The stand features two eco-wedding dresses made from sustainable bamboo and silk by Julie Dutton (who exhibited her first eco gown, ‘Remnanta’ at our Eco Chic Wedding & Home Show in 2009). The idea is to show how different countries, communities and individuals are harnessing the Power of Plants to develop skills, jobs and careers and foster creativity.

The Eden Project and City & Guilds got involved in the project to demonstrate the important role plants play in eco-friendly fashion and beauty. Visitors to the stand got the chance to make mood-enhancing floral buttonholes or a glamorous floral hair do.

Find out more about the Chelsea Flower Show

What next?

• Talk to other brides and grooms in the Ethical Weddings Forum
• Sign up for our Ethical Weddings newsletter

Katie

But, according to the 30 (yes, that’s thirty) florists I spoke to in the 3 months leading up to our wedding, you’d have thought I was asking them to make the sun spin round the earth, when I asked for UK-grown flowers for our Big Day.

Florists aren’t somewhere I usually go, I have to confess. For me, flowers are usually picked from the garden or given by friends.

It had never crossed my mind to ask where the flowers came from, until I got married.

Getting it sorted, early on

Our wedding was late September and we had got engaged at New Year. Being a fan of getting “big decisions out of the way”, I had originally phoned Wiggly Wigglers and asked them to do our wedding flowers – just the bridal bouquet, some button-holes and table centres. They offer a wonderful service with UK-grown flowers delivered direct to your door. They asked me to phone them a couple of months before the wedding to finalise my requirements.

Flowers – done. Big tick. Forget about them for a bit.

July arrived and I was excited about chatting to their florist. We discussed the number of arrangements I wanted and how they would be dlievered. But then I fell into the “Barbie Bride” trap – apparently. I mentioned my “colour scheme”. Big oops!

Now, my “colour scheme” wasn’t strict. I knew I had accents of gold and deep blue in my dress and was tying colour choices in with that, as and when it worked out. I didn’t plan to insist on gold and blue flowers! But I did know I didn’t want pinks and oranges, as these can often make me look pale and washed-out and I didn’t want to risk that with my wedding bouquet.

Here’s the official line:

“Not every bride wants a “Barbie Theme”. Nature doesn’t need to colour co-ordinate – Wiggly Flowers are beautiful, natural and varied!“

I just don’t “do” pink. I had a sudden, shocking vision of myself on my wedding day, looking like a fushia-coloured merringue, arriving at the Church in a horse-drawn pumpkin carriage with the groom in a violet velour suit.

Dragging myself quickly back to the relief of the “real world”, I asked, in confused reply, whether that meant I could ask for “whatever you have, as long as it’s not pink”?

The answer?

No.

I have to say that Wiggly Wiggler’s flowers are gorgeous and ethical and I would recommend them to anyone wanting UK-grown flowers. I’m a big fan of them as a company and love their ethical attitude.

But I knew I didn’t want pink

So, with just 8 weeks to go, I had to start “The Great UK Flower Hunt”.

Over the following couple of weeks, I spoke to 30 (yes, three-zero) florists, asking them what would be in season in late September.

After most had chastised me for leaving it “so late”, the majority were already booked for weddings that weekend and not a single one of them could offer me anything other than Dahlia, Chrysanthemum and possibly Michelmas Daisies, none of which felt like elegant wedding flowers, to me.

The general response, when I politely asked which UK-grown flowers they might supply, was to tell me that all their flowers come from “a wholesaler in Holland”.

I asked florists within a 50 mile radius (Southern England) and the response from all of them was the same.

Some were honest enough to admit that from late September a significant proportion of their flowers would be flown in from Africa. They went to great lengths to explain why this was more environmentally friendly than UK greenhouses, which might have had heaters, and that it’s socially responsible to provide a living for the “poverty-stricken Africans”.

But they just didn’t get it.

I wanted locally-grown, seasonal flowers. Not much to ask?

With just 2 weeks to go until the wedding, I still hadn’t found an answer. But I kept hoping and trusting, knowing that something would turn up.

I had a lead from our local farm shop – she put me in touch with a lovely lady who grows flowers in her garden, which she sometimes sells. But due to the long, hot summer, most of her autumn blooms had gone to seed early and all she had left was Dahlia and some “slightly wilted” (her words!) sunflowers.

I had even “Facebooked” my dilemma, asking friends and friends-of-friends for suggestions. But still no flowers.

