My big fat green wedding

Don’t want the wedding industry to hijack your special day? Lucy Siegle explores the scope for getting married in style without stitching up your ethics.

Everyone I knew seemed to be getting hitched. The ‘wedding season’ became a blur of John Lewis gift lists, leaky marquees, and journeys to villages with names out of Miss Marple - with precious little to distinguish these ‘unforgettable’ nuptials from one another.

When my turn came, I was determined to do things differently, and somehow distance mine from the consumerist jamboree.

The concept of the ‘ethical wedding’ didn’t really exist at the time, so we were left to feel our way, doing what seemed natural. We did our fair share of trekking round country-style hotels. With hindsight, those perfectly manicured lawns using vast quantities of water, herbicides and petrol mowers were ecologically unsound, but that wasn’t why I turned them down. I just didn’t like their style - preferring the long grass and funny sculptures of the slightly dilapidated Hazelwood Hoouse in Devon, whose owners run charitable projects  ( www.hazelwoodhouse.com). The region’s got some great organic food - we wanted to show that off. And Hazelwood just happened to have a wind-powered water pump.

Six years on, I’m just starting to see weddings that not only look a bit like my own, but go further into such territory as the charitable gift list, the conflict-free wedding band and the biodegradable confetti.

As you might expect, couples who work in the ethical sector are finding it particularly pertinent to try and put together an ethically motivated big day - the antithesis of consumerist weddings with an average £17,249 price tag (according to You and Your Wedding magazine).

When I spoke to Liz White from Forum for the Future, she admitted that she had been “a control freak” about it all. But 24 hours before the big day there wasn’t a hint of Bridezilla behaviour in her calm, measured tone - perhaps another benefit of removing some of the consumerist expectations. “I went to one wedding fair after we got engaged,” she says, “but I found it hard to get enthused; it was completely tied into unsustainable consumption.”

So Liz followed some tips from her elder sister’s wedding a couple of years ago. “Instead of presents, guests could contribute to part of the day, by paying for the bouquet or whatever, or they could donate their time via an internet site she had put up.”

“Suppliers pretty much understand what organic and local means by now.”

The food side proved to be pretty easy, for, as she says, “Suppliers pretty much understand what organic and local means by now.” The couple also chose to offset the carbon emissions generated by their wedding through a £150 wedding offset package from Climate Care. But some aspects were just too challenging. “OK, I didn’t take an unflinching ethical route,” says Liz, confessing to the odd fake tanning session. And some things didn’t work out. “The fairly traded silver wedding rings we had to buy over the internet weren’t exactly what I wanted, and the organic or recycled dresses were very disappointing. Initially I wanted to go the vintage route, but they are just too tiny.”

Cue James Dorrell, environmental consultant, and his wife Blanca, who are launching a collection of wedding dresses made in socially responsible and audited workshops under their Whiteleaf label.  "It is really strange when you think about it,” he says, “that when women are buying the dress for the happiest day of their lives, which is often the most expensive garment they will buy, it could well have been made by someone in the most desperate of conditions. It’s not a good fit with many people’s beliefs and principles.”

Whiteleaf wasn’t around in time for Katie Abbott’s wedding earlier this summer. For her, though, hitting the right note for the big day was about creating an inclusive experience. “It wasn’t so much that my wedding was incredibly environmentally sound, but more anti-consumerist. I took the view that I didn’t need to order Waitrose sandwiches when I could make them myself. My aunt baked the bread, my mum grew the flowers and my brother did the music. It takes quite a lot of patience because you have to ask people to get involved, but the basic premise was that love and hard work can save a lot of cold hard cash.”

“Donating a camel to poor nomadic tribes is a terribly jolly wedding present, because buying camels is like a bride price.”

She also knew all about ethical alternatives to the gift list. Today, it’s camels and milking cows, destined for communities in the developing world, that are gaining ground over dinner services and crystal glass. Katie, who works for Oxfam in campaigns and marketing, gave her own list over to the charity’s Oxfam Unwrapped service, for which the take-up has risen threefold in the last year (www.oxfamunwrapped.com). Hilary Blume, whose Good Gifts list (www.goodgifts.org ) has similarly soared in popularity, thinks guests like it too. “Donating a camel to poor nomadic tribes in Somalia and Ethiopia at £100 is a Good Gift best seller and terribly jolly wedding present, because buying camels is like a bride price.”

When sustainability communications consultant David Willans married Katherine Mautner this summer the guests sat on hay bales borrowed from a local farmer, who found the whole idea quite amusing. “We looked at some venues,” says David, “but they didn’t offer any flexibility.”

“Jo and I wanted the whole event to encapsulate ‘us’, rather than simply grafting on greenery,” explains ‘just married’ David Bent, from Forum for the Future. Jo’s a keen gardener, so they sent out sweet pea seeds with the invitations and asked people to grow them for table decorations. “I think it’s fair to say that it did cause some panic. People would ask us how the wedding arrangements were coming along, and they’d tell us how well the sweet peas were doing - or not... The florists in Oxford had a run on sweet peas that day!”
He did admit to “feeling terrible” about the long haul flight to Madagascar for their honeymoon, despite trying to work out the best way to offset the carbon dioxide emissions. “I can only mitigate it by saying that this is to celebrate the start of our married lives together, and not something we intend to do every year.”

Katie Fewings doesn’t think couples should beat themselves up too much about air miles, as long as they have carefully researched the location, and chosen an accredited eco lodge that genuinely feeds money into the local community. Two years ago she went to Costa Rica for her honeymoon, arranged through Responsible Travel (www.responsibletravel.com) where she works four days a week. “We decided that this was the one big holiday we were going to do, and after that we’d take very few plane journeys.” The final day in her working week is reserved for her new business venture: www.ethicalweddings.com, an online directory cataloguing all UK ethically motivated wedding services and products. The forums are particularly lively. There’s more to aspire to than trundling down the aisle as a Berketex bride.

Lucy Siegle writes on environmental issues for The Guardian and The Observer.

8 November 2006

Lucy Siegle