Featured on Bloomberg: Sustainable Weddings Guide
This month we were delighted that our work was featured in an article named "An Opinionated Guide to Big, Fat, Green Weddings" on bloomberg.com. This particular wedding was catered for by Social Pantry, whose founder Alex Head contributed to the article as an expert in zero waste luxury event catering in London.
We have been committed to working with and curating magical events that use vendors and suppliers who are committed to sustainability and corporate social responsibility for a very long time, and made a public commitment to this with a new vetting programme introduced in 2017. It is fair to say we have learned a lot, and are still pushing for change and better methods across our supply chain.
Pay close attention to catering because 26% of all greenhouse gas emissions come from food production. Approximately half of the global food system’s emissions comes from waste. There are also specialist zero-waste caterers you might consider.
One such outfit is Social Pantry, founded by Alex Head in 2011. Everything in her kitchen gets used. Carrot tops are transformed into a bright green powder for garnishes. The whey from making labneh contributes to a caramel for desserts. The remaining lemons and limes at the bar get turned into limoncello and lemon oils. What can’t be fermented, pickled, dried or eaten by staff gets fed into the food waste digester to be transformed into grey water that can be sent to water treatment facilities. The coffee grounds from one of Head’s cafes goes to feed a local lady’s worm farm.
For the wedding featured in the Bloomberg article we created a sustainable menu with Social Pantry, we sourced our own wines from British vineyards, including cordials from local Cotswolds suppliers. The flowers were taken home by guests or sent to either be made into confetti, or composted back at the studio of our florist Paula Rooney. We rented everything on the tables, or used our own stock and garden furniture where necessary. The wedding party all wore outfits handmade by British designers using ethical materials, or rented them otherwise.
My engaged friends often talk about decision fatigue: Trying to get a wedding arranged alongside your full-time job, social life and exercise routine, is a lot of work. If you don’t have sustainably minded vendors or a planner to hold your hand, then some things — like reusing flower displays throughout the day or knowing where to hire, rather than buy, decor — won’t even cross your mind. You’re just trying to get the job done.
Cost, meanwhile, isn’t necessarily the barrier people think it is. In my research, I’ve seen how sustainability can happen across the spectrum of wedding budgets and styles — from glamorous and big budget to modest and intimate.
Read the full article on bloomberg.com here.
All images by Katie Julia for Studio Sorores.
