March 29, 2024

Planning your wedding is a once-in-a-lifetime experience. If you want to make it extra special, you may want to throw an engagement party to celebrate your love and commitment to each other. Of course, you’d want your family and friends to be present to witness this incredible milestone in your lives as a couple.

However, grand engagement parties tend to lean towards excessive celebrations. Therefore, plenty of leftover food is thrown away, and even excess flowers will wilt in the garbage bin. The waste can be too much, but that does not mean you should forgo having an engagement party.

Fortunately, there are eco-friendly ways to help you commemorate your unforgettable day. We’ve gathered some handy tips to help with your sustainability efforts while ensuring you have a splendid time with your loved ones.

Start with Your Venue

It is nice to hold your engagement party somewhere you can relax and unwind. I suggest traveling to the countryside or arranging a weekend getaway in a quiet, intimate setting. However, this will compel you and your guests to travel. Driving to the venue can contribute to CO2 emissions, especially if each guest is bringing a car.

The trick here is to find someplace that is local. This way, you won’t have to drive far, making it easier for your guests to attend the celebration. You may also encourage them to take public transportation, which will help reduce the carbon footprint further. But if public transportation is not that effective, then you can talk to everyone and ask them to consider car sharing.

On another note, there are bound to be venues that support eco-friendly practices. For example, the building has installed solar power to reduce electricity reliance. They might also support their staff by providing the best working conditions for their employees and using sustainable materials for their facility.

Shop Sustainable Items

An engagement party is not complete without the perfect ring and outfits. The easiest route is to find the nearest jeweler and find the ring of your dreams. But if you want to take your sustainability efforts further, you may want to consider shopping for a gorgeous vintage, secondhand ring instead.

This will ensure a one-of-a-kind, eco-friendly ring that you can truly customize. Sometimes, you may even arrange to melt down the gold ring and refine it to the design and style you want. If you prefer to have a diamond as the stone for your ring, you have to make sure that you have tracked its origin. Some diamonds come from mines with unfavorable conditions that exploit child labor to produce such gems.

If you want to take it further, consider lab-created stones. No mining is involved, so it does not cause harm to the earth. Socially responsible jewelry is a thing nowadays.

Pick the Props with Care

Your engagement party comes with all sorts of props to make the event memorable. For example, you will be preparing floral arrangements and invitations. Instead of printing invitations, you might send them electronically to reduce your environmental impact. An actual, physical invitation might be more personal and sentimental, but this method is easier to implement and won’t generate more waste.

Plus, it will be just as memorable for them to receive a virtual invitation from you, especially if you make it a point to personally send a unique message for them to read before they open the link to your invitation.

Also, regarding the venue’s appearance, you may want to avoid using too many decorations that will go to waste. You can incorporate it into the setting if you are close to nature. Instead of bringing in excessive flowers for the floral arrangement, you could use potted plants and shrubs.

Choose Your Food

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Eco-friendly Engagement Party 1
Photo by cottonbro studio via Pexels.

You’d like to keep your food simple, sufficient, and seasonal. Fancy three-course meals might be excellent, but an engagement party does not have to be that splendid. Preparing food that your guests will enjoy ensures that nothing goes to waste and that they will enjoy every bite. Maybe you want to opt for a buffet-style meal of foods they all chose before the party.

You will want to minimize food waste as much as possible. Finalizing your guest list ahead of time helps prepare enough food for everyone. Like the venue, choosing local and seasonal ingredients might be better, reducing the need to bring your food from a distance and lessening the probability of transporting them.

Set a Guide for Gifts

It is not surprising to find loved ones bringing gifts to mark the occasion. You may let them know ahead of time what your preferences are. Maybe it is better to encourage them to choose sustainable gift options that will not go to waste and are friendlier to the environment. Solar lights and bamboo toothbrushes come to mind.

If you have a new home, you will be moving into after the wedding. You may ask them to buy you the items you will need instead. This way, you will only receive valuable gifts. They will be happier to know that you will be using their gifts.

Read more: How to Get Your Yard Ready for a Backyard Wedding.

Make Memories the Eco-Friendly Way

It is always a delight to celebrate occasions of any kind, even more so when it comes to weddings and engagement parties. An eco-friendly engagement event with intimate family and friends will do so much for the environment, allowing you to do your part while making memories of a lifetime. If you want to keep it eco-friendly and fully support sustainability efforts, these tips will help you with every step.