Ya’ll have no idea how excited I am to *finally* share the story of our sustainable wedding.

I want to preface that it is an extreme privilege that Brooks and I were able to have a wedding. They can be VERY expensive, therefore not making them accessible to all. Let alone the industry… I made a joke about the “W word.” Let’s say we wanted to order a cake. If we said it was a typical cake, it would be a certain price the second we said the “w word” the price went up nearly 5x! It’s an extremely frustrating and unjust practice in the wedding industry, therefore making it even less accessible. Brooks and I did pay for the wedding ourselves, it was definitely a big expense that we saved up for, and we acknowledge our privilege that we could use our money towards it.

The average wedding creates 400-600 pounds of waste, in just a couple of hours. I have worked weddings in the past where I saw full boxes of cookies thrown into the trash, and don’t get me started on the flowers… So when Brooks and I were planning our wedding, we wanted it to be an intentional, sustainable celebration because simply put, this is how we live. We recognized that a wedding is an opportunity to be fully expressed and create a display of our lives, inviting our community to celebrate in it.

From the venue, to the dress, to the favors, and every fun detail in between, I’ve outlined what we did, in hopes to spark some inspiration or ideas for you! But as a content creator, I probably speak better with video than words, so let’s start with our wedding video to paint a picture of what it looked like when it all came together:

Alright, let’s have some fun.

VENUE

A sustainable tip for the venue is to keep it as local as possible. Not only do your guests save money staying home after the event (vs. needing to book travel and accommodations) but less resources are used to get them there. So we started looking in the Southern California area, where the majority of our guests live.

The same went for our bachelorette / bachelor parties, and rehearsal dinner. For my bach, we went to Big Bear Lake and my besties threw a y2k Lizzie McGuire themed party of my dreams. And Brooks went backpacking in the Sequoias with his friends. Our rehearsal dinner was at a local coffee shop called Metro Cafe, where they turned their outdoor patio area into the perfect space for a garden pizza party of our dreams.

First things first, we knew we had to lock in a date. Brooks and I had been together for nearly 8 years before getting married, so we didn’t want a long engagement. And due to COVID the earliest dates some venues were offering were 2 years in advance.

A friend of ours had recommended looking at AirBnBs, so that’s what we did! We were able to find one that allowed events, and we created a separate contract to protect us and the wedding. While the space was absolutely beautiful, unfortunately I don’t feel comfortable sharing the name of the venue. We had a pretty poor experience with their team, last minute making changes and adding fees. To save you the headache and potential costs, I would not recommend this venue to anyone.

But the positive side of booking an AirBnb, we were allowed 14 guests to stay in the home the night before and night of the wedding. There was a buzz in the house that was so special! My mom intentionally made a huge breakfast spread for everyone both mornings, and we got to experience more intentional time together as a family.

Ideally, we would have the ceremony and reception in the same venue. Yet getting married in a church, we needed to transport our guests to the reception. We encouraged them to carpool, and provided an Uber code for the way up, and provided shuttle service for the return (dark, windy roads!). This was probably my least favorite / least sustainable element of the day, but we made it work!

INVITES

Since Brooks and I only gave our guests about 100 days notice of the wedding, we skipped “save the dates” and just sent invites. Our insanely creative & talented friends Taylor & Tim helped us produce an invitation video (watch the full thing here) which we then created a QR code for. We explain how we put it all together in this IG reel.

We love the novelty of snail mail, but didn’t want to create waste from using new / virgin paper, so we printed the QR code on reused vintage postcards and sent them to our guests.

VENDORS (or as I like to call them, “FRIENDORS” )

We are so fortunate to have an amazing, creatively talented group of friends who made our wedding come to life. This was by far my favorite part of the wedding. It made it feel like a community project where everyone got to contribute their skills and talents to the day, and it was such a gift to get to experience them doing what they do so well. All of these “friends” are available for hire, so I will link their sites so you can check them out if you want to work with them too!

Planner: My best friend Mackenzie from Details Darling is an AMAZING wedding planner, and helped us review our plans, and give us access to Aisle Planner which helped us with our checklist and seating chart. Her college Kayla managed our wedding day with such peaceful leadership, and was the point-of-contact for all of the vendors.
Photographer: My talented friend Hallie shoots photos, and she made us feel so comfortable in front of the camera, so naturally we hired her to shoot the wedding!
Video Team: My dear friend Connor from Foreword Films, we used to work together, and he generously offered to shoot video for our big day (and his footage brings me to tears every time!) Connor gave me the footage and I personally edited together the final video (which is a miracle in itself)
Hair & Makeup: My great girlfriends Sarah, Brielle, and Helen did hair and makeup for me and all the girls on the morning of.
Musician: Our friend Hans and Gwyneth have voices of angels, they beautifully sang at cocktail hour, and Hans performed our first dance song.
Emcee: Our hilarious friends Madison and Max are gifted on the mic, and emceed our rehearsal dinner and reception, making everyone belly laugh until they cried happy tears.
DJs: We hired Mike Robbins to DJ the reception, and then we busted out silent disco headphones from Silent Disco Rental and our DJ friends Moxie, Wesley Weekends, and Rossum dueled the red and blue channels for the silent disco.

FOOD

Brooks and I are both plant-based, so it meant a lot to us to serve plant-based food at our wedding. We kept asking ourselves, “why would we serve something we wouldn’t eat at our own wedding?!” We both love Mexican food, and with some research for vegan, Mexican catering companies in LA, we found Cena Vegan. Carmen, the founder of the company, is an absolute angel, and took such good care of us. We share the same values of sustainability, being connected to plants and people, and the beauty of a shared, delicious meal.

