thyagarajan.
