Cathy Dyer and Eric Engel worked to "green" up their wedding day.

Angela Cesere | AnnArbor.com

When Eric Engel and Cathy Dyer began planning their wedding, it was only appropriate that they would decide to go “green.”

After all, the first time they met was at an evening bonfire at a camp by the lake. Engel joined the group late and Dyer offered a friendly welcome.

"And I could tell, 'Wow this person's really special. I know already,'" Engel said.

Last weekend, the Ann Arbor couple were married in a "green" outdoor ceremony and reception near the Huron River fit to pay homage to their shared love of the environment and the outdoors.

"We could've done a hotel and it would have been much simpler," Dyer said. "I've had to do a lot of work myself, planning this."

The trend toward green weddings certainly isn't new, but experts say it has evolved to allow couples to incorporate their own personal preferences and still afford their big day.

"The thing we're noticing (is) people come to us asking us about a green wedding and once they hear about what it entails, they end up going a different route," said Carol Thompson, marketing manager of Katherine's Catering, which helps plan weddings through Weddings by Katherine.

Engel and Dyer decided they wouldn't be able to keep everything perfectly green, but were going to try their hardest. "I just brainstormed on paper and with Cathy, and kept asking 'What more can we do?'" Engel said.

And the most essential element was to make the day educational as well as fun for guests, they said.

They planned the ceremony at the Leslie Science and Nature Center where tours were offered to guests in the hour before they walked down the aisle. The tour featured different water and energy conservation technology used at the center like the solar-panel arrays for electricity, solar-powered heating and water heater systems and no-flush compost toilets.

The couple also focused on little details they said make a big difference. 

Dyer wore an heirloom - a vintage green dress that had been her great-grandmother's in the 1930's. Her ring was made with recycled gold and had a beryl stone instead of a diamond. Her makeup was certified organic. Guests were given local lavender buds - rather than sachets of rice - to throw in celebration.

The reception was held at Delhi Metro Park, where they covered tables with local wildflowers and locally sourced foods. Leftovers and unused food were recycled (by sending to local farms) or reused. "We spent time with the caterer to make sure we were reusing as much as possible and asked 'How much of this food can be used by someone else?"

One of the biggest ways they were able to cut back on energy was finding a generator at a Whitmore Lake business that was solar powered and able to generate enough power to run the lights and the sound system they needed for the band, they said.

For all their efforts, the couple said they still made some choices they knew weren't the most eco-friendly options.

While they served Michigan white wine and a Michigan sparkling cider, they couldn't find a red from the state they liked. So they decided to have a red wine from the U.S. for that option. And they could've gone with Internet invites rather than printing and mailing invitations, but Dyer said she felt paper invitations were important - on recycled paper, of course, she said.).

They said they stuck with their priorities, which included educating guests.

"Having one site would've been more energy efficient. But if you take the extra step to see the park at Delhi, you're going to appreciate it more," Engel said. "We're not being sticklers about it. We could've gone with only local meat but when we saw the costs we just had to say, 'No, we can't do that."

While educating guests on environmental sustainability was at the top of their priorities, the couple also was focused on fun. 

Engel said he loved that he got to marry his wife the same way they first met: outside by the waterside.

"The wedding is how we wanted it," he said.

They are now looking forward to retrofitting their new home to reduce its energy consumption, he said.

Going green for your wedding involves some hard work

While green weddings are becoming more popular, planning and pulling off the event is not as easy as one might think.

Sorting through claims of environmentally friendliness when shopping in today's marketplace is a big enough challenge for ordinary purchases, let alone for such an emotionally charged and personal event as a wedding, said Andrew Hoffman, associate director of the Erb Institute for Global Sustainable Enterprise in the University of Michigan's School of Natural Resources.

The same problem emerges for funerals. Experts have not seen the shift toward green burials they might have hoped, because grieving loved ones planning the event usually pick the options most available to them.

Hoffman suggested the best way to reduce the impact of an event is to do a life cycle analysis on different elements of the wedding. For instance, where is that food coming from, how much energy is expended to produce it, how does it get to your plate and where do the leftovers go?

While meat typically takes more energy to produce than fruits and vegetables, considering how far some fruits and vegetables have to travel might give them a larger carbon footprint, he said.

The best way to cut back on an event's carbon footprint is to cut back on the number of guests invited, said Rick Bunch, managing director of the Erb Institute. Fewer guests mean fewer meals, fewer needs for centerpieces and other decor and fewer miles traveled to reach the wedding, experts said. 

If not inviting Aunt Edna isn't in the cards, there's always carbon offsets - credits that can be purchased toward projects that help reduce carbon emissions to offset carbon already used. But "you can't go crazy with them," Bunch said, comparing them to the idea of 'buying indulgences.' They should be used to offset what can't be reduced with efforts and cost, he said.

Those efforts often include figuring out which 'traditions" are just plain unnecessary. Many of Bunch's students at U-M tell of experiences with throwing their own weddings with green elements.

One of them, Zach Robin, who went through the Erb Institute's program, said he and his wife knew they wanted to be as eco-friendly as possible.

The biggest environmental decision the couple made was finding a wedding coordinator who truly understood the best ways to incorporate what the couple was looking for, Robin said. That coordinator was able to track down a restaurateur who was willing to work only with locally sourced foods.

But when they chose their home state of Michigan for the wedding, that immediately made it much less energy efficient since 70 percent of their guests would need to travel from out of state.

But having the wedding in their first home state (they now live in California) was symbolically important to the couple. Besides, Robin said, "It's her big day so that trumps everything else." So they encouraged guests to help offset their travel buy purchasing carbon credits. And they tried to find other ways to cut back, like offering local apples as favors at their fall-themed wedding. Pictures of their wedding were featured in the wedding magazine The Knot.

"We do the things we can. I've chosen to live my life doing these things and dedicated my life to it since I'm in the energy efficiency industry," Robin said. "It's part of who we are and when it came to the wedding, we wanted to reflect that."This is one event ... where you can have the biggest impact."

Tina Reed covers health and the environment for AnnArbor.com. You can reach her at tinareed@annarbor.com, call her at 734-623-2535 or find her on Twitter @TreedinAA.