Most wedding sustainability advice is about confetti. The decisions that actually matter are duller and considerably larger.

Numbers before intentions

The largest environmental cost of a wedding is usually guests travelling, followed by food, followed by everything that gets thrown away afterwards. Bunting is not on the list.

So the useful questions are: how far is everybody driving, what are we feeding them, and what happens to what is left.

One venue, not three

A ceremony, reception and evening in the same place removes a whole round of car journeys for everyone attending. It is the single biggest reduction available and it also makes the day easier to run.

Eat what is in season, and close

This is where a caterer can either help or quietly not.

Seasonal produce grown nearby has a fraction of the footprint of the same ingredient flown in out of season, and it tastes better, which makes it an easy argument. English asparagus in May is worth building a course around. English asparagus in October is neither English nor worth it.

Ask your caterer to name suppliers rather than say “locally sourced”. We use Newmarket Musk sausages, Red Poll beef, glazed Suffolk ham and Shipcord because they are good, and because they are down the road.

Serve less meat, and serve it better

A menu with one excellent meat course does more good than a menu with three mediocre ones, and it costs less. A full vegan menu is a genuine option rather than a gesture — we have catered entirely vegan weddings and the guests who were not vegan rarely noticed.

Get the numbers right

Over-catering is the commonest source of waste at a wedding, and it usually comes from guessing high on evening food. Not everybody eats at ten o’clock. Working out the real figure with your caterer saves money and food at the same time.

Ask what happens to the waste

It is a duller question than the menu and it tells you more about a company.

At our marquee weddings, grey water, food waste and packaging all leave with us. Nothing is tipped into a hedge, nothing goes into the venue’s bins to become somebody else’s problem on Monday, and nothing is left for the farmer whose field it is. Somebody walks the ground before we go.

Hire, do not buy

Cutlery, crockery, glassware and linen should all be hired. Single-use anything at a wedding is both worse and cheaper-looking. This is one reason we quote equipment hire separately rather than bundling a standard set into the price — see what is included.

What we do at our end

Solar on the workshop roofs, EV charging on site, and waste timber burned for heat rather than skipped. None of it is remarkable. It is just the same instinct as leaving a field as you found it, at a different scale.

More on marquee wedding catering and our seasonal menus.