Eco-Friendly Transportation to the Wedding Reception

Image by State Library of New South Wales collection via Flickr

Your wedding ceremony was beautiful.  Now it’s time for you and your guests to proceed to the reception location.  If you and your new spouse are passionate about the environment, you may want to look at transportation in a new light.  Not only will you conserve fuel, but the impression you make on your guests will last a lifetime.  You may even instill new habits in your friends and family thanks to your good example.

You should consider alternate ways to get your guests from the ceremony site to the reception site.  Of course, one option would be to have both the ceremony and the reception held in the same location.  Both can be held at a restaurant or banquet hall.  The wedding ceremony can be held at a church with a catered reception following in the church basement. 

You can encourage your guests to carpool, or rent buses to transport them.  If the distance between the sites is small, then you can organize a parade from the wedding site to the reception site.  Be sure to check local ordinances and obtain a parade permit in advance if necessary.  The parade can be led by musicians or dancers.  The wedding party can either walk ahead of the guests, or they can be transported by bicycle taxi or rickshaws.

If you have friends and family members who own a Prius or a Smartcar, you can commandeer their vehicles for the wedding.  What better way to arrive at the church than a convoy of Smartcars?

You must also address the problem of out of town relatives.  Will you have them travel to the wedding location?  Have you considered having your wedding webcast so that out-of -towners can share in your joy without contributing to wasting jet fuel?  Or you can burn copies of your wedding DVD and send them to relatives along with a wedding announcement.