Tay Wedding
Thoughts & Tips for a Low-Waste Wedding
This coming weekend JT and I will be celebrating our first wedding anniversary, so I thought I'd do some reminiscing and share some of our special moments and some tips for a low-waste wedding. Last summer I was not yet fully pursing a minimal and sustainable lifestyle, so it was definitely not completely low-waste wedding, but now that I have a different perspective, I am excited to share some thoughts and tips for future brides!
Invitations & Stationery
For our stationery, we did do paper invitations because I love paper goods. However, I did realize that it could be quite wasteful so we tried to minimize our paper stationery that day. I designed our paper wedding invitation suite and minimized paper goods by opting for electronic Save the Dates through a website called Paperless Post. We did not have any programs or song sheets during our ceremony, instead we were able to use our church's AV system for lyrics for worship songs and for a photo list at the end of the ceremony. I up-cycled two mirrors I had found on the street, painting the frames gold and covering the mirror with chalkboard paint to create a welcome sign and one big menu instead of a menu per person or per table. Finally, I calligraphed our guests' names for the place setting and were able to recycle all the tags at the end of the night.
Florals
Our florals were kept to a minimum with personal flowers for just the bridal party and family. We also made an effort to reuse all of the florals from our ceremony at our reception. We had a wonderful auntie make greenery garlands and two bouquets at our church which we later reused at the guest reception table.
We had our florist, Lauren Wilson, who made all of our personal bouquets and simple greenery garlands for our evening reception at the Steam Whistle Brewery in Toronto.
My wonderful, super handy dad and I created a fake floral garland and pipe altar for our ceremony which since our wedding, has been used many times by other friends and family! I'm planning to do another recycle for the altar, so let me know below if you'd be interested to see what I do with it next!
Decor
We kept our decor to a minimum, mainly using florals and greenery. I repurposed a few crates and used the classic IKEA lanterns for some moody candles. I also purchased some glass votives for tea light candles for our receptions tables. I was able to "bunz"/trade most of my decor after our wedding, thanks to the amazing Bunz community in Toronto.
Waste-wise, that's all I can think of for now! I'm a huge DIY-er and had so much fun coming up with ideas for decor and ways to save. If you're currently planning a low-waste wedding, don't get too stressed about all the fine details and forget to have fun at your wedding! This lifestyle is not one of perfection, it's a journey.
Post-wedding, we printed a photo album of our favourite memories through Artifact Uprising that prints with intention and on recycled paper.
I love that our wedding was very stress-free and in the end, we were married standing in front of God, witnessed by our most beloved family and friends. Can't believe we're almost at ONE! A huge shoutout to our dear friend and talented photographer Branden Cain who captured our wedding so well!