Eco-Savvy Alternatives
Think of arriving at your wedding in a horse-drawn carriage like a fairy-tale princess or leaving your reception by sailing off into the sunset. These are extremely romantic and extremely green methods of transportation. You could opt for some unique eco-friendly transportation choices — roller skates or inline skates, skateboards, electric scooters, bicycles, boats, carriages, and skis, snowshoes, or dogsleds for winter weddings.
Bicycles
Bicycles are very eco-friendly and can be a very cute way to arrive at your wedding or depart after the reception. They come in all different shapes, sizes, colors, and styles. You could ride on a bicycle built for two or get driven off in a rickshaw carriage.
You can burn as many as 750 to 1,000 calories per hour riding a bicycle, but that has to be some hard continuous riding. Most normal bike riding will burn 500 to 600 calories in an hour. Riding a bike is good for the environment, and it may help you shed some excess pounds.
Bicycles are very eco-friendly. Bicycling instead of using motorized transportation reduces greenhouse gas emissions, fossil fuel usage, air pollution, traffic congestion, and noise pollution. It decreases the amount of resources used to manufacture and recycle vehicles.
If you are planning on arriving at your wedding location on a bicycle, consider changing into your wedding attire at the venue or practice riding the bicycle in your attire or something similar ahead of time. Brides will have a difficult time keeping their dresses out of the way. If you are planning on bicycle departure, you could just change your clothing into something more casual before leaving the reception location.
A rickshaw carriage will solve the attire problems while still taking advantage of the eco-option of the bicycle. The happy couple can just climb into the carriage and be driven off by the rickshaw driver. Rickshaws are quite popular in other countries such as China, Japan, India, Greece, and Australia, and you see them occasionally in tourist areas of the United States. You might be able to find one for rent or even for purchase in your area or online.
If the average person stopped driving two days a week, she could save about 143 gallons of gas in a year. If just 1 percent of all licensed drivers drove two fewer days per week, they could save 273 million gallons of gasoline.
Sail Away
Is your wedding on a lake, pond, or even an ocean? Consider arriving or leaving via the water. Any nonmotorized boat is wonderfully green; canoes, rowboats, sailboats; even an Italian-style gondola can be a unique, romantic, and eco-friendly way to get around.
If you are sailing away in a small boat, you might want to practice getting in and out of the boat without tipping it and landing in the water. Making a literal splash might be comical, but it's probably not the grand exit you had in mind.
Horsepower
There's always good old-fashioned horsepower to get you where you want to go. No, not the kind under the hood of a gas-guzzling muscle car — real horsepower, the kind that can pull a Cinderella-style carriage.
Nothing says romance or old-fashioned style like a horse-drawn carriage. There are many types of horse-drawn carriages and sleighs, from simple hayride-style wagons to elaborate carriages straight out of a fairy tale. Make sure you get a look at the exact carriage or sleigh you are renting so there are no nasty surprises on your big green day. Also make sure that the horse farm is a reputable one and is known for treating its animals well.
