CHENNAI: Everybody’s dream wedding is different — some want a traditional wedding with all the traditions and ceremonies, some want a simple wedding with just their closest friends and family, and some just want to sign the register and be done with the affair. For Praveen and Shreya, who got married on October 22, their dream was to have a zero-waste wedding.
“It didn’t start with the idea of zero waste. We aren’t extremely eco-friendly — we do our bit, but we don’t claim to be anything like that. It initially started because Shreya was very specific about the aesthetics she wanted with rustic, rural themes. It slowly evolved into a zero-waste wedding,” says Praveen, adding that Shreya’s mother, an ardent lover of all things eco-friendly, helped them design their wedding.
From the invites to the décor to the catering and the gifts — everything was eco-friendly and had no plastic waste. The two professional classical musicians — Shreya, a violinist and Praveen, a mridangam player — decided that if they were going to have an eco-friendly wedding, they’d take it all the way.
“The most difficult part was the invitations. I would have panic attacks over it, and Praveen would calm me down and say that everything would be fine. That was an underlying concept in the preparations — if one person got worried or stressed, the other person would say don’t worry, we’ll come back to it,” says Shreya. She explained that despite the idea of an e-invite being foreign in the city and in the traditional music circles where they work, their guests understood once they explained their reason behind it.
“Usually people think that an e-invite isn’t as important as a physical invite, and therefore think that they aren’t important. Once they realised that everyone got e-invite, they were 100 per cent supportive,” says Praveen. They also called every single person to whom they had sent invites to, and thank WeddingWishList.com for their round-the-clock support in making sure everyone received the e-invites.
All the gifts for the tamboolam consisted goods from rural artisans and NGOs that help rural women and people with disability. Their gift bag was made by theyellobag.org, an organisation that sells eco-friendly cloth bags made by rural women in Madurai. The bag consisted of a karupatti-based sweet made by Patham, an organisation that makes organic, sugar-free and ghee-free recipes, and the vethala pakku and other items were provided by Vaer Organic, a Chennai-based organic store. Information on the gift bag and where they were sourced from was typed on a seed paper by the Gram Art Project.
“The people we worked with were open to what we were standing for. For example, we wanted the bakshanam to look good, so we went to Patham’s factory and suggested a few changes, and they complied. These are organic foods, which don’t have any added flavour or colouring, so they don’t look as good as sweets you buy from commercial stores. Even though we wanted a zero-waste wedding, we also wanted it to reflect well on our families, and everyone we worked with was kind, because they too, understood our context,” says Shreya.
The decorations, done by Sruti Swamy, featured regionally sourced flowers. The catering, done by Shri Pattapa Caterers, used stainless steel plates rather than paper cutlery. After listening to their story, Pattapa invested `70,000 for stainless steel cutlery on his own accord, and ensured that all his caterers used cloth gloves rather than rubber gloves to keep up the zero waste ideal from their end.
Shreya explained that they worked with the Together We Feed Charitable Trust to ensure that all the excess food was given to those who need it. The trust collected the cooked food from Pattapa and stored them in proper refrigerated containers overnight before distribution.
“What’s amazing is that now, Pattapa and Together We Feed have entered into a partnership with each other, and now all the excess food they prepare for all weddings is collected by Together We Feed. Vaer is now displaying and selling organic goods from Patham. We may have done the groundwork, but they are taking it ahead and going far beyond us, and that was our ideal,” says Shreya.
Finally, for their gifts, they had a wedding register with only two options — a nest egg for travelling, as they both love to travel, and a link to donate to Maithreyi, an organisation that works towards women’s empowerment. “We didn’t want any gifts, and on the day, we only got around 10 to 20 gifts. What really touched us was how people knew that we were serious about this, and we collected around `50,000 for Maithreyi. Our guests were also very generous — some donated large sums of money, more than we expected,” she says.
Over the course of planning, Shreya and Praveen feel that they have grown closer and understood, as they put it, how to deal with each other. “I’m an easy-going person, but Shreya is organised and plans to the T. Like if we found three vendors, and one was working out, I wouldn’t call the other two, but Shreya called all three of them, because eventually the one that confirmed would drop out. She had a spreadsheet and to-do lists and evening briefings and everything. I learned how to work with her during the planning process,” smiles Praveen. Shreya too, found in Praveen’s easy-going nature a moment of calm during the storm that was the organising process.
In his Facebook post after the wedding, Praveen summed up what both he and his wife felt after the wedding — “When it came to our wedding, Shreya and I did some, our parents did more, and our guests did the most.”