weddings

This couple prove a $4000 wedding can be completely beautiful.

Weddings are stressful. They’re beautiful, and expensive, and the pressure to have the “best day of your life” screams at you from wedding catalogues and Pinterest feeds.

The average wedding costs $US 26,000 (AUS $35,000). So when we heard about a sustainable wedding that cost $4,000, our ears perked up.

This couple, from Durham, U.K., managed to keep their budget low, and have a wedding made out of mostly recyclable materials. And before you roll your eyes, the event was beautiful.

Bride Kim Woolnough wanted to have a waste-free wedding with her husband, Dan, in April. “We didn’t want to waste a single thing, so everything had been recycled in some way,” the bride tells The Daily Mail.

The food they served was a little off—in a good way though. They teamed up with the Real Junk Food Project, an organization that creates meals from food past its “sell by” date; food that bakeries and grocery stores would have otherwise thrown away. But really, when the taste is the same, who cares? Who’s actually going to notice that?

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“Some of our guests thought it was a bit weird that we were having out-of-date food for the wedding breakfast but everyone said it was really tasty,” Kim says.

Guests were served tomato-and-red-pepper soup, vegetable curry, and a number of desserts. Guests were also told to take home the leftovers. How completely perfect.

Brace yourself for some wedding horror stories. Post continues below. 

And the bride’s dress? There was no fuss, no fittings, no freak-outs. She just ordered it from Gumtree for $150. And she looked gorgeous.

“I had a few alterations made so that it fit me, but the lady was so glad that the dress was going to be used again,” Kim says.

There were no over-the-top expensive diamond rings, either. The couple made a conscious effort to buy rings from Etsy made from reused metals. And, because paper invitations were seen as a waste of paper, the invites were email-only.

Weddings don’t have to be the lavish extravaganzas we’ve become accustomed to. If you’re getting married, and you’re worried about the costs, there are ways to keep them down and keep your carbon footprint down, too. And they can still be absolutely beautiful.

*Feature image via Twitter. 

This post originally appeared on Flo & Frank. It’s a happy place for smart women, come say hello.