Hello hello! As a little intro before we get started, I'm Laura, and together with my partner Devon, we've been photographing adventurous weddings and elopements all over the Pacific Northwest and beyond for the last decade.

We're incredibly passionate around here about caring for the planet, and it's a huge part of our mission to make sure that all our couples' weddings give back to the healthy, thriving future of the places they get married, especially since we focus on adventurous weddings and elopements in the great outdoors.

Something that's always bothered me is how a culture of waste is just rampant at weddings, and there's a lot of really great articles around the web already about how many pounds of trash and tonnes of CO2 your average wedding produces (spoiler: it's a number that will probably keep you up at night), but keeping things green & saving the planet are not really emphasized in the wedding industry. As a result, it's not an aspect of weddings that most couples think of.

And I get that, truly. There are already so many variables to consider, like budget and guest list and everyone's preferences, that it's tempting to think that since it's only a one-time, special occassion celebration, then all those small choices don't really matter, right?

I do want to say that if you're looking at your budget and freaking out about making your wedding good for the environment on top of everything else you have to worry about: Take a breath. Don't stress, it really isn't that difficult to throw a wedding celebration that doesn't trash the earth. Often times, the environmentally conscious choices are also budget-friendly ones. Win-win, yeah?

So! Because we love the planet and weddings, we wanted to compile all the best tips for an eco-friendly wedding celebration that we've gathered from smart folks on the web, some amazing past couples, and our own observations from years of attending shindigs of all kinds and sizes.

I always say that good florals will make or break the design of a wedding and they are worth their weight in gold. However, many of the flowers used for floristry in the United States are flown in from other parts of the world, mass produced using lots of pesticides, and trucked out in refrigerated trucks to florists, all to be used for a single day or a few hours before being thrown in the trash. Furthermore, many arrangements are made using floral foam, which is made of non-biodegradable, carcinogenic styrofoam. YIKES. Ok. So what can you do about that?

-Hire a florist who uses locally grown, organic flowers, and doesn't use foam in their arrangements.

-Go for dried florals, which are more sustainable and have a much longer shelf life than cut flowers, which have to be refrigerated and use much more water. Plus, you can save them as keepsakes, and those muted color palettes are very chic.

-Pick your own bouquet from your own garden or a loved one's garden (with permission, obviously), or do a you-pick style bouquet from a local flower farmer.

-Have a composting plan for your florals at the end of your celebration! Ask your florist what options they recommend, and see if there's a way you can avoid those flowers ending up in a landfill.

-Incorporate whole, reusable plants like succulents, ferns, or planters that you can take home with you or gift to guests & loved ones after your wedding. If one of your friends has a green thumb and basically has a little in-home jungle of gorgeous greenery, ask them if you can borrow some of their houseplants to use as decor for the day!

-I'll talk about wedding dresses til I'm blue in the face (as evidenced by not one, but TWO separate blog posts about wedding dresses). I am always shouting it from the rooftops to everyone I meet that the best way to buy a gorgeous wedding dress is to buy one used!!

For one: the cost of wedding dresses is insanely inflated for the first buyer, and by buying a used dress, you can get an amazing designer dress at almost half the cost and save thousands of dollars. Buying a used, previously loved, resold, or sample wedding dress is also way easier on the planet. Seriously, please consider it, there are so many amazing previously owned gowns out there. You can find them at local area boutiques, like Brides for a Cause, Blue Sky Bridal, or online worldwide at Stillwhite, PreownedWeddingDresses, Poshmark, and a ton of other sites.

If you really, really want a brand new wedding dress, you can purchase a wedding gown made out of eco friendly materials. Smaller, boutique designers will gladly work with you on making your dress out of eco-friendly materials, or you can purchase a gown made from repurposed vintage materials.

For bridesmaids, Thredup has a small but usually awesome collection of more formal dresses, and Poshmark usually has tons and tons of used bridesmaids dresses for sale. You can also rent your bridesmaids dresses via Rent the Runway or other rental sites, or just have your bridesmaids wear a cute dress they've already got hanging in their closet.

For gents: obviously the most eco friendly way to get your dudes dressed up nice is to rent a tux, but if you'd prefer to source something more custom and personal (and well-fitting), vintage stores and thrifting are some awesome ways to get great menswear that can be tailored to your particular size.

Okay. This is probably the biggest section, because there are too many good ideas on how to get amazing, thrifty, planet-friendly wedding decor.

-The obvious first choice is to rent your linens & decor! You don't need 25 table linens, because nobody needs 25 table linens unless you're a wedding decor rental house. Rental companies have a lot of great options, will usually take care of ironing and collecting the linens, and just generally make the whole thing less of a headache. For renting decor, there are tons of amazing vintage rental companies that have tons of amazing, adorable decor that they'll happily help you curate & style.

-If neither of those are doing it for you, you can always purchase your decor used, a la goodwill or vintage stores. If you have some great home decor that you love, bring your cute stuff from home! Grab that adorable indie rug in your living room, or borrow furnishings from a friend who has a great sense of style (and thank them with a nice dinner or a good bottle of wine for the favor).

