TUCSON, Ariz. — Even though she plans green weddings for a living, Danielle Archer is in the middle of planning her own eco-friendly event out of love for her guests and the Earth.

Archer’s eco-awareness is part of a growing national trend where event planners are using organic and sustainably made resources in their weddings and parties, saving a lot of waste that’s normally produced by big events.

The average person can do just three things to reduce their event’s impact, according to Beck Cowles, director of the environmental resource center at the Ecology Center in Berkeley, Calif.,: minimize air travel, use local and organic resources and simplify the wedding or party to consume less.

Earthy brides and grooms have been extending their eco-philosophies to their weddings for years, but it seems that having a green wedding now is actually becoming the trendy thing to do.

The Knot, a popular online wedding magazine, even lists green weddings as a top trend in 2008.

“Having a green wedding is trendy right now,” said Archer from Rochester, N.Y. "I have a hard time believing that a lot of these couples are really doing this because they think it’s a good thing to do."

"It’s about the trend," she added, "and we have celebrities to thank for that. It’s because of Hollywood.”

Archer cited the buzz in Hollywood over hybrid cars and an obsession with Al Gore’s documentary “An Inconvenient Truth” at last year’s Oscars.


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Tucson, Ariz., wedding planner and owner of the Stillwell House, a popular wedding venue, Candace Flores, said that the topic of green weddings is popping up at bridal fairs all over.

“I’ve gone to very popular, high-end bridal fairs and they were all talking about how the green wedding is the thing to do,” said Flores, who recycles everything from weddings held at the Stillwell House at 134 S. Fifth Ave.

But the touches of green in Jessika Higganbotham’s wedding are due only to the fact that she cares about the environment, said the Minneapolis bride-to-be.

Higganbotham, who uses public transportation to get to work and a low-gas-mileage car on the weekends, is having her wedding in a park, so there won’t be many decorations needed. A hotel is attached, so guests won’t have to travel very much. Fair Trade Certified coffee will be served at the reception and Higganbotham is borrowing as much as she can for the wedding to cut her consumption and waste.

“I’ve been trying to do things that are for the environment and a wedding is such a large-scale thing that would just make a huge impact,” said Higganbotham. “It’s part of who I am and I want to relay that with my wedding.”

Archer has a similar reasoning for why her wedding will be eco-friendly: “This is totally who we are now. It needs to be about us and that’s totally us.”

Having an eco-friendly wedding is a healthy trend, because weddings can generate a lot of waste, Cowles said.

“Waste depends on how you organize the wedding: They really can be nice non-wasteful affairs and then they can be really wasteful,” Cowles said.

Cowles said that most waste occurs in the paper aspect of events. An average wedding or party will end up trashing invitations, envelopes, menus, place cards, table cards, programs, packaging from gifts and other receipts and invoices involved in planning.

Emily Anderson of EcoChicWeddings.com pointed out that approximately 500,000 trees are used per year for all the paper involved in the 2.3 million weddings that happen each year.

Save a few trees and use invitations made with recycled paper or with a more renewable resource like organic cotton. Higganbotham and Archer are both using seal-and-send invitations, which use less paper because they are small and don’t require envelopes.

The sheer cost of weddings is an indicator of how much waste is involved.
The average cost of a wedding in 2007 was $28,800, including the engagement ring and the honeymoon, according to Tickled Pink, an online wedding planning resource. It was also predicted that in 2012, the average cost will increase to $31,010.

Cowles also said that just curbing consumption can help make a wedding or a party more eco-friendly.

This can help cut costs, too. Check out what the planners said about how green weddings stack up cost-wise to normal weddings here.

Cowles picked out three ways to make an event greener to give party planners a place to start in the vast green wedding scene.

“Don’t fly off in a jet airplane,” said Cowles. Her first tip is to minimize travel, especially by air. “Don’t have your family fly in a jet airplane. Airplane travel is one of the very largest impacts on the environment involved in climate change and resource use. That’s where the biggest impact comes from.”

Her second tip is to stay local and organic. “Picking locally produced foods that are sustainably made and using recyclable or reusable service materials can really help out,” she said.

Part of having a green event, said Cowles, is keeping the carbon footprint of the event low. Buying a product that has to be delivered consumes the components required to create the product and also the resources required to deliver it to you, like gas, which creates carbon emissions and contributes to the greenhouse effect.

As much as possible should be organic, said both Flores and Cowles. Green weddings and parties can serve organic food, organic sparkling wine and fair-trade coffee and have organic flowers on display. Organic fabric and linens, like cotton, hemp and silk, are also available.

Green event planners can locate an organic caterer, like Mere Ours from Back to Earth Catering in Berkeley, Calif.
“I’m a cook and a baker, and food is literally what we are made up of,” said Ours. “When it comes to what ingredients go into things, organic is very important because pesticides are very dangerous to the body.”

Cowles’ last tip centers around curbing consumption: “Simplify (the party) to consume less in general,” she said.

“If (event planners) could keep the material use low and use stuff that comes from something natural, that would be better,” she said, noting that the less materials used, the less trash produced.

If you’re planning a green wedding or a party, check out the top-5 links we found to help you out: 1. TheKnot.com is base camp for the couple planning their own wedding. This online wedding magazine has tons of tips for how to have a stylish and eco-friendly wedding. Check out their own green wedding section. 2. Eco Chic Weddings is a great book and Web site about green weddings run by Elizabeth Anderson, a girl who just had a green wedding herself. Follow her fashionable ideas and discover her main tips on how to have an environmental affair. 3. The Ecology Center in Berkeley, Calif., has been in the eco business for 40 years and their fact sheet on how to green an event has great tips. 4. Treehugger.com is one of the most comprehensive sites available for the green scene and luckily, they have lots of information for environmentally conscious brides and grooms. Check out their top-10 tips on how to green your wedding and find companies that will help you get what you need. 5. And if you’re having a big meeting or event, check out this list from EcoSpeakers.com which shows plenty of resources and brochures on the changes you can make to bring more green into your event. A brochure created by the Environmental Protection Agency listed by the site has a great checklist of priorities to be aware of when planning the event.

Instead of asking for gifts, green partiers can ask for donations in their names to an environmental charity, like the World Wildlife Fund which unveiled a wedding registry site last Valentine’s Day.

Even if having a green wedding or party is trendy, it’s still good for the environment, said Archer.

“It’s a bittersweet thing because yes, they’re giving exposure and creating buzz and excitement, but at the same time, trends die,” she said. “My fear is that people are going to forget all about this next year.”

She hopes to keep the trend going and spread the green message with her Green Weddings 101 tutorial that she gives to potential clients.

“These are the ways that you can improve your habits and in the meantime you’re improving the lifestyles and the lives of future generations. Some people think, well, I’m one person, I can’t make a difference. But it all adds up. People are starting to take notice and it’s really good,” said Archer.

“The wonderful thing is that if you’re less wasteful in your practices, the wedding will be more grounded and there will be more of a general feeling of love,” said Cowles. “Picking greener practices can bring you back to what matters and it can really benefit your wedding.”