Love in the time of COVID: A Zero Waste Wedding Story
Our green|spaces’ Green Ambassador + self-professed “Groomzilla” + Mercedes-Benz Stadium Assistant Facilities Maintenance Manager, Brian Wright, started planning his Zero Waste wedding before the word “pandemic” became a regular part of most people’s vocabulary.
While the Wrights live in Atlanta, where Brian is helping the Atlanta Falcons’ and United FC teams’ stadium reach its goal to become the world’s first Zero Waste Stadium, they were married in Chattanooga’s Southside! Special thanks to Brian and his wife Katie for taking the time to share their Chattanooga wedding story...
Our Zero Waste Wedding
A global pandemic is not an ideal time to plan a wedding.
However, my wife and I set September 26, 2020 as our date nearly 365 days prior and made the difficult decision many couples have had to make this year: We chose to continue with the wedding, recognizing that the act of marriage was the priority, not having a huge party or a large guest list.
So during the six months prior to our wedding as the Covid-19 spread and longevity was being realized, we went through plans A, B, C, & D on all things from scaling down the invite list, spacing out the seating chart, changing venues, ordering PPE, and altering our honeymoon plans.
I was relishing the opportunity to put on my own event as the client / event planner, after ten years of being on the facility side, serving the client and guests’ needs as my day job. Katie, my wife, had a vision for the weekend, but left it largely up to me, self-proclaimed “Groomzilla,” to see it through. We adapted as best we could in the Covid environment, requiring masks, offering a Youtube live stream for relatives, contactless meal serving, and an indoor/ outdoor reception environment with fire pits and music.
However, one element that was always Plan A was having a zero-waste wedding.
Seeing the amount of waste resulting from events early in my career at Finley Stadium in Chattanooga inspired me to start recycling initiatives there and that passion deepened when I moved to Mercedes-Benz Stadium, working under sustainability guru Scott Jenkins.
Katie and I practice recycling, reuse projects, and energy efficiency in our own home, so we wanted to use our one-day platform to send a message of how simple it is to adopt a zero-waste mindset.
Here is how we did it:
Waste: The average wedding produces over 400 pounds of garbage. We could not have that, so we did not source anything that would be sent to landfill or plastics that could not be regenerated in under six months.
Instead, we:
rented reusable plates and silverware, and only sourced aluminum beer cans and glass liquor bottles, and
partnered with Compost House to drop off a bin which we filled with food waste and compostable cups, napkins, and appetizer trays.
Decoration: One of the most wasteful elements of many events, we utilized the “reuse” method here, with:
Succulents, which were used as table decoration/ nameplates and given to guests as gifts.
Chinese Paper lanterns, which were spread throughout the venue as décor, used in our sendoff, and guests then got to take them home.
Handmade signage around the venue, which I made from pallets and later reused to build an entry table for our house.
Transportation: The largest, single contributor toward Greenhouse Gases is transportation, so selecting your venues wisely can have a direct effect on the environment.
We chose the Moxy for a hotel room block, Bluegrass Grill for the rehearsal dinner and The Granfalloon as a ceremony/ reception venue, all within walking distance and limiting the need for guests to drive.
Vendor Selection: A Greener Economy means buying from locally owned businesses and sourcing food from within a 100 miles.
So,
we strictly used local, family owned Chattanooga businesses for everything, from event coordinator, photographer, cake maker, etc., and
both Bluegrass Grill and Taqueria Jalisco (our reception caterer) are local, family owned staples in Chattanooga who source all their ingredients locally and were greatly appreciative of the extra business with the Covid-19 slowdown.
Photo by Sara Van Senus Photography
Throwing our zero-waste wedding was something we were truly passionate about, so all these decisions came to us naturally and were really fun to plan and execute. The best part was our guests recognized and appreciated it!
Our hope now is that our story inspires others to throw their own zero-waste wedding, event, or socially distant cookout …
… P.S.
Being the face of an event for once, I did not get to participate in the breakdown post-event, which was an odd feeling for me when I woke up the next morning!
So, I walked down to The Granfalloon and found our bag full of compost and compostables, which was accidentally placed in the landfill roll-off container!
I happily removed it and placed it in the compost bin for pick-up. And like a good husband I stopped at Velo Coffee Roasters to bring my new wife a cold brew coffee back to the CrashPad Hemingway Suite where we were staying. (Only later did I tell her the real reason for my early morning trip!)