Weddings don’t require any significant planning or expense—if you elope to Las Vegas. For everyone else, a decent wedding can seemingly require a master’s degree in project management. Fortunately, a vegan wedding does not need to be any harder to plan than any other wedding. There are a few added details to attend to, but nothing of real difficulty. It’s best to think of the vegan provisions in your wedding as the fun stuff, since there’s nothing about this part of your planning that will add measurably to your workload.
You can have a vegan wedding without emphasizing that aspect of things to your guests, or you can frame things in a way that your mutual commitment to compassionate living is front and center. If you choose the latter approach, consider holding your wedding at a farmed-animal rescue shelter. Most of these places are well-equipped to host weddings, and many have held quite a few. The venue costs associated with a sanctuary wedding will significantly benefit the shelter’s rescued animals, while gently exposing your guests to the issues surrounding compassionate eating and farmed animal rescue.
Wherever you decide to host your wedding, there are four topics that require attention for vegans: the invitations, the catering, the dresses and men’s wear, and the photography. Let’s look at each:
Wedding Invitations
This is certainly the easiest task of the bunch, since the invitations themselves are invariably vegan. The question is whether to highlight a vegan theme in your wedding, or to mention that the event will include vegan food and beverages. Many wedding invitations ask guests to indicate any food allergies along with their response. That’s a wise question to ask, and it will enable you to pass along this crucial information to your caterer.
Invitations give you the chance to hire a vegan artist to custom-draw an image that aligns with your wedding’s theme. You can find all sorts of wonderful talent by searching online or visiting Etsy.com.
Catering and Alcohol
By all means, choose a caterer who specializes in vegan foods if one is available. Not only will you gain a much wider range of hors d’oeuvres and dinner possibilities, but you’ll support a business whose values align with your own. The closer your wedding venue is to a big city, the more likely you are to easily find such a caterer. A few tips:
- If an animal sanctuary will host your wedding, the staff will probably know of an excellent vegan caterer.
- Your recently married friends may also know someone suitable.
- Do an internet search for vegan caterers in your city. Be sure to check the ads that come up as well as the organic search results. A competent vegan caterer will have a website that’s easy to find through an appropriate web search—it shows they are serious about the business.
Couples shopping for wedding caterers often schedule a preliminary tasting so they can choose the foods served at the wedding. Consider selecting entrées that are a little heavier than the meals you typically eat. You may have guests accustomed to eating meat-based meals that are more filling than the foods you typically consume, and you don’t want your guests making jokes about rabbit food.
Vegan Wedding Cakes
As to your wedding cake, we no longer live in the bad old days when every baked dessert contained eggs. Every competent bakery should know how to bake a cake without animal products, and vegan cake and icing recipes abound. Finding a suitable bakery should not be difficult. Ideally, you can find a nearby vegan bakery that has experience baking wedding cakes.
If you decide to serve alcohol, check the vegan status of the drinks you’ll serve. Most wines and many beers are processed with non-vegan ingredients. But you can find excellent brands of booze through the definitive vegan alcohol website, Barnivore.com.
Wedding and Bridesmaids’ Dresses
Custom-sewn wedding and bridesmaids’ dresses can include your choice of fabrics. That offers you a tremendous range of vegan possibilities. Although many wedding dresses are made primarily of silk, rayon and polyester are high-quality and excellent vegan alternatives.
You may also consider purchasing a used wedding gown. If you buy a used gown, regardless of its vegan status, and then donate the money you’ve saved to animal protection nonprofits, you can save a great many animals from harm.
As with wedding dresses, as long as you avoid silk, bridesmaids’ dresses will typically be vegan. Since they’re custom-sewn for the occasion, it should be easy to specify they be made from vegan materials.
Men’s Formal Wear
The clothing for the groom and groomsmen can be trickier to arrange than that of the bride and bridesmaids. A custom-made suit or tuxedo can consist of whichever materials you specify. But things will be harder for the groomsmen if you take the traditional route of renting tuxedos. Wool or silk are the two most common fabrics that appear in men’s suits.
You may decide that worrying about something that is only rented and worn once isn’t a meaningful concern. Where groomsmen’s apparel is concerned, you might take a route akin to religious dispensation, knowing that $50 thrown to a great animal protection organization can protect far more animals than thousands of dollars spent in the name of achieving Level 5 vegan status for your groomsmen. Or you might decide to fork over the huge sum required for custom-tailored tuxedos—it’s up to you.
Dressy vegan footwear for both men and women is easy enough to find. Zappos.com has an entirely vegan section of its store that offers a variety of formal footwear for men and women.
Photography
Before digital cameras, vegan wedding photography posed immense challenges. That’s because traditional camera film usually contains a gelatin coating. But today, many photographers shoot digitally. Remember that, because the wedding industry is inherently conservative, many wedding photographers still shoot with film. So make sure that your photography contract specifies that all shooting will be digital.
The main reason that many weddings are still shot with film is that the photographer’s business model hinges on owning the negatives. Under this scheme, you can only get first-generation prints of your favorite shots by paying whatever exorbitant costs your photographer charges. This arrangement is outrageous. Professional wedding photography doesn’t come cheap under any circumstances. Photographers who demand perpetual ownership of your photos ought to be run out of town by a pack of wolves.
You will probably encounter photographers who will try to keep rights to your wedding photos. Consider this demand a deal-breaker. Don’t argue or negotiate—just move on to the next photographer. You’ll certainly find someone fantastic who is able to shoot beautiful photos to capture your special day. When you sign the contract, make absolutely sure it assigns no ownership or rights to the photographer, apart from perhaps granting rights to have your photos appear on the photographer’s professional website as a sample of their work. These are your photos, and you should receive every last image on a USB drive, ideally in the RAW file format, and explicitly own all rights to them.
Including Vegan Themes in Your Wedding
If you and your beloved have made a lifelong commitment to compassionate living, your wedding and reception offer the chance to celebrate your shared values. In a low-key yet memorable way, your marriage ceremony can expose your guests to the very best food and experiences a vegan lifestyle has to offer.
Weddings offer a perfect moment to celebrate compassionate living. You might, for instance, want to have photos of rescued farm animals at each table. Or you might announce after everyone has enjoyed their food that there wasn’t a speck of meat, dairy products, or eggs served. Your bridesmaids’ and groomsmen’s gifts can also be vegan. Vegan purses might be ideal for bridesmaids, while SlimFold wallets are a great choice for groomsmen.
You have all sorts of creative opportunities to work vegan foods and compassionate values into your wedding. With a little thinking, you’ll come up with a way forward that works perfectly for you.
