For any event, but particularly a wedding, travel to and from the venue can be responsible for seriously increasing your carbon footprint. Everyone tends to travel in their own cars unless the wedding is a long distance from home, but car travel can be very damaging for the environment. So what is the solution? A car pool!
Organizing a car pool
This is going to seem like a mammoth task but there are a few things that you can do to make it go smoothly. First of all you need to ask people how they are going to get to and from the wedding. You could send out a mass email or just ask people to note it on their RSVP when they get their invitation. The next step is a little boring but it will help! Create a spreadsheet with all list of guests on it and note where they live and if they are planning to drive or not.
This spreadsheet will help you to work out if there are guests that live close enough together to share a vehicle. You will also need to know if the guests are planning to stay overnight at the wedding location – some will prefer to return to their own home and this will affect the way that you match people up.
Talk to everyone first before you go making arrangements for them. Some will be happy to car pool and some will not. Explain to everyone why you are doing it – some will want to help you to reduce your wedding day’s impact on the environment but there will also be people who do not understand why it is important. How much time you want to spend convincing them is up to you!
Car pool benefits
The reduction in fuel usage will be important for the environment but remember that it will also save your guests some money. The cost of gas can be split between everyone in the car, which would be much more if they had all arrived in individual cars. It also means that some of your guests can get to know each other before they arrive at the wedding, so you will have far fewer of those guests that do not know anyone and find it hard to talk to strangers. And there are also fewer parking issues – there are so many venues that only seem to have enough parking facilities for half the number of guests that you have invited!
Alternatives to car pools include hiring coaches to ferry guests from the church to the reception and then back to hotels or even home. When planning your wedding, consider not only the travelling that you are going to be doing but that of your guests too – the environmental impact soon adds up but with a little (or a lot) of careful planning, you can change that.