We shared the mindset around food waste, wanting to avoid it all cost, so we served the food buffet style, avoiding guests from having too much unwanted food on their plates, and they could always go up for seconds (thirds, or fourths, lol) Her team served nachos as an appetizer on compostable coconut filter plates, and for dinner we had a buffet of three different plant proteins that they make from scratch: Carnitas, Pollo Asado, and Carne Asada, with salad, rice, beans, tortillas, salsas, and guacamole. With whatever was left after the buffet, they wrapped into burritos, that came in handy after four hours of dancing!

We ordered our cake and cupcakes from Top Tier Treats, a local vegan bakery in LA. We ordered the cake plain, and my sister pressed dried flowers into it.

RENTALS & STAFF

Something about the wedding industry that is already pretty sustainable, are the rentals. From tables, to chairs, to plates, and forks, these items will be reused several times across loads of weddings. While researching, we came across an amazing sustainable event company called The Rolling Hero. They provide rentals and staffing services, and offer responsible waste sorting on-site, and take everything back with them to make sure it’s properly recycled and composted. Brilliant! Tommy is the owner of the company, and he is an absolute pleasure to work with. 10/10 recommend!

FLOWERS

Second to food, flowers are extremely wasteful at weddings. The majority of flowers sold in the US come from Colombia and Ecuador. Which require refrigerated planes to transport them across the world, refrigerated trucks to get them to distribution centers and warehouses, all before they make it to the event, only to be thrown out a couple hours later? Immediately no.

We wanted to avoid unethical, wasteful, imported, cut flowers. So instead we had potted plants on each of the tables as centerpieces. We spent months collecting pots from family, friends, and thrift shops, and sources the flowers from our local nursery. My amazing mama helped me plant the flowers, and kept them watered in her garden leading up to the wedding. That way the flowers lived way long before and after the wedding, even some are planted in the front of our house and I get to look at them everyday.

We did however, purchase two buckets of cut pollinator flowers from our local regenerative farm, The Ecology Center. My bridesmaids and I put them in thrifted vases the night before the wedding. My bouquet also came from The Ecology Center, Carra did an amazing job of putting all of the local and seasonal flowers together. To make it a full circle, after the wedding we sent my bouquet to The Printed Paige, and she pressed my bouquet into a frame that now hangs in our bedroom. And this next part brings me to tears… For Christmas, my older sister (who took home the vases of flowers after the wedding) dried out all of the flowers and made us a wreath. She also collected the seeds from the flowers as they dried, and gave us a jar of them, so someday we can replant the same flowers that we had at our wedding. The intentionality compares to none!

A fun little project was when we foraged local flowers and greenery to make boutonnieres for the guys, which came out super cute! And the eucalyptus we laid across the main table, we foraged from a tree in the parking lot of our gym (lol)

DECOR

Since the backdrop of the venue was a beautiful ocean view, we knew we didn’t need much for decorations. We thrifted everything from candle sticks, to battery operated candles (no active flames in Malibu during fire season!), to the vases, frames, guest book, flower pots, and more. The one that blew my mind was when I found a mirror with “appetizers and cocktails this way” painted on it, for $6 at my local thrift shop. Perfect!

The only thing we didn’t rent from The Rolling Hero, was the wine / cocktail glass for the table setting. Yes, we thrifted 150 glasses for each of our guests! This was actually super fun, as none of them matched and it added some color and personality to the table. We told our guests to take the glasses home as a wedding favor, and I still get the occasional text of our friends drinking out of them in their homes.

DRESS & OTHER FASHION THINGS

Some new wedding dresses cost the same amount of a used car?! No way. Especially now that fast fashion brands are getting into the wedding space, exploiting their garment workers and reaping the profits. When I was looking at used dresses online, my (now) mother-in-law Mary Beth offered me to wear her wedding dress from the 80s. With some alterations from my local tailor Clemente, and a secondhand skirt from ReBridal, I was able to turn it into a fun dress that I loved! With the satin skirt that I didn’t use, I had table doilies made for Mary Beth for her home. You can watch this video for the full story about the dress!

I did splurge and treat myself to a pair of green strappy sandals from Alohas. And for rings, Brooks and I got each other wedding bands from the ethical jewelry company, Bario Neal.

To keep the wedding fashion sustainable, we told our wedding party to wear whatever they wanted, groomsmen in shades of navy, and bridesmaids in shades of sage and olive. As a thank you for everything they had done for me, I gifted the ladies robes from Le Buns and a locally handmade cup from Costa Mesa Ceramics.

REGISTRY

We knew it took folks a lot to come to our wedding, whether it was travel, taking time off work, hiring a sitter, or anything else, we didn’t expect gifts from our guests, as the best gift they gave us was celebrating together with our entire community! And since the majority of everything in our home came from family, friends, thrift shops, and even the curb, it didn’t feel right to make a list of new items for gifts. So instead we made “cash funds” that our guests could contribute to if they wanted.

IN CLOSING

Lastly, I think the best advice I could give (although it’s not too original) is YOU DO YOU. In my opinion, a wedding is a time to publicly declare how much you love your partner, invite your beloved community into that experience, eat your favorite foods, drink your favorite drinks, dance your butt off, and have a BLAST. If you want to wear blue or pink or black - DO IT! If you want to get married in the morning, or if you don’t like cake, or if you want to go to the courthouse - DO IT! This is your day, baby. My only loving request / recommendation is to do it in a way that’s not so harmful on people and planet.

That was a lot! Thanks for reading! Feel free to DM me or shoot me an email from my “contact” tab on this site if you have any questions.

boom, baby ⚡️