When sustainable-living website founder Tara Button got married, she wanted to do it in style, and without wasting a thing. Hence paperless invitations, a preloved dress, recycled wedding rings and much, much more…
Tara and Howard on their wedding day at Brocket Hall
The rings
The couple’s wedding bands and Tara’s engagement ring were made from her father-in-law’s diamond ring and old hat pins
My fiancé Howard Cohen proposed while we were away in New York but he told me that he wanted to make my engagement ring from his late father’s diamond ring. Howard’s dad Geoff died before I met him and I loved the idea that he would be with us this way. We took his ring to ethical and Fairtrade British jeweller Joy Everley (joyeverley.co.uk), who collaborated with us on designs.
Joy works directly with a Canadian mine, and only uses recycled or Fairtrade gold. We settled on using the diamond from Geoff’s ring along with two little ones on either side from old hatpins that Joy provided, so they were reused, too. We melted the gold from Geoff’s ring to create Howard’s wedding band, and we used the other diamond from my late father-in-law’s band to make a ring for Howard’s mother.
The invitations
All our save-the-dates and invitations were sent by Paperless Post (paperlesspost.com), apart from one to my 90-year-old grandmother, who insisted on having it printed for her mantelpiece. On the website you can design gorgeous invitations that create no waste, and it cost just £62 to send out 130.
If you’d rather send paper ones, look for an eco-friendly stationer, such as Paper Tree (papertree.co.uk), which uses recycled materials. Or you could try Wildflower Favours (wildflower-favours.co.uk), which makes eco invitations with seeds embedded in them, so your guests can plant them in their gardens.
The flowers
The centrepieces were orchid plants gifted to love ones
Instead of spending a fortune on floral arrangements that would be thrown away at the end of the day, we used plants that could be gifted to the important people in our lives. We had orchids on the tables which looked elegant and can last for 15 years. In the church a jasmine arch spanned the aisle – from crowntopiary.co.uk – which my mother planted in her garden afterwards. The bouquets for myself and my bridesmaids were from The Land Gardeners (thelandgardeners.com), two women who specialise in local, organic flowers who were located close to the venue, so the flowers didn’t travel from far afield, such as Holland, as many cut blooms do. My mum, sister-in-law and her mother made the confetti – they were microwaving rose petals from their gardens for months.
The venue and decor
At the wedding breakfast there were no throwaway napkins, seat plans or menus
Our wedding breakfast took place in Brocket Hall, a Georgian stately home in Welwyn, Hertfordshire. It’s so ornate it needed no embellishments to make it look beautiful. If you have a plainer venue, try not to buy decorations that will be thrown away. Handmade fabric bunting and lanterns are a lovely option because they can be brought out at all your future parties, so that they live on far beyond the wedding.
The wedding breakfast
The biscuit place cards doubled up as wedding favours
There were no throwaway napkins, seating plans, menus or place cards at our wedding. Our nephews milled around with iPads showing the seating plan and we went without menus.
As for place settings, my superhuman friend iced 130 biscuits with people’s names on them. These doubled as both table name tags and wedding favours and were gobbled up, so we didn’t end up with 130 ribbons and cards going in the bin. If you don’t have such a friend, beautiful biscuits can be bought from The Kitsch Hen (the-kitsch-hen.co.uk), which uses local, Fairtrade and organic ingredients wherever possible – and avoids excess packaging when sending out biscuits. Our venue had linen napkins, but if yours doesn’t Northfields linen hire (linenforhire.co.uk) has made a particular effort to be eco-friendly.
The bridesmaids’ dresses
The bridesmaids’ dresses were picked so that they could be worn again
So many bridesmaids wear their dresses only once, which is such a waste. I gave mine a budget of £200 and told them to buy any dress they liked, in white or ivory. The only stipulation was that they like it enough to wear it again in the future. They were delighted and looked beautiful.
The dress
Tara’s wedding dress was a sample
I was keen to find a dress that was second-hand but in the end I fell for one that had been worn in photo shoots but was almost pristine. It was by designer Caroline Castigliano and was handmade ethically here in the UK.
There are so many shops selling great vintage wedding dresses. I particularly like Abigail’s Vintage Bridal (abigailsvintagebridal.co.uk) and Open For Vintage (openforvintage.com). You can also buy second-hand dresses at Oxfam – or on sites such as Ebay and Preloved.co.uk.
But if you’d prefer to buy new, then there are designers who work with eco fabrics and ensure that they are made in ethical factories. Sanyukta Shrestha (sanyuktashrestha.com), Celia Grace (celia-grace.com) and Julie Dutton (juliedutton.co.uk) all have beautiful gowns made from eco fabrics, created in fair working conditions. I’m now planning to donate my wedding dress to Angel Gowns (angelgowns.chauglie.com), where it will be made into burial gowns for stillborn babies.
