A Living Green Expo that took place the other weekend prompted me to find out how to “green” a wedding celebration. What better place to look than the book Green Wedding: Planning your eco-friendly celebration by Mireya Navarro. I read it cover to cover and found some of the most amazingly beautiful means to host a grand wedding and to help to save the earth. Some couples can go as far as calculating the carbon emissions produced by hosting a wedding and purchase carbon offsets. Others simply find that overwhelming, but Mireya offers several baby steps to take to make the day green. It can be as simple as hiring a limosine, bus, or trolley to transport guests and wedding party from hotel to church to venue, or the couple can serve an organic menu at the reception. How about just providing recycle bins for the personalized water bottles served!
The author surmises that,“Being green is not an absolute; it is a series of goals, and only you can decide how far you will go in achieving them. The shade of green in your green wedding may also depend on busget and what’s available near your venue. But whether all green, light green, or, as one bride put it, “relatively green”, a green wedding stands against waste and excess.” (Navarro, 19)