Zero-Waste(ish) Wedding

In honour of the climate marches yesterday, I wanted to sit myself down and get a new blog post out. What have I been up to for the last few months? Aside from trying to avoid the general doom and gloom in the news, I’ve been planning a wedding.

It was slow going at first because I couldn’t figure out what I was trying to achieve with the day. So many things seemed frivolous and wasteful, both in money and resources. I was having trouble coming to terms with wedding culture in general. Part of the issue was that I started planning when I was only a few months postpartum, when the thought of crowds of people or a lot of attention was overwhelming. In any case, we finally decided on a low-key afternoon ceremony with a small group of our closest friends and family.

The next step was planning décor and outfits. Again, I wasn’t sure what to do about a wedding dress. On one hand, it felt hypocritical of me to buy a wedding gown that was only going to be worn once – the very definition of single-use! On the other hand, isn’t it supposed to be my special day? I settled on the idea of wearing a green evening gown that I had bought on a whim the year before. It was sitting in my closet unused and this seemed like the perfect chance to justify my impulse purchase. Now, some of you may have heard the rest of this story. I was set on wearing that green dress, except maybe I wasn’t. I decided that if I could find a wedding dress secondhand, I could have the best of both worlds. I nabbed the last appointment at a popup shop called Ecobrides, where I got to try on half a dozen dresses in my size from local brides who were selling their dresses. And I found one! (And it was a total surprise to my new husband, ha!)

I did my best to source the rest of my materials secondhand as well. For our afternoon wedding, we wanted to keep it fun with games and a candy bar. I spent many a trip to the thrift store checking out the aisles for good candy jars. I found about half of my jars there, along with a cute basket for cards and a napkin holder to use for the treat bags. I bought a CUPCAKE FERRIS WHEEL from Facebook Marketplace. Yes that’s a thing, apparently. Yes, it actually spins. I also reached out to my local Buy Nothing group for supplies and received a pile of crayons and gently used coloring books. I saved all our spaghetti sauce jars for months, scrubbed the labels off them and put little fairy lights inside to make lanterns to line the church aisle.

Not everything worked out according to plan. I ran short on time at the end and had to grab the rest of my candy jars at the store. Ditto with my plan to make flowers and a cake topper myself. I did some Dollar Store shopping for the decorative lace, the cake topper and the treat bags. We got a little extra and ordered personalized stickers for the treat bags. Another thing that I bought new was the flowers, but I went with Sola wood flowers. They are gorgeous and instead of being tossed aside the next day, I can keep them to brighten my home for years.

When I walked into the reception, I couldn’t believe how all of the scraps and odds and ends had come together to make such a beautiful wedding. I had been worried that the secondhand foraging might make things look cheap. Instead I thought it looked perfect. I feel like it was a lesson in expectations; our perception of how our parties and ourselves should look is so skewed by social media. The place didn’t need to be decked out in expensive flowers or have lavish centrepieces to make us happy. We had a wonderful time with each other and our friends and at the end of the day didn’t have to feel as though we had made any compromises.