Then the minor miracle happened

I had heard rumours from a neighbour about an alstromeria nursery, somewhere near us. But online and phone book searches had yielded nothing.

Then we bumped into the neighbour one Saturday morning and she gave us detailed directions of how to find the place (you would never stumble across it!).

That afternoon, on the way back home, we decided to drive past the place, so I could find it again on the Monday. It took us 5 sets of stopping and asking people, before we reached our destination. And that’s where the magic happened.

Not only were there 3 huge greenhouses, growing nothing but alstromeria, but the lady who runs the place is an absolute Angel. She was so excited by our quest for ethical flowers that she sent us home with samples of about twenty different colours.

She told us to phone her on the Monday before the wedding and she would cut the stems, before the flowers opened, so they would be perfectly fresh for the big day. All we had to do was keep them somewhere cool for the week.

So we sent her photos of the colours we loved most for the bouquet and button holes. For the table and Church flowers, we asked her to send us whatever she had going spare. We were happy to use up the “seconds” (those with flowers pointing in “non-upwards” directions), which she couldn’t sell to her wholesaler, which would otherwise have been composted.

It was with no small amount of trepidation that I arrived at the nursery that Monday afternoon to collect my flowers, not knowing what they would look like or how much they would cost, though I was happy to be supporting a local grower, especially one who was so kind.

I was astonished to receive over 200 stems of alstromeria. And the price she asked was so low that we insisted on paying double. She had been so generous.

Disaster Nearly Struck At The Eleventh Hour!

The rest of the week was spent tiptoeing round three garden trugs full of gently opening blossoms, filling the shower room. It was an incredible sight.

There was one scary moment, the day before the wedding, when I realised we had put the heating on for the first time since the summer (in deference to guests who perhaps weren’t used to double layers of jumpers!) and I had forgotten that one of the flower trugs was resting against the radiator.

10 scorched stems hit the compost heap, but the rest survived!

The afternoon before the wedding, a creative friend of ours took all the multi-coloured stems and arranged them beautifully in hi-ball glasses, to be the centre of each table at the wedding reception.

Then, on the morning of the wedding, while I was having my hair done, she and a friend arranged the bridal bouquet and made the button holes. They were gorgeous.

• The bouquet was a simple arrangement of stems, tied with some beautiful ribbon from a present we had been given the day before.
• The buttonhole flowers were paired with greenery from our garden.

We had so many flowers spare that we just kept giving them away. And since the wedding, we have had lots of lovely messages from friends who said the flowers lasted a good two weeks, reminding them every day of the wonderful day they had shared with us.

So it just goes to show that you can source locally-grown, seasonal flowers, even in autumn. But you might have to get creative to find them.

Top tips for finding ethical flowers

1. Check out your garden
   If you’ve got a year or more to plan, you might be surprised how many of your wedding flowers you could grow, even in a small space. Or maybe you have friends or family who could help? If Great Aunt Emily has always won prizes for her roses, then maybe it’s worth asking nicely…?!
2. Ask around
   Friends and neighbours might know of some local growers.
3. Visit your local farm shop
   Farm shops are bound to know of local people who are keen flower growers. It’s also worth talking to local allotment associations, in case one of their members is famous for their blooms.
4. Consider alternatives
   Instead of cut flowers, how about considering small pot plants? Bear in mind that many garden centres are importing their stock, just as florists do. But most also work with local growers.
5. Less is more?
   If you end up going the route of imported flowers, then perhaps less might be more? There’s no rule saying every table has to have a full, formal arrangement. Sometimes a single stem in an elegant vase is all you need.

What are your top tips for ethical wedding flowers?
How did you handle the topic on your big day?

If you’re planning your wedding, what are your ethical wedding flowers questions? Please feel free to share via the comments box!

And while they’ve had a lot of fun doing it, it hasn’t been easy.

So when I spotted this course in our local Friends Centre Autumn prospectus, I thought I’d share it with you.  After all, even the most green-fingered among us can always do with a few extra tips.

Grow your own cut flowers is a 5 week course starting on Monday 27 September.  Let us know if you sign up – we’d love to hear how you get on.

Katie

Seasonal wedding flowers

The church was beautiful, we found a florist who was a friend of my parents, and who was sympathetic to our green ideas.

She sourced flowers and greenery as seasonally as possible, including some raided from my parents’ garden the previous day (!), and also made up some planters of growing flowers and herbs that we took away to keep afterwards.  The results were stunning.

