We have this idea about a fun, intimate wedding that doesn’t cost the earth, in any sense of that phrase. When one talks about wanting an ethical wedding it’s really hard not to sound desperately preachy and ethicaler-than-thou. That really isn’t our intention. As we don’t want to preach but thought people might be interested in what we are doing we thought the website was a good place to give a list:

  • First and foremost we’ve thought carefully about what we want in a wedding celebration and how we are going to go about it, this has made it easier to tailor our wedding to suit our aims and made it hugely less stressful
  • We are having an intimate wedding which allows us to use less resources in celebration of the day
  • The wedding ceremony is taking place where the largest fraction of our guests live or will be staying.
  • The hotel will be serving fair trade tea, coffee, and wine to our guests. Fairly traded sparkling wine is proving too difficult to get in Ireland, perhaps this is recession related?
  • Our clothes are not being created for the day and will be worn again. Most items that are new for the day are handmade and bought directly from the maker or created for us as a gift. Where possible we have used environmentally friendly materials.
  • The time and energy of our guests is being harnessed to help with lots of wedding tasks: guests are the photographers, the musicians, the celebrant, the cake-makers, the makers of some of the clothing and jewellery. Essentially no-one is working at the wedding who hasn’t been invited bar the hotel staff.
  • Our wedding rings will be fairly traded.
  • Using the web as a resource for distributing and gathering information, such as through this site, in order to cut down on the paper used. We used email invitations to do lots of that and this website to give further info. Of course the printers mucked up our first lot of invitations and then printed too many replacements so there will be a spare invitation colouring in competition at the reception. We’re serious.
  • We are going on honeymoon by ferry rather than by plane.
  • At least a third of our wedding menu is vegetarian and coeliac friendly (ok so this isn’t a great one but we want the vegetarian guest to know they are well catered for).
  • We have a fair trade goods gift list although the whole concept of gift lists is fairly green as it means you don’t get stuff you don’t need or want.
  • We’re hoping to have plants we can take home and enjoy for a long time to decorate the church rather than flowers that will die soon after the day.
  • The wedding cake is being made with as many fair trade ingredients as can be sourced

Hopefully we’ll be adding to that list over time when we find more bits where we can be ethical for eg. we are hoping that the website will help us facilitate car pooling closer to the date. There were some things that were just too hard to find, my shoes for example or a reception location closer to the ceremony without compromising beyond sense, but that’s another blog post for another time. We hope that wasn’t too preachy for you and thanks for reading.

This page last updated: Saturday, March 7th, 2009.