Alternatives to confetti
Apr 28th, 2009 by Katie
First things first, a big congratulations to our blogging couple, Helen and Mike who got married on Saturday. We hope you had a lovely day and are feeling well and truly relaxed on your honeymoon.
Confetti crazy
I’m not sure what Helen and Mike got pelted with as they left the church but to carry on the confetti theme that Henrietta started I thought I’d share a question sent in by green bride, Darla, who’s holding her wedding in an historic dance hall in Texas Hill Country (in Darla’s words: ‘All local food, wine and beer; a vintage dress. Big family celebration with honky-tonk band and lots of dancing!’):
What can guests throw as we leave the venue (instead of rice or confetti)? Is bird seed still acceptable?
Thankfully, with the author of the Green Guide for Weddings, Jen Marsden on speed dial, a swift reply was winging its way to Darla in no time. Over to Jen…
Hi Darla,
Bird seed is a great idea! I would also recommend the following for some other really good alternative confetti ideas:
- Bubbles made from plant-derived, ecological washing up liquid
- Collect leaves – they can be stored in jars up until the big day
- Real petals from native flowers – these can be sourced through your florist and co-ordinated to your wedding colour theme (if you have one!)
- Money. An alternative style of collection for your favourite charity, as long as you have somebody to pick it up before a gust of wind gets it.
It’s always worth checking with the venue to ask whether they have any policies on the confetti.
Have a great wedding!
Jen x
Thanks Jen! Jen will soon be joining our panel of Ethical Weddings experts so get ready to send in your green wedding dilemmas.
Wedding by candlelight
And to finish, another question – as yet unanswered! This one was sent in by Emma who asks:
How much energy would we save, if we used candles instead of electric lights during the whole one-day wedding?
We want to use candles during our wedding and we are curious about this question – I hope you can give us some statistics about that. Thank you so much!
We’re busy tapping all our ethical wedding connections for their thoughts on this one but if you know the answer, send it in! Maybe we can set up some kind of candle-based competition…
Take care,
Katie
Chat about anything and everything ethical weddings in the Ethical Weddings Forum
There’s also a product out there called Ecofetti.
Here is the link if you would like to read more about the product
http://www.ecoparti.com/toec.html
We got pelted with dried rose petals that we made ourselves last summer by collecting the fallen petals from a local rose garden – it was one of the most fun wedding tasks we did!!
We dried them slowly in a cool oven, then stored them in an open box in a warm, dark airing cupboard so they stayed dry and didnt get exposed to sunlight and fade. Once in a while we checked through them to get rid of any brown/mouldy looking ones, but we only lost a handful out of 2 large box loads. The result was beautiful, they held their colour and shape and looked spectacular on the photos!