A very personal wedding ceremony

Our church wedding was fantastic too.  As we are both Christians, the spiritual aspect of marriage was really important to us, so getting married in church was particularly special.

The service was wonderful – our friend and university chaplain led the service so he was able to tailor it to us quite a lot (his address to the congregation after the marriage involved Bagpuss!) – and as there is quite a lot of choice about what wording to use for the marriage service, and which readings (Bible or not) and music to use, the whole thing felt very personal.

We entered the church to the Beatles’ ‘Here comes the sun’ in the end, very happy! We involved friends and family in leading the readings, prayers and music too, which was lovely.  We exchanged wedding rings from Cred (who really impressed us), and our little ‘engagement ring’ trees made it along to the church too as decorations.  And we made our own service sheets (using Evolve recycled printer paper), including our story in them.

Snap happy guests

After the ceremony we did a big photo session in the pretty churchyard, with my keen amateur photographer uncle doing the ‘posed’ photos, and the rest of our photos taken by the guests who then posted their digital photos on to us.

It worked out really well, despite what you hear about how you must get in a professional.  With so many people doing your photos you are bound to have a fantastic selection of shots, and they covered different groups of guests, as well as getting some fantastic informal pics to add to the posed ones.

Homemade confetti

We had made our own confetti the previous summer, by drying rose petals in the oven and storing them in warm, dark and dry boxes. We decorated the boxes we stored it in with some shiny red paper from Oxfam (again – they did well out of us!) to make pretty serving boxes to pass round for guests to pick out handfuls from.  And it was so beautiful, the colours were preserved really well.

The cherry tree in the churchyard decided to add to our confetti and showered us with blossom as soon as we stepped out of the church, which was VERY cute.  It made a wonderful backdrop to the photos too.

Love,

Helen and Mike

We had a general theme for the wedding called “sweet peas”.  I did at first intend to have sweet peas everywhere.  This soon developed into a colour scheme of  green and purpleish nuances.

As for the sweet peas, my mother planted some in early April, kept them in the greenhouse, nurtured them and talked to them and of course they blossomed three days after the wedding.

Oh well, they were lovely shades of green on the wedding day and it all helped decorate the tent anyway.

Table decorations

For the decorations I had a vision, inspired by the book ‘Simple Stunning Weddings’, where one of the ideas was a collection of old vases with different flowers.

This idea appealed to me because it looked simple and elegant and could be done with minimum effort on a budget. We made a deal with the local florist that she would get flowers from the market in the right colours. This way we got what was in season at a very reasonable price. For the vases we used what my mother had lying around and topped these up with vases from local charity shops.

On each table we put a single flower stem in a high narrow vase, a little bouquet in a medium height vase and a little bouquet of a green herb (different one for each table) in a low, small vase.

We also had three tea lights (soy candles) on each table in glasses of three different heights for when it got dark.

The wedding bouquet

I also had the idea of having a simple, tight bunch of lavender as a bouquet. I would then wind around the stems the ribbon from my grandmother’s wedding bouquet from the ’40s.

Unfortunately, my mother’s lavender died before the wedding, causing another worry for her. 

It did not faze me, however. I just made a lovely bouquet of the leftover flowers from the decorations and tied my grandmother’s ribbon around it. I was very happy with the result.

Flexible flower arranging

At the end of the day I was really happy with all the flowers at the wedding. We used very few seasonal, cut flowers for the decoration and bouquet and mostly decorated the tent and garden with potted plants and flowers.

I think the flowers reflect the rest of the wedding preparations. I would get an idea, which we would use as a guideline. But we never made any plans set in stone, which meant that nothing could really go wrong. We had the most perfect wedding because we never tried to force it to be perfect.

Henriette
Read more ethical wedding posts from Henriette

I’d like to share my ideas with you – brides and grooms trying to plan a wedding less ordinary – and see what you think.  How has it been for you?  What have been the challenges? What have been the triumphs? If you were starting again, would you go for a green wedding again?

Have a read… and let us have your comments.  Here goes:

Back in 2004 when we were planning our own wedding and planting the first seeds for the Ethical Weddings website we asked people what they thought of the idea of a green or ethical wedding (limiting environmental impact, choosing products and services that give something back: fair trade, organic, local). The usual response was: won’t that be more expensive?

Fast forward 5 years and into one deep, dark recession you’d expect that misconception to have landed the green wedding squarely in the compost bin.

