ethicalweddings.com

Last weekend I went to watch two of my greenest friends get married.  Andy and Jane live on a smallholding with Andy’s parents, and together the family grow their own vegetables, keep sheep and chickens, make their own wine and beer and produce a lip-smackingly good honey with their own bees.

Andy and Jane, keen kayakers, are now on a honeymoon on the Isle of Skye – preparing to paddle to the Western Hebrides.  It’s just not a holiday if they don’t fit a challenge in somewhere!

Their civil wedding took place in a nearby licensed room and was followed by a buffet in their local pub.  Andy and Jane walked into the dining room through an archway of paddles that we held above their heads – and the wedding cake, made and beautifully decorated by Andy’s Mum, featured tiny wooden paddles as a decoration.

In each guest’s place was a wooden napkin ring, hand-turned by the groom himself on his pole lathe.  And when we all walked back to the family home, an evening of live music from a local band, barn dancing and hog-roasting kept everybody entertained until the small hours.  A bar well-stocked with home made wine and local beer and a table groaning with homemade salads and roast pork made for a fabulous local feast.

In fact, local food, local services and careful planning made Andy and Jane’s wedding very green indeed.  But the interesting thing to me was that they didn’t make it green deliberately – that is simply the way they live. And many people at the wedding were very impressed by how unusual and ingenious some of the touches were.

Jane’s dress, a real head-turner in flowing champagne-coloured silk, was from Oxfam, and I saw lots of people look surprised when they found out.

“But it’s lovely!” I heard someone say.  And when I commented that it is very eco-friendly to get your dress from a charity shop and ‘re-use’ rather than make a new one, somebody else said: “Well yes… It’s a great idea actually.  But who would THINK of it?! It just wouldn’t occur to me to even look there!  Perhaps I will now!”

In many ways, I think it can be surprisingly easy to make your choices a bit more ethical.  Andy and Jane are very lucky – their families share their lifestyle and their home lends itself very easily to putting on a party without a lot of wasted resources.  And I know they all worked extremely hard to make the day such a success. But their wedding probably demostrated to quite a few people what could be achieved with a small budget, simply by making the most of local surroundings. 

Now I just hope they get to make the most of the Western Hebrides too, when they get there – after  a wedding, a barn dance and a kayak trip all the way from Skye, they will need a rest!