Vegan Wedding Special
Planning a Vegan Wedding in Vienna
A Vegan Wedding in Vienna – The Day Of
Vegan Wedding Food
Cruelty-Free, Vegan Wedding Hair and Make-Up
How I Made My Own Wedding Dress
The Vegan Groom
A Vegan Wedding in Graz
An all-vegan wedding in Vienna is much easier to plan than you might think and there are so many reasons to do it!
Be it for ethical or environmental reasons, a big vegan feast is a great way to show non-vegans, that you can indulge and celebrate in style while staying true to your beliefs.
Both my husband and I have been vegan for years, so there was never a question that our wedding(s) would be 100% free of animal cruelty.
To us, it would have felt wrong to celebrate our love and life together while ending someone else’s for our dinner.
This vegan wedding special is not only a personal diary but also doubles as a guide to help you organize your own vegan and sustainable feast.
If you read my A Vegan Wedding in Graz post, you already know, that we chose to get married twice. We had a smaller, traditional Styrian “Trachtenhochzeit” in Graz with our families and a slightly bigger “white dress” wedding for mostly our friends and immediate family.
For our wedding in Vienna, we wanted a laid back, timelessly elegant outdoor party inspired by ancient Greece, Viennese Art Nouveau, and the Arts and Crafts Movement.
Planning
It’s a cliché, but I started planning the wedding before I was even engaged. And by planning I mean, I pinned a ton of things to a Pinterest board.
So when I actually started planning because we got engaged, I already had an idea of what I wanted:
A timeless, relaxed outdoor wedding, that would of course be 100% vegan.
Our very first step in planning was creating an Excel Sheet containing all important notes and to do’s.
In the end, it had a total of 11 tabs:
- To-Do – A general oversight by month
- To-Do Day Of – A detailed oversight of who has to do what, when, where and which material would be needed
- Guest List, Addresses, RSVP (you could probably combine those three)
- Money – Our budget and how much we spent on what
- Order of Events – For the whole day of as well as the ceremony alone
- Link List – A list of all Webshops and Websites used in planning
- Food – Our menu and cake flavor ideas
- Decoration – Calculations of how much fabric and ribbon would be needed, which signs would be needed etc.
- Notes – just general notes
As soon as all of our guests RSVP’d via the contact form of our wedding website, we started planning the seating.
We used All-Seated for it and it made planning super easy, I can definitely recommend this!
Apart from Pinterest, I did some research on Instagram.
Fellow vegan blogger Once Upon A Cream also did a Wedding Special a few years back when she got married.
Other than that I checked Martha Stewart Weddings a lot and bought a handful of magazines.
Planning Tip:
Use Excel or Google Docs to stay on top of things.
The Stationery
Being a trained graphic designer, I designed our stationery myself.
I was inspired by the Arts & Crafts movement and kept the color scheme light and airy with different shades of light green, cream, and brassy tones.
As the background for all designs, I used a modified version of William Morris’ Acanthus wallpaper, which is also the wallpaper we have in our kitchen.
We had Save The Dates, Invitations, and Thank You Notes.
We decided against RSVP cards in order to save on paper and money and instead had our guests RSVP via our wedding website.
The light green envelopes were sealed with antique gold vegan sealing wax and a custom wax seal stamp bearing our wedding emblem.
Sustainability Tip:
Save on paper, CO2, and money by letting people RSVP online!
The Venue
Europahaus – Schloss Miller Aichholz in the 14th district was heaven sent.
We got engaged in August 2018 and planned on getting married on August 1st, 2020 for two reasons: August 1st was the day we met, it would have been a Saturday in 2020 and it would have given us enough time to plan our dream wedding.
Then my husband’s parents came to visit us in Vienna and stayed at the hotel in Europahaus and would not stop talking about how beautiful the place is. We had already seen it online while researching wedding locations in and around Vienna but thought it wasn’t for us since most outdoor locations have to close up before or around midnight.
But my husband’s parents convinced us to make an appointment and talk to them.
Right at the beginning, we asked if it would be possible to serve drinks directly from the location but use an independent caterer for food since we want the food to be 100% vegan. The event manager told us, that that would not be necessary, since they do vegan food as well and we wouldn’t even be their first vegan wedding! That basically settled it for us.
Given that we had found our location much earlier in the planning process than we thought, we decided to move the wedding up a year and BOY are we happy we did!
Who could have known that getting married in 2019 instead of 2020 would turn out to be such a fateful decision?
We booked the Orangerie for the dinner and party and the “Tanzboden” (wooden stage outside) for the ceremony and “Open Stage”.
We were able to use the surrounding lawn and terrace as well.
The Orangerie has a beautiful terracotta tile floor, floor to ceiling windows stretching across the entire room, and an original mid-century bar.
All of that, including the beautiful wood chairs, went perfectly with our Mediterranean theme.
Another big plus was that Europahaus is also a Hotel, meaning the guests who had to travel further could stay there. We actually did as well, even though our home isn’t far away, but it just made it much easier.
Sustainability Tip:
Lower your wedding’s carbon footprint by having your wedding where most of your guests live.
The Flowers and Decoration
Perfectionist that I am, I made a PowerPoint presentation for our florist to show her my vision.
Since the floral arrangements would make up most of our decorations, it needed to be just right.
I met with two florists and eventually went with Ilvira. I was extremely happy with her work and attention to detail. She also had a lot of beautiful vases and other items she rents out for weddings and having it all come from one source was incredibly practical.
She also provided baskets for the flower girls and cones filled with loose olive leaves as a sustainable, elegant alternative to confetti.
My absolute favorite arrangement were the two “boas” made of greenery that framed the archway.
Sustainability Tip:
Research which flowers are in season to make your floral arrangements and bouquet more sustainable.
Decorations
We did not have any pompoms, paper lanterns or balloons, because we didn’t want any disposable decorations.
Apart from floral arrangements we had:
- solar powered light-chains
- LED Candles in lanterns
- Textile decorations such as the white linen curtains adorning the archway
If you are looking for wedding decorations, there is no need to buy everything brand new. Especially after the wedding season (Fall and Winter) a lot of couples are selling their decoration on websites like Willhaben (as did we!).
Or you can rent decorations via the following websites:
Sustainability Tip:
Rent your decorations or buy them second hand and re-sell them, once you don’t need them anymore!
You can find lots more detailed posts about our vegan wedding by clicking here!
Photos by Freynoi
Post contains Affiliate Links.
If you choose to buy using one of the above links, I make a small cut and I’m forever grateful!