Not so. Because the bevy of ethical brides and green grooms who have trod lightly down the aisle since have shown us that if you’re after a green wedding less really is more. It’s a perfect match for the make do and mend spirit revived by our current crunch.
As we all cut back, the big star-for-a-day, broke-ever-after wedding is going down.

Something borrowed

There’s no longer any shame in sharing (something borrowed?) or secondhand – just type ‘wedding’ into your local Freecycle site and you’ll find brides and mothers-of seeking and offering wedding gowns, bridesmaid dress patterns, cake stands, and more. And don’t forget the rage for all things vintage which makes a charity shop wedding gown the ultimate in eco chic.

DIY weddings

In the effort to curb costs, couples discover doing-it-yourself can be a lot of fun and bring family and friends together. Blogger brides on the Ethical Weddings website suggest tips on everything from grow-your-own bridal flowers to cooking up the wedding breakfast. As Henriette says of catering for her 40-guest wedding:

“It was all down to good planning (yes, I had made a spreadsheet!) and choosing food which could nearly all be made a day in advance. […] it was a great success with food far better than we ever would have been able to pay for if we had hired caterers. And it was a lovely thing for our families to do together.”

Meanwhile, Jenny grew daffs, crocuses and primroses in her garden. These “…made great table and floor decorations which are living on in gardens and conservatories.”

Green brides don’t mind getting their hands dirty!

Ethical and green wedding experts

DIY done, it’s time to turn to the growing number of ethical and green wedding specialists for your nuptial needs – whether that’s organic, handcrafted chocolate favours, a pre-loved, re-fashioned wedding dress or perhaps a rickshaw to get you to the church on time. They won’t add ££s at the whisper of the word ‘wedding’ but will work with your budget to help create the wedding of your dreams without compromising your values.

Loving local

Support local suppliers too – even if they’re not yet waving the green flag. You may find them willing to consider fresh ideas in difficult times. Ethical Weddings blogger, Emma says:

“We’ve found that so many people are willing to change details of their standard products to fit in with our ethics – you just need to ask. Joy [wedding cake maker] is a great example. She’d been wanting to “go ethical” and just needed someone to ask her to do it.

A wedding to remember

It seems the slump has made us more careful about if and how we use our hard-earned cash. We’re getting down with DIY and spending with businesses that share our values. The payoff? A more personal and memorable day for us and a little something back for our poor put-upon planet.

The green wedding is here to stay!

Katie

Name: Beatriz Custodio-Strachan
Location: Blairgowrie – Scotland

Tell us a bit about yourself and your business
I grew up watching the women in my family create beauty with flowers. Photos that are reminders of this have always surrounded me in every home I’ve ever lived in.

In my shop I sell flowers that are fragrant and beautiful, each stem is unique and each design I create is unique too.

My business comes from wanting to create beauty with flowers that have been produced without damaging the environment by ethical growers, I do this every day and it makes my customers and me happy.

What or who inspires you?
Photos of my Great-grandmother, my Grandmother and my mother with armfuls of flowers, the beautiful flowers I work with, the brides themselves who come into my shop and care so much about making a difference, my children and their laughter.

On the environmental side I am inspired by my determination to make a difference and protect our beautiful planet for future generations.

I am also inspired by suppliers, the flowers and plant growers, who are as passionate as I am about producing flowers that have been grown in an ethical and eco-friendly way.

What do you enjoy most about running your business?
I love doing weddings, the whole romance of it, the dreams and the love I see but most of all being able to create beauty with fantastic flowers that are fragrant and natural. I really enjoy delivering flowers because no matter what mood the recipient is in as soon as I present them with a bouquet of flowers someone has sent to them their faces are transformed!

It never ceases to amaze me the joy that flowers bring to a person’s life, I see it so clearly when I deliver flowers to someone. I also enjoy meeting people who care as much as I do about the environment and the ethical issues surrounding the flower industry.

What is the most challenging aspect?
Helping people understand the difference between my flowers and those that they can buy in other establishments.

Encouraging people to have confidence in the flowers that are grown in the UK.

Trying to get customers to understand the consequences of buying 20 roses for £4 on the lives of the workers in the fields in South America and why buying one rose for £4 that has been grown in the UK makes a difference to the environment.

It is very challenging to stand up day in day out for these principles in a small community that has always done things one way and that way alone; I hope that this is slowly changing as we all continue to support ethical and environmental issues.

