Sustainable weddings are an important topic among wedding planners. Each year, more and more accountability is being placed on industry professionals to ensure each ‘special wedding day’ is proactively advocating for sustainability and the prevention of waste!
And, it’s not just the priority of industry professionals either. At Mallorca Boutique Weddings, many of our couples are also asking the golden question, “how can we ensure an environmentally-friendly wedding?”
Live Intentionally and Choose to Plan a Green Wedding?
Sustainable living means to live intentionally! Our daily choices as individuals, businesses, and communities must intentionally work towards protecting our planet and the environment. A wedding will often encounter purchasing lots of items, sometimes from afar, that may never be used again, equating to numerous elements every year that can be harmful to produce, transport, and decompose.
Although a wedding may never be 100% eco-friendly, small intentional improvements, through conscious planning and commitment, can create a perfect, yet environmentally-friendly day.
As industry professionals here in Mallorca, we are always looking for new ways to reduce our carbon footprint, support our local community, and work sustainably.
If a green wedding is high on your agenda, then take a look below at our current ideas, practices, and inspiration that will ensure your wedding is working towards a better planetary future.
Our Wedding Catering Team and Bars – Elimination of Single-Use Plastic
Catering teams, pop-up bars, and food and drink services that are contracted through Mallorca Boutique Weddings must eliminate single-use plastics, such as drinking straws, as our chosen providers. Eliminating single-use plastics is perhaps the easiest and most common first step, but one we deem as completely mandatory.
If our couples wish to serve special signature cocktails as their welcome drinks or as part of their special day, alternative biodegradable options can always be made available like bamboo, wheatgrass, metal, pasta, or paper straws.
Our Wedding Catering Team and Bars – Fresh Local and Seasonal Produce
We always recommend using catering services and menus that promote fresh, organic, and local produce. Food is one of the biggest elements of a great celebration. Choosing menus under a local seasonal produce category is better tasting, higher in nutritional value, helps to support the local island community, and significantly reduces our carbon footprint, ultimately protecting our environment.
Our main catering company, part of the Marc Fosh Restaurant in Mallorca, now has its very own ‘Fosh Farm’ set in the beautiful location of Finca Son Mir. Their Mediterranean, culinary garden, surrounded by red earth and olive trees, grows unique, seasonally appropriate crops using organic and sustainable techniques. While it is still the early days of their set-up, very soon their sustainable garden will be supplying most of the herbs and vegetables that you’ll find on your plate at Marc Fosh Restaurant and through their catering services.
Where ‘Fosh Farm’ is still preparing and cultivating, the company otherwise prefers to buy locally sourced products where ever possible, especially as the island is blessed with so many wonderful Mediterranean products.
Our Wedding Styling Team and Decoration – Recycle & Upcycle
We always choose to rent and reuse items. Our styling team and providers for wedding decoration are very proactive in ensuring the very best quality in tableware and decor. However, materials are strictly locally sourced and are chosen based on either being previously recycled or ones that can be reused or recycled afterward.
Our Wedding Styling Team and Decoration – Biodegradable Purchasing
Our providers are completely free-from-single-use-plastics. Policies include opting for biodegradable items over single-use plastic, including any form of balloons, and choosing natural or recycled paper confetti to reduce our pollution impact.
We are incredibly fond of dried flower petals in handmade recycled paper cones, they look simply magical and cause zero harm to the environment.
Our Wedding Styling Team and Decoration – Wedding Floristry
Wedding day flowers can come at a great expense to the environment. Floral design in such a large capacity needs to be farmed, chemically enhanced for preservation, and depending on your choice of flowers, transported long distances.
We understand certain flowers only grow in South Africa, and so forth, but if your keen to embrace a sustainable wedding, then we recommend opting for a seasonal floral arrangement that’s dictated by what’s available at the time, rather than flowers that need to be shipped internationally. We always recommend sourcing local flowers to reduce our carbon footprint. Gratefully, in the Mediterranean, this can equate to a lot of variety and some wonderful designs!
We also ask all couples if they would like to donate their floral arrangements back to our florists. Keeping floral designs and drying them out can make beautiful ongoing arrangements for future events. We can even arrange for your hand bouquet to be professionally pressed into framed art for a wonderful memory of your wedding day flowers.
Our Wedding Styling Team and Decoration – Paper & Stationary
We are always keen to reduce the amount of paper we use at weddings. Our writing programs, welcome boards, name placements, table numbers, and menus are almost always written on chalkboards, wood, or glass that can later be cleaned and reused for future events.
We highly recommend the use of digital invitations and save the date cards and even wedding group chats. The invitations can be created in a very beautiful format and will save hundreds of pages, paper, and trees collectively if all couples opted for the same method.
However, where couples do wish to use paper for particular details, we always encourage handmade or fully recycled paper options.
Natural Wedding Venues Mallorca
One of the best things about Mallorca is our beautiful estate farmhouse and grand-hotel wedding venues. Between the historical architecture, landscaped Mediterranean gardens, eclectic interior designs, and panoramic views, our venues are already perfected with natural adornment.
We can afford to keep a local-matching approach to floristry and offer a style that perfectly matches the natural backdrop on offer, without thinking too much about unnecessary extras.
Ethical Brides & Wedding Dress Suppliers Mallorca
Wedding dresses are often one of the least sustainable items of the entire wedding process. You’ll most likely only wear it once, and materials such as silk are the most resource-intensive, thus have the biggest impact on the environment.
Opt for a wedding dress designer with a carbon-neutral, eco-friendly ethos with zero-waste production practices, low-impact fabrics, who is a local business. Perhaps consideration could be paid towards renting, purchasing secondhand, or selling afterward and upcycling for another bride.
We personally recommend, especially for our German couples, Boutique LIEBE. Boutique LIEBE is a unique German Wedding Dress Boutique Store advocating for sustainable and ethical wedding fashion. Every design is handmade, providing both bridal wear and groom attire, including accessories which are all purchased sustainably and fairly in Germany.
A wedding Planner with Green Priorities
From your engagement to your venue, wedding dress, and decorations, it’s paramount to think intentionally and optimise our ability to work sustainably. As climate change becomes an ever more urgent issue, we must look at every element of our lives and ensure our wedding day is also creating lasting memories for our planet as we choose to be ethical and sustainable.
Planning Your Wedding Day in Palma de Mallorca?
At Mallorca Boutique Weddings we are here to ensure the most sustainable practices possible for your wedding. And, together we can innovatively create a beautiful and stylish wedding that is also kind to the planet.
Are you embarking on the destination wedding planning journey? Contact us at Mallorca Boutique Weddings and together we will create the unique and unforgettable experience that you have always dreamed of.
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