Sustainability

We adore weddings, however, sadly weddings can be incredibly wasteful, from the amount of paper used, the volume of food that goes to waste and the air miles of suppliers and guests. It all adds up, especially when you think of the number of weddings happening around the world at any one time.

At Matthew Oliver Weddings we are committed to doing what we can to improve the sustainability of weddings to reduce the impact weddings have on the environment. But what are we actually doing about it?

We are completely digital at Matthew Oliver Weddings, no printing of contracts, no hard copies of quotes and even our wedding event schedules we keep digital. For guests' wedding stationery we often encourage going digital for the Save the Dates and RSVPs, with tangible stationery ideally being printed on recycled or seeded card. Where this isn't possible we like trees to be planted to offset the paper being used.

With food wastage, we work closely with venues and couples to ensure we are being realistic with our food orders, so there is certainly enough, but we are smart with it. Avoiding guests being able to choose their food at the wedding, for example, in this scenario kitchens need to have far more of each food option available than will be consumed. This can be avoided simply by requesting menu choices with the RSVPs.

The big one is travel; mileage and Airmiles are a huge contributor to carbon emissions for weddings, but what can we do? Quite often it can't be avoided, especially where destination weddings are concerned, as the planners we fly in, the guests fly in, often a number of the suppliers will fly in. We always look local for suppliers, but often flying suppliers in is the best decision for the wedding. So there is little we can do to prevent the emissions from being generated, but we can certainly look to offset them. We try to travel with airlines that already do this (such as EasyJet) and where we can't we donate money to companies dedicated to planting new trees, fighting deforestation and driving the uptake of renewable energy. These projects either avoid the creation of new carbon elsewhere or directly remove carbon from the atmosphere. We know carbon offsetting is not a long term solution, but we believe it is the best way, at current, to do our part for the planet.

So there you have it, a little of what we have introduced into our business practices and trying to introduce to our weddings, to keep our beautiful planet green for as long as possible!