What do you feel you bring to an ethical wedding?
I offer couples the opportunity to have beautiful flowers that have been grown naturally without chemicals or pesticides with 0 airmiles. Unique and fragrant flowers made into designs that have been created with their personalities in mind. I offer flowers to feel proud of!!

How do you see the wedding industry changing over the next five years (if at all)?
I see more and more couples wanting to make a positive difference and to have a wonderful wedding without damaging the environment. I see the wedding industry becoming more aware of the difference that can be made by choosing a positive option and doing things in an ethical and environmentally conscious way.

Find out more about Butterflies of Blairgowrie – locally-grown seasonal wedding bouquets

Marrying in March means some of my home-grown decorations will be spring bulbs – daffodils and crocuses to bloom alongside my cyclamen and primroses, along with plenty of foliage and borrowed pot plants.

September, I have learned, is the month for planting your spring bulbs. So this weekend I was out buying crocus and daffodil bulbs in large quantities!  I have amassed a number of terracotta pots from Freecycle (the online community where people give away unwanted things to neighbours who can make use of them).  I also bought a few large terracotta pots from the local garden centre and I now have enough pots to put one small pot on each table, two on the top table, and a few large ones either side of the ‘aisle’ we have created in our big wedding room.

One of my big worries is that the bulbs will flower a few days too early or too late for my big day on March 15.  So I have bought some that describe themselves as ‘early flowering – February to March’ and some that flower ‘Spring – March to April’.  A bag of 90 early flowering crocus bulbs is £5 at the moment and miniature daffs are 30 for £5.  With some early flowering and some later-flowering varieties, my hope is that at least some (!) will definitely be flowering on the day.

We will also then have loads of pots of spring flowers – great presents for wedding helpers, and great for brightening up the house and the patio.

I spent yesterday planting them all in the pots and I have bought some winter flowering pansies which I have planted on top of the bulbs.  So at the moment I have a row of pots of winter pansies on the patio – colour all winter and then more to come in spring when the bulbs come up, hopefully!  I am also told that the pansies, if sheltered from frost, may flower a second time in spring – giving me another burst of colour that I can make use of in the decorations, hopefully.

Organising the rest of the flowers and foliage is the next job.  Plugs of primroses and cyclamen for the tables, and more trailing ivy from the cuttings we took back in July.  It’s a bit of a worry imagining it all failing to flower or being caught by frost, but I will just have to look after them all as well as I can and keep them in the house during the depths of winter.  And if the worst comes to the worst and I have to buy more plants before the day – well, at least I will have learned a lot about growing spring flowers!

We are hoping that by March we will have many long ivy tendrils which we can plant alongside the primroses, daffodils and cyclamen in our table pots, to provide living decorations all around our wedding hall.

Last week we went with our parents to look around the hall where the wedding will be held and agree where all the floor standing plants, which we are borrowing from the conservatories of our friends and family – should be placed. It was exciting looking at the platform where we will hold the ceremony but it is hard to imagine it decorated with plants at the moment!

I now need to start making willow obelisks for us to grow ivy up so that we have some green, leafy pillars to get married in between. Has anyone else got any ideas for green and eco-friendly decorations? How have others made their wedding venues look nice?

So that’s exactly where I started my little potted flowers, and today I’m so excited to report my very first bright red poppy! This is just about the prettiest thing I’ve ever successfully grown, so I’m quite proud. Unfortunately, it’s going to take more than one poppy to create 5 bouquets and a dozen centerpieces so I’ve called for back-up.

I’m lucky to live not too far from California Organic Flowers who will be supplementing my decor with a wedding package of about 20 bunches of various flowers, freshly picked from their garden. I love that it’s a husband and wife team, and that I’ll be directly supporting the farmers (and their pesticide-free methods!)

There’s a growing number of sources for organic flowers for those who are interested. In the U.S. Organic Bouquet has been getting a lot of buzz, though they mainly specialize in gift bouquets. The UK’s answer to gifts of cut flowers is Organic Flower Company.

Local Harvest will help you find an organic flower farm in your area, if you’re in the U.S. And this organic food directory lists a number of UK options.

Fantastic… except for one thing. Now that I have this lovely flower, the idea of cutting it off and watching it wither makes me a little sad. I started wondering about whether it’s even ethical at all to use cut flowers. In retrospect I wish I’d maybe gone the potted plant route for centerpieces. It’s amazing how creating something gives you a whole new appreciation for its life.