A wedding is filled with a lot of decorations, party elements, and celebrations. During this one event, a lot of waste can occur through garbage, electricity, and driving. When working with your wedding chapel, you can make a variety of changes that will help reduce the carbon footprint of your wedding.

The following five changes will still create an elegant event and help showcase your love for the environment. Many of the changes are easy to implement using current wedding chapel settings.

Natural Lighting

One of the easiest changes you can make to the wedding is by choosing natural lighting. Save a lot of electricity by letting the sun do most of the work. When the wedding occurs near sunset, you can have gorgeous lighting that helps set the mood and creates great photo opportunities.

You can easily supplement the natural lighting with Eco-friendly forms of lighting. Soy candles or small fire pits can offer additional lighting and can create a romantic mood for the ceremony and reception.

Potted Plants

Flowers are a staple for any wedding, but after the ceremony, they can quickly go to waste and die. Instead of wasting flowers for one day, you can choose potted plants for the ceremony and reception. After the wedding, all of the plants can be placed back into the ground to grow and spread additional life. Work with local farmers and nurseries to access your flowers. This will help keep emissions down for the delivery and set up of the plants.

Not only are potted plants ideal for the ceremony, but they can become great centerpieces for a reception. Depending on your wedding flower of choice, you can offer guests a small seed kit as a small gift for attending the wedding. This can help spread the growth of plants in the future.

Rented Formal Wear

Reusing tuxedos and wedding dresses can help cut down on the workload used to create new dresses. It's a form of recycling that can still create memorable moments for your wedding day. When renting a wedding dress or tuxedo, you still have a variety of styles and designs to choose from. A dress or tuxedo can easily be fitted to your size and kept for multiple days to capture pictures as needed.

Horse Carriage Rides

A lot of wedding traditions include a limousine or special car that the bride and groom can drive off in. Instead of wasting gas and adding extra emissions to the air, you can enjoy a horse carriage ride after the ceremony.

Horse carriages offer a formal touch, come in a variety of designs, and are a memorable way to leave a wedding. Carriage options for a horse ride include an open carriage, an enclosed carriage, or eliminating the carriage all together and riding off on the horse itself.

Botanical Paper Products

Paper waste can add up quickly at a wedding. Invitations, decorations, table seating cards and party favors can all consume a huge amount of paper, ink, and waste. One of the more Eco-friendly options is botanical paper. Botanical paper can be planted when it is done being used, so it directly gives back to the environment.

Not only can you choose your custom paper options, but you can select from the types of seeds that you want infused into the paper. To help match your wedding colors, you can select from a number of wild flowers like snap dragons or daisies. Vegetable seeds are also available. This includes paper infused with tomato, carrot, or basil seeds.

When working with a wedding chapel, it's important to express your wishes for a wedding ceremony. Open communication can really help make a wedding ceremony go smoothly.

For more creative ideas to help you plan your perfect wedding, click here.