Altar your plans: Can Indian weddings really be sustainable?
Can the Big Indian Wedding really be mindful of the planet? Bridal couples now send e-invites, put the baraat on e-bikes and get guests to do beach clean-ups. See how they celebrate love without leaving a landfill behind
On a bright May afternoon in 2018, as waves lapped against Mumbai’s littered shores, Ashwin Malwade and Nupur Agarwal had a meet-cute — not at a café or a party, but at a beach clean-up drive. “We fell in love amidst trash,” Ashwin says with a laugh. “And when we decided to get married, we knew we couldn’t create the same waste we were cleaning up every day.”
Their wedding ceremony, in 2019, had no plastic bottles, no disposable décor, no food waste. When photos began circulating on social media, other couples started reaching out. “People saw that it was possible,” Malwade says. “That you could have an Indian wedding without compromising on beauty, emotion or grandeur.” It promoted them to set up Greenmyna, a sustainability consultancy for weddings and large-scale events.
Meanwhile in Bengaluru, Sahar Mansoor, who studied environmental law and economics at the University of Cambridge and worked on solar-energy projects in rural India, takes her impact on the planet more seriously than most. Mansoor runs Bare Necessities, a zero-waste brand, and at her own wedding in 2023, she had a tree-planting ceremony (in honour of her late father, whose coconut tree has nourished the family for years). The couple exchanged garlands made of leaves. Instead of confetti, guests tossed leaves. The ceremony concluded with a beach clean-up. “Our grandparents, parents, nieces, nephews all participated.”
The 2025 wedding season is a beast – 46 lakh weddings, set to generate ₹6.5 lakh crore and create 1 crore jobs. People are realising that they can’t go zero-waste entirely. But being less wasteful, less polluting, and more conscious are on every client and planner’s mind. Many want a sustainable celebration that isn’t short on glitz and splendour. Are organic buffets, no-plastic flatware, reusable décor and separate waste bins enough to give the Earth a happily ever after? Take a look.
A forever promise
Data from the portal WeddingSutra shows that the average wedding in an Indian metro generates anywhere between 200kg and 400 kg of waste per day, from food and décor to single-use plastics. Co-founder and CEO Parthip Thyagarajan says that this is because we no longer have the small, traditional ceremonies of the past. “The problem began when scale, not intimacy, became the measure of success.”
So, going green is not so much a backlash as a course correction. “There are certainly clients who live sustainably, and seek us out,” says Malwade. “But there’s also a growing number of people who attend Indian weddings, witness the food waste, the single-use plastics, and want their own celebrations to reflect greater awareness and care.”
On Instagram and Pinterest, the #EcoWedding hashtag encompasses everything from campsite nuptials and expensive white weddings for only 30 guests to plastic-free décor ideas and tips on how to talk to Indian parents about not booking Styrofoam mandaps. Influencers recommend using digital invitations to curb paper waste, and setting up digital registries to cut down on overproduction and unwanted gifts. Most wedding albums are now digital too, with just a single copy printed as a souvenir. Still, hilarious myths about eco-weddings persist.
How green is your mandap?
“A lot of people associate sustainability with jute and beige,” says Mansoor, laughing. “But true sustainability is about reducing the footprint at every level — from not wasting food to replacing wedding favours with meaningful, lasting gifts.” At one client’s wedding, the favours were handcrafted soap, not plastic trinkets. At another, she used local marigolds and brass thalis instead of having décor flown in. “You don’t have to compromise on beauty,” Mansoor says. “You just have to be intentional.”
Eco-entrepreneur Madhuri Balodi, who got married in Delhi in 2021, puts it more simply: “Sustainability isn’t about doing something new, it’s about remembering what we’ve always done. Our grandparents’ weddings were simple, local, and waste-free. We ate on leaves, had reusable utensils, held day weddings to save electricity. All of that was sustainable. We’ve just forgotten.”
Balodi and her husband chose her uncle’s garden in Delhi’s Mandi House for a small wedding. Their e-vites urged guests to arrive by Metro, bicycle, or EV, and to bring plants instead of bouquets. Friends decorated the garden with newspaper buntings and reused bottles, local chaiwallas and coconut-water vendors served the beverages. The couple wore simple outfits – they cost about ₹2,500 each – and guests left with saplings as favours.
At Greenmyna weddings, surplus food is donated through partnerships with organisations such as Feeding India and RHA (Robin Hood Army). Giant plastic flower arrangements are swapped for smaller compostable natural ones or rented potted plants. Upcycled fabrics, banana leaves, and handcrafted installations replace one-time-use backdrops and entryways. Floral foam (the bed that secured flower stems and a major ocean pollutant) is being replaced with banana stems or aloe vera to keep arrangements fresh. “Each region offers something unique for wedding décor,” Malwade says. “In Kochi, we use banana fibers; in Rajasthan, desert flowers. Sustainability doesn’t mean boring, it means being rooted in place.”
The full revolution
For a 300-guest wedding, Greenmyna’s team charges between ₹50,000 and ₹70,000 to handle segregation, composting, and repotting. But this is not just about bins and bags. After every wedding, couples receive a carbon emissions report that quantifies their impact. A traditional wedding might clock 150 tonnes of emissions, a sustainable one can cut that nearly in half. At one wedding Malwade worked on, the couple decided to plant one tree for every guest. “Guests received digital certificates and six-monthly updates about their trees,” he recalls. “It turned something fleeting into something deeply personal.”
In 2023, Delhi-based bride and groom Sanya Budhiraja and Rahil Kalra chose lab-grown diamond rings and cruelty-free makeup. “I’m an animal lover, so we also opted for a plant-based menu and cruelty-free cosmetics. It’s about being mindful, not performative,” says Budhiraja.
It’s at odds with the fantasy of a Great Indian Wedding, so understandably, it upsets the relatives and families that use weddings as an opportunity to show off. Weddings go late into the night and guzzle electricity. “The hardest part is cutting down the guest list,” says Reshma Srijay, wedding planner and founder of The Bridal Retreat, an experiential programme for brides-to-be. Even when couples are willing to go smaller or simpler, it’s hard to find eco-friendly venues, waste management systems, and renewable energy options for banquets and large gatherings. “Most banquet halls and hotels lack facilities for composting or recycling, while caterers and florists still rely on single-use plastics and non-biodegradable materials because they’re cheap and convenient.”
Malwade knows first-hand how hard it is to coordinate with non-profits late at night to distribute wedding-buffet surplus. “It’s not that people don’t care, it’s that systems don’t support the change yet.” Perhaps we must all make new vows this wedding season.
From HT Brunch, November 29, 2025
Follow us on www.instagram.com/htbrunch