-Minimize individual items in your decor. So, for example, instead of printing out individual menus for each place setting, have one big menu sign, one big ceremony itinerary as opposed to individual programs, one big seating chart as opposed to individual name place settings, a big buffet of deserts instead of individually wrapped goodies, and so on. It's kind of a big, scaleable design concept, but it cuts down on a lot of extra items (and cost!).

If you are purchasing or using your own decor that you've purchased, try to avoid the following:

-USE. REAL. PLATES. SILVERWARE. AND. GLASSES. This is the biggest item on my list for making your wedding eco-friendly. Seriously, if you skim read the rest, just read this. The amount of plastic cups, forks, knives, and plates that just go in the trash at the end of every wedding is sickening. Every time we see it, we're just immediately depressed. It happens all the time at tons of weddings because plastic dinnerware is so much cheaper. But seriously, the environmental impact is NUTS. So please, please splurge and rent real cutlery & plates.

-If you just don't have the budget or the capacity to go with traditional dinnerware, you can purchase made-from-bamboo or compostable disposables.

-Have guests reuse their glass or mug all day! Don't buy cases of single use plastic cups. Opt for a cute water station & personally labelled drinkware for your guests (cheap glasses, jars, mugs, etc are great for this).

-Eliminate single use drinks, like bottled waters. If you need or want to have single serving packaged drinks, opt for glass bottles of things like sodas, cocktails, beers, sparkling waters, or canned drinks instead of ones that come in plastic bottles.

Paperless Post has astonishingly beautiful digital invitations (seriously, so pretty I swear) that will save you a bunch of money on postage, and will save a lot of trees too. Plus, no more worries about tracking down all your guests home addresses.

Still want your old school snail mail invitations? Then there's Paper Culture, which plants a tree for every invite they sell and uses all recycled paper in their products.

For wedding signs & other paper goods, like menus, welcome signs, etc, you can often find some really really great deals on folks selling their wedding decor on facebook marketplace. A bit of clever paint and creativity means you can usually remove any dates or names on them and repurpose them for your needs. Don't underestimate the power of cute & simple, and see if there's a way you can reduce the number of paper items you need printed, like having a menu sign instead of individually printed menus.

-Go for vegetarian for the day! This doesn't mean you only have salad for your guests, but it's easy to cut down on your environmental impact by limiting the amount of meat you serve at your wedding meal. A lot of options won't even strike your guests as vegetarian so much as plain delicious (like fried mushrooms, garlic bread, cheesy potatoes, pasta, rice and beans, the sky is your limit). If you can't bring yourself to go veggie only, then consider doing no red meat instead! Chicken has a vastly lower environmental impact than pork or beef. And literally everyone loves fried chicken, ok?

-Talk to your caterers about sustainability, organic food, local ingredients, what they do with food waste, recycling, and what their policies are. Don't be afraid to ask them questions about more than just their menus and pricing. A good caterer will be delighted to chat about how they handle their food waste, and how they contribute to their local food landscape.

This can be a tricky topic to navigate with friends and family, all of whom will likely have their own expectations around what size your wedding should be, but reducing your guest list to your wedding can be one of the easiest and biggest reductions of your wedding's impact on the planet, especially if you are having a destination wedding. This, and about a gajillion other reasons, can be a really great reason for eloping, or keeping your wedding intentionally small. There's many reasons why a big, large traditional wedding might not be the best fit for you & your partner, and keeping the celebration smaller allows you to reduce your budget, reduce your guest's emissions, and ensure that you get to spend great quality time with every single guest who is present for your day.

Another really easy yet significant way to keep your wedding sustainable is to get married locally to you! While we love a destination wedding, they do create, by necessity of you and all your guests travelling to that destination, a lot more emissions. If you want a destination wedding, consider keeping your guest list small, or having a destination elopement. Want a larger wedding? Consider finding someplace beautiful that is more local to you that you & your loved ones won't have to fly to.

If airfare or other travel is unavoidable for you or many of your guests, you can purchase carbon credits that help mitigate the effects of your wedding travel. We recommend doing your research on any carbon offset companies you find, and making sure they are accreddited, certified, and in good standing within the industry. There's a lot of greenwashing carbon schemes out there, so if you can find a local project to donate to, all the better! If the idea of carbon credits is not for you, you can opt for environmental donations on your wedding registry (you can do this through most online registries) to encourage your guests to gift to a conservation org or charity instead of, or in addition to, other registry items. Here at Forthright, we research & recommend a conservation organization local to the area of your wedding for every single couple with work with, to make this part even easier.

Hopefully, this gave you some amazing ideas and places to start! If you're looking for more information on how to throw a sustainable, planet friendly wedding, our Leave No Trace wedding and elopement guide is another great resource, especially if you're planning to get married outdoors or on public lands. For folks planning a wedding in the Pacific Northwest, Emerald Hour is a wonderful vendor directory, specifically for eco friendly & sustainable wedding vendors, and they also have some great planning resources for couples available too.

As always, if you need any help implementing these suggestions or someone to help brainstorm more ideas, you can always shoot us an email, and we can talk it out together.

-Laura & Devon