Dresses can be altered or dyed to make them into evening gowns or cocktail dresses (try thedressdoctor.co.uk). You can also donate them to Gift of a Wedding (giftofawedding.org), a charity that helps people with incurable illnesses have a beautiful day.
The shoes
Tara’s go-with-anything wedding shoes
I wore my wedding shoes to a party before I even got married – they were a pair of sparkly heels from Jimmy Choo, bought specifically so they would go with anything from a cocktail dress to smart jeans. I can see myself getting decades of wear out of them.
The wedding list
We went to John Lewis but took inspiration from the products on Buy Me Once. Our list featured sturdy Le Creuset pans, Robert Welch cutlery (which has a lifetime guarantee) and a Dualit toaster (which will be virtually indestructible). Howard and I walked around John Lewis imagining ourselves in our 40s and 50s and asking what would still be relevant to us in 20 years.
The wedding confetti was handmade from rose petals
The honeymoon
Howard booked a honeymoon in the Seychelles, which is making great strides in conservation and moving towards renewable energy. We are going to offset the carbon emissions from our flights by paying ClimateCare (climatecare.org), which will reduce the amount of CO2 going into the atmosphere by the same amount through its renewable projects.
For more information, visit buymeonce.com
The women entrepreneurs helping us to live with less
The anti-waste movement is growing, not just because it’s the right thing to do but because it makes us feel good, says Tara. ‘When we launched our site, hundreds of people got in touch to say: “At last! I’ve been wanting this for years.” Initially it was baby boomers who remember when things used to last and were feeling increasingly frustrated with their appliances breaking after 18 months, but now we’re seeing a surge in younger customers.’ No matter what the age or reason – it seems that it really is time to throw away our throwaway culture, as the following women know and are proving…
Olio app creator Tessa Cook
Mother-of-two TESSA COOK (right) was head of e-commerce for Dyson before she struck upon the idea for Olio, an app for giving away unwanted food.
‘I was moving house and hated the thought of throwing away the food in my fridge,’ says Tessa. ‘I thought about knocking on the doors of neighbours, but would I embarrass them by offering them food? It seemed crazy that there wasn’t a solution.’
So she came up with one: creating an app for people to post pictures of food that they won’t eat. This sends an alert to other app users in the area, who can then pick up the food. Olio now has over 242,000 users across the country and has prevented over 417,200 food items from going to waste.
Tessa says, ‘The app is building a new sense of community. People are inviting each other to dinner parties and helping each other out. It’s a return to old-fashioned values.’
Rubies in the Rubble founder Jenny Costa
JENNY COSTA (right) was working for a Cityhedge fund when she read about the huge amounts of food being thrown away by supermarkets. Furious, she quit her job and started Rubies in the Rubble, a company that turns fruit and vegetables that would be discarded or fail supermarket inspections into pickles, relishes and chutneys.
‘I grew up on a farm on the West Coast of Scotland, so I know how much work goes into producing food,’ she says.
Rubies in the Rubble now sells in Waitrose, Ocado, Harrods and Selfridges and is used by the Eat chain, Marriott hotels and Virgin trains. Each week Virgin gives Jenny around 1,000 apples that would be thrown away by the train’s catering service, which she turns into chutney and sells back to the company. ‘I’m passionate about being a business not a charity,’ she says.
Author Ruby Warrington
RUBY WARRINGTON (right), author of Material Girl, Mystical World, has challenged herself to not buy new clothes in 2017, although buying second-hand or vintage is allowed.
‘We vote with every pound we spend and fashion is the second “dirtiest” industry after oil. My decision is my way of voting for what I believe when it comes to the environment,’ she says, adding, ‘it’s been surprisingly easy and there’s a real thrill when I find something fabulous that costs a fraction of what I’d have spent on it new.’
Ruby isn’t alone in her fight to reduce fashion waste. According to a report by Wrap, experts in resources efficiency, we are binning 50,000 fewer tonnes of clothing every year. Not only are we now more likely to pass on unwanted items to charity shops, swap at fashion parties or sell online, but buying second-hand and on auction websites is also on the up.
Zero Waste Week founder Rachelle Strauss
Nine years ago, mother-of-one RACHELLE STRAUSS (right), who runs a web agency, set herself the challenge of filling no more than one dustbin of rubbish for the whole year. She blogged about her Gloucestershire-based family’s enterprise, and in 2009 founded the annual Zero Waste Week, which is now followed by millions of people around the world.
On her website Rachelle shares tips for reducing waste, from bringing your own bag to the supermarket to joining a ReStart party where you take your broken electrical appliances along and get shown how to fix them. She says: ‘Living a waste-free life involves rebuilding communities. We are a lonely and individualistic culture that has been treating our isolation with “stuff”, but we’re seeing a change and are moving away from that life.’