When it comes to weddings – green is the new white.

Going green for your wedding doesn’t mean wearing a hemp dress or toasting the bride with dandelion tea – unless you want to – but celebrating your special day in a way that’s not only right for you but also the planet – and might even save a few pounds too.

When my partner asked me to marry him the second time – the first time I thought he was joking and laughed it off with a flippant Jerry Maguire-style “show me the ring!”  which he did later that same day – I was like a rabbit caught in the headlights (nice romantic image there).

So. Many. Things. To. Organise.

After a brief bridezilla period imagining a castle, Vera Wang dress, 15 bridesmaids in various pastel colours and Jimmy Choos all round, I remembered that in real life none of those things really appeal to me (although I’m partial to visiting the odd castle) – and definitely not for my husband to be.

I calmed down, took a breath and set about organising a wedding which actually fit us; one that was as sustainable as possible for me and cheap for him (I jest!) and that actually achieved the most important thing – joining us together forever.

We will have been married for five years in August so here are my five top tips for anyone interested in organising their own green wedding.

1. The dress. During my bridezilla phase I went to an assortment of posh dress shops with my mum and squeezed myself into some amazing creations, which would have cost thousands of pounds. And I admit it was fun, sort of, but what I enjoyed more was when my £30 pre-loved dress I bid for on eBay arrived and was perfect. It didn’t even need altering. There are some beautiful dresses for sale which have only been worn once for a few hours so why not save some pounds and help the environment.
2. Invitations. I love paper almost as much as I love my husband (not even kidding) but remortgaging our flat to buy beautiful gold embossed invites that people look at once and then recycle (best case scenario) seems daft – not to mention wasteful. We only had 30 guests (mainly because we could only have 30 people in the register office) so I emailed those I could and then handmade the rest using recycled products where possible.
3. Favours. When my mum first mentioned them I looked at her like she had just started talking in a foreign language. Huh? Those little packets of things on the tables at weddings are for you to take? I thought they were part of the decoration! I was all for not bothering with them but because it made her happy (and I needed her help – see item 4) I ordered seeded boxes, filled them with Fairtrade chocolate and asked people to take them home and plant them (after eating the chocolate, of course).
4. Flowers. In return for doing the favours I asked my mum for one in return; to do the flowers. Our choice was almost made for us because my husband has terrible hay fever so real flowers would just have made him miserable (cue a joke about having me to do that for the rest of his life). My mum is something of a whiz at flower arranging so I bought second-hand silk flowers and got her to sort them into some sort of order for my bouquet and the table decorations (in vases sourced from charity shops) . The benefits are that they live forever, you can recycle them into new bouquets or give them away to be reused again.
5. Photos. We found a photographer who didn’t print the photos but instead copied them all on to a CD. That way we, and our families, could just print the ones we wanted. In our case we made a book to keep and as thank you presents for our parents.

I could go on and on. I haven’t even mentioned transport (we arranged for people from my side to travel by bus together) but I’ll have to wait until we’ve been married for longer and I have more room for tips.

What was your wedding like? Did you have a bridezilla moment or were you always relaxed about the big day?