Reception

Your reception may likely be the most detailed and budget-hungry piece of your wedding preparations. It’s exciting, though, because there are so many opportunities to make green choices and put your wedding dollars to work for the environment! If you take ample time upfront to develop a budget, investigate options, and form a clear vision of your ideal reception – and then establish and stick to a planning timetable - you’ll stay in control and have the joyful and carefree bash you envision.

Style

Location

Food & Drink

Music

Green Reception Tips

Style

One of the first tasks on your wedding to-do list will be to decide upon your reception style, as it will serve as the basis for a great many of the choices you’ll make in your overall planning. Formal or casual? Traditional or contemporary? Theatrically themed or sophisticatedly simple? There are so many ways to have fun expressing your unique personalities! Once you’ve decided upon your style, you can start finding ways to incorporate earth friendly practices and products into your reception plans.

What if you’ve never given much thought to planning a wedding celebration? Where do you start in thinking about a reception style? Well, like most folks, you probably have attended at least a few weddings - so you may have some ideas about styles that you have admired (or that you have strongly disliked!). Style inspiration may also be found in mainstream wedding magazines (check your local library) and web sites. Although they often promote excessive consumption and unfriendly environmental practices, they may still provide ideas for creating a look or theme, as well as keep you abreast of contemporary trends if that’s important to you. A creative environmentalist can make modifications to design ideas by substituting environmentally and socially responsible products, and by thinking about ways to reduce consumption, reuse, and recycle. Take a look at our Flowers and Favors section for tips on how to bring your style to life.

Your style will also be reflected in the events that take place during your reception. Are there cultural, ethnic, or religious traditions that you want to include? Are a first dance, bouquet toss, and garter pull essential – or definitely out of bounds? Be sure to create a schedule for the reception that includes all of the activities that you want to take place and in what order. Distribute it to everyone who needs to know, including the caterer, photographer, videographer, and DJ or musical director.

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Location

Selecting a location for your reception will also be among the first steps in your planning, and will depend a great deal upon your chosen wedding style. You may choose either an indoor or outdoor setting, perhaps using the same site for both ceremony and reception to cut down on costs and logistical complexities. See our Ceremony - Location discussion for points to consider in site selection, and be sure to reserve your location as early as possible to avoid disappointment.

Choosing a geographical location that is convenient to the largest number of your guests will cut back on necessary travel and help reduce the environmental impact of fuel consumption and related emissions. If your guests are scattered around the globe, or if you have your heart set on a particular location or a destination wedding, consider ways such as carbon offsetting to neutralize transportation’s effects.

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Food & Drink

What you serve at your reception will be among the most important decisions that you make. Not only will it reflect your desire to gastronomically pamper your beloved guests with excellent food and drink, but it will also be a great opportunity to put your earth friendly convictions into practice.

Luckily for you, sustainable food and beverage options are abundant, but you’ll need to do some research to find out what the best choices will be for your wedding location and time of year. The eco-rule of thumb is to use local, seasonal, and organic produce and meat whenever possible. If not all of these variables can be satisfied, think local first. Besides ensuring freshness, it also helps save the earth from the pollutants released into the air when food is transported thousands of miles to your wedding buffet. In a New York Times article, Michael Pollan described the environmental cost of a “transcontinental strawberry,” which provides “5 calories of food energy” but “takes 435 calories of fossil-fuel energy to deliver to my door.” Buying local also helps support small and medium-sized businesses that have a stake in the community and generally work hard to maintain their good reputations for social and environmental responsibility.

You may wish to consider a vegetarian menu for your reception, even if you are not currently vegetarians. There are many earth friendly reasons for serving vegetarian fare. According to Green Living – The E Magazine Handbook for Living Lightly on the Earth, your choice to eliminate meat from the menu saves water, fossil fuel, and the raw materials used in meat production, and will also help prevent the deforestation required to create grazing land. Even if you choose to serve meat and/or seafood, be sure to include some vegetarian options to help lessen the environmental impact. Some great recipes can be found on the web sites of The Vegetarian Resource Group and the International Vegetarian Union.

