Easy, eco-friendly wedding favours for your destination wedding

You should prioritise eco-friendly favours for your wedding because we all have a duty to protect our beautiful planet. You’ve chosen a beautiful setting for your wedding, but if we don’t all do our bit for the environment, we’ll ruin all of the stunning natural environments we’re blessed with.

Plus, having a destination wedding, although wonderful in so many ways, does mean a higher carbon footprint than a wedding in your own back garden.

So, as well as having eco wedding favours, you could request that your wedding is zero plastic, ask for donations to charities that are dedicated to fighting climate change, organise for trees to be planted in honour of your wedding, or do a whole host of other things to minimise the impact of your wedding.

That being said, let’s have a look at a few ideas for the best unique wedding favours that are relatively easy to transport and won’t have a negative impact on the planet.

Lists for eco-friendly wedding favours often include potted plants, but I think we can all agree that that’s not a practical option for destination weddings. So, a fantastic alternative is giving each of your guests a small seed packet that they can take home and plant or scatter. Wildflower seeds are fun if you know people have places to sprinkle them.

Just be sure to double check that it’s okay to transport seeds to and from your country of choice, to avoid your plantable wedding favours being confiscated at customs.

A lovely way to mark your wedding is making a donation to a charity that’s close to your heart. It could be an environmental charity, or one that’s local to your beach wedding venue.

Let them know about the donation by printing it on seed paper, which your guests can then take home and plant. Some people include this on the back of the wedding breakfast menu, printed on seed paper, which is also a nice idea.

Having eco-friendly wedding favours on your big day doesn’t necessarily mean you have to lug a whole load of stuff out with you on the plane.

Homemade edible wedding favours are out of the question as they would take up so much space, but a fantastic alternative is ordering sweet treats that are typical of the local area from a bakery or patisserie nearby. It’s a way of putting money into the local economy, and ensuring that there’s no waste involved, as it will all get eaten up.

You could provide recycled paper bags so that your guests can take the local treats back to their hotel for a midnight snack.

If you like the idea of edible eco-friendly wedding favours but think there’s already enough food to eat on the day, then you could consider something culinary-themed that your guests could take home with them.

If you’re having a Mediterranean wedding, opt for tiny glass bottles of olive oil. Depending on where you are, you could gift spice mixes, liquors, coffee, condiments, or anything that will mean your guests can take a taste of your wedding home with them.

The great thing about opting for this is that you pick it all up when you’re there, rather than trying to squeeze it into your luggage, which will already be overflowing.

If you’re getting married on the beach and want to spread the message about how important it is to protect our marine life, then a cute idea would be to buy travel sized bottles (preferably made out of recycled materials) of an eco- and reef-friendly sun cream.

You’d be supporting a brand doing great work and helping to make sure your guests aren’t having a negative impact on the local environment.

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Just remember that rule number one with destination weddings is to keep things as simple as possible, enjoying your surroundings and the company. Whilst eco-friendly wedding favours can be a lovely touch, don’t worry too much about them, as on the day you’ll have much more important things to think about.