An Essex Wedding - Mar/Apr 2017 (Issue 79)

Green conscience According to a study by Count on Me, (countonme.today), the average UK wedding is now said to cost £25,000, but it’s not just the financial expense you should take in to account when planning your dream day. The same wedding in the UK will cost you between 14-26 tonnes of carbon. To put this into perceptive, a normal person in Britain will generate around 14 tonnes of carbon in a year. Michelle Marwood, events and new business coordinator, at award- winning Essex-based venue Hylands House, (hylandsestateweddings. co.uk) , talks us through ways to help make weddings more environmentally-friendly while retaining an elegant style. “We’ve all become more aware of the harm plastic is doing to the world. A recent study reported in The Guardian newspaper found that humans have produced 8.3bn tonnes of plastic since the 1950s, with the majority polluting our earth and oceans. “The growth in plastic production has been driven largely by packaging and the rise of single-use containers, wrapping and bottles, so try to keep packaging and other plastics at your wedding to the minimum. “Here are some tips on how to do this and make your wedding as exquisite and beautiful as our environment.” ♥ Desserts such as lollies and marshmallow treats can be supplied on wooden sticks, while icecreams can be served in paper tubs. ♥ Try not to use plastic glasses and certainly ditch the plastic straws in favour of paper ones. ♥ Put bars of soaps in the toilets, perhaps placed in nice hessian bags, decorated with flowers around them and remove plastic liquid soap containers. ♥ Give wedding favours that are not only natural but help our eco- system such as wildflower seeds in personalised paper packaging or, even better, in linen or hessian bags. ♥ Talking of seeds, why not ask guests to bring birdseed to throw instead of confetti? Your day can be one full of romantic memories and gestures. At the same time you will be doing your best to help save the planet. Food for thought ♥ If you’re eating Argentinian steak and drinking wine from New Zealand, your footprint won’t thank you for it. Try and keep your food as local as possible and, if you want to go the extra non- carbon mile, opt for organic or even vegan menus. ♥ Around 90 per cent of cut flowers are imported into the UK, choose regionally-grown, organic blooms to lessen the impact on the environment. ♥ Go with a venue that will recycle 100 per cent of your waste, or, of course, you can do this yourself. The average wedding generates over half a tonne of rubbish, so doing what you can will make a huge difference. Going for gold Would it really make a difference to your carbon footprint if you followed these guidelines? Using the same criteria as the previous calculations, Count on Me worked out the carbon emissions of a wedding at Bournemouth-based The Green House Hotel, (thegreenhouse hotel.co.uk ), and the results speak for themselves... ♥ This eco venue cuts your carbon emissions down to two tonnes, less than a third of what it would cost at a non-eco venue in the UK. Voted Best Green Hotel by Condé Nast this year, The Green House Hotel boasts private events rooms, beautiful gardens and is situated a stone’s throw from the stunning beach. The popular wedding package includes exclusive-use of this exquisite venue for the ceremony and wedding breakfast, invites guests to toast the happy couple with glasses of Dorset bubbly, sources ingredients ethically from a 50-mile radius of the top table and delivers all this in a fabulously restored Victorian villa, which has been voted the Number One Boutique Eco-Hotel in the world. Avoid flashing the plastic 82