If you do choose to serve meat and/or poultry at your reception, be sure that the animals have been raised in a cruelty-free environment and that they have been fed organic feed free of hormones, antibiotics and chemicals. Seek out wild, rather than farmed, fish and seafood. According to a study published in the journal Science, farmed salmon may contain as many as fourteen cancer-causing chemicals, having been routinely fed a banquet of vaccines, antibiotics, pesticides, and synthetic pigment.

If you plan to work with a caterer, look for one in your area who specializes in using organic ingredients and seasonal produce, or who is willing to seek out and use sustainable foods at your request. One challenge for caterers is that couples generally work on their menus several months in advance and they will often sample menu items at a different time of year than when the wedding will take place. Caterers may feel that they are unable to give an accurate sampling of foods that will be in season on the wedding date. They can, however, offer guidance regarding what is generally in season during a particular week. A caterer may even recommend that if a particular food item is an absolute must-have for a couple, it may be best to schedule the wedding when that item will be in season – for example, springtime for asparagus or early summer for strawberries.

For help in locating earth friendly food vendors, take a look at Local Harvest for a directory of “farmers' markets, family farms, and other sources of sustainably grown food in your area, where you can buy produce, grass-fed meats, and many other goodies” or the Eat Well Guide, “a free, online directory of sustainably raised meat, poultry, dairy and eggs from farms, stores, restaurants and online outlets in the US and Canada.”

Wedding Cake
The best option for creating an earth friendly wedding cake is to find a baker who specializes in organic ingredients and natural decoration. If you are not able to find such a baker, request that your traditional baker use as many organic ingredients as possible.

For embellishment, consider organically grown flowers or other natural materials in place of the commonly used plastic and metal cake toppers. A very special touch is to use family heirlooms or vintage pieces to top the cake, thus forming a connection to the past as well as employing the “re-use” principal of environmental responsibility.

Beverages
Your choice of beverages is another area that offers great opportunities for making environmentally and socially sound choices. Undoubtedly you will be serving coffee and tea, and likely alcoholic drinks as well. Think organic and fair trade, and you’ll be doing your best for the planet and its people.

Organically grown coffee and tea, and organic wines and beers, are good choices for the environment because they help cut down on pesticide use and its resulting negative environmental impacts. Check out the National Wildlife Federation’s Get Green campaign and the Organic Consumer Association’s information page on organic wine to learn about the value of making organic beverage choices.

Selecting Fair Trade products will allow you to make socially responsible beverage choices. According to TransFair USA, when you buy Fair Trade Certified products “you are enabling farmers to live with dignity and invest in their families, communities and the environment.” One socially responsible product source for coffee and tea is The Fair Trade Coffee Company which offers “organic and shade grown coffee, organic tea” and supports “cooperatives, socially responsible shopping and believe strongly in sustainable development.” The Organic Consumers Association provides a wealth of information and links to articles on Fair Trade coffee, tea, chocolate, and other agricultural products - and includes the interesting statistic that “85% of Fair Trade Certified coffee is shade grown and organic as small farmers have never had the money to purchase chemicals.”

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Music

The music that you select for your reception will most likely be more upbeat and danceable than your ceremony music, but you will still want to take into account many of the same considerations. Refer to the Ceremony – Music section for hints on making environmentally compatible music choices.

Green Reception Tips

• Serve local, seasonal, and organic foods and beverages whenever possible.
• Rent or ask your caterer to provide glasses, dishes, and linens rather than using disposables.
• If outdoor weddings make the “real thing” impractical, use biodegradable and compostable dishes and cutlery made of cornstarch, sugar cane, or tropical leaves, or reusable plasticware manufactured from recycled materials.
• Keep it simple – true elegance results from quality, not quantity. Decide on the things that are most important to you and then make earth friendly decisions to bring your choices to life. In the words of Leonardo DaVinci, “Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.” That’s what green elegance is all about!

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