There is an amazing older, but perfect for the season series at Telegraph.co.uk about growing your own wedding. From the flowers to the food, if you’ve already got a small plot of land, you can grow it all organically and save BIG bucks while keeping your wedding eco-friendly.

The series from start to finish looks at how to plan and manage growing your own DIY green wedding.

Some of the many wonderful ideas offered include:

• Peach or raspberry Bellinis for guests, made with some fruit picked from the garden.
• For canapés with the early drinks, lots of different bruschettas made with garden tomatoes, garlic, and plenty of home-grown basil and a minty bean humus as well.
• Plates of just-picked baby vegetables – radish, mini carrots, peas, purple-podded mange touts, and the late, mini broad bean ‘Stereo’ – on plates covered in ice.
• Crisp courgette wedges with anchovy mayonnaise and stuffed courgette flowers with goat’s cheese and honey.
• Fresh salads and new potatoes served with dinner.
• Lebanese tahini salad, home-made mint jelly and platters of salad scattered with blue borage and orange marigold flowers included with the main wedding meal.
• Flowers such as, Cosmos ‘Purity’ and dill flowers for decor, table centres of potted acidanthera, and a bouquet of roses, alchemilla and sweet peas.

I LOVE this great green DIY wedding idea!

Read the series:

• Grow your own wedding: part 1
• Grow your own wedding: part 2

See more DIY green wedding ideas.

The super talented and crafty Jeanne Winters made this sweet little pyramid box for her hubs on Valentine’s day, but it would also make a fantastic small wedding favor box, wedding card, or wedding table place marker.

Winters’ notes that it was really easy to make with a simple template. You could hand write the words or a phrase of your choosing on the box or use the computer to print out some text. These are also made so that you can tuck a little gift or other treasure neatly away inside.

A beautiful idea and one you could easily use recycled paper and scrap paper for. In fact this would be a cool project to do with leftover wall paper samples you can get at places like Home Depot.

Visit Jeanne Winters for many more awesome DIY projects – you won’t believe your eyes.

If you want a unique decor item, are short on cash, or just want to use resources responsibly for your green wedding, one of the best ways to do all three is to do some of your wedding yourself. Here are five DIY decor ideas that aren’t too hard, and all would work well for a green wedding…

If you’re handy with the cutting, this crafty project from Craft Stylish is such a pretty ideas for simple wedding cake decor. Use recycled paper!

Need place card holders that will totally biodegrade after the big event? Try sugar cube place holders! An excellent idea from Weddingbee. I don’t know if it’s possible, because of the softness factor, but I think these would look amazing with Brown European-Style Sugar Cubes too.

A beautiful DIY wheatgrass centerpiece from DIY Wedding. Get some organic flowers and go nuts!

Make adorable little gum paste strawberries with an amazing tutorial from Cake Journal, which really you can use for cakes and cupcakes or as part of a decor effort, say on the wine table. If you got good you could make all sorts of cute stuff with gum paste – other berries, little flowers, leaves, etc.

This cute garden minded project is meant to hold garden seed packets, but I think they’d be cute as food markers – i.e. salad, fruit salad, apple tarts, etc. They project here is from Sculpey, but if you wanted to you could make your own natural play clay for this project or get some organic clay.

Also learn how to make your own sugar crystallized wedding flowers!

I’ve been a fan of candied flowers since the third grade when my teacher (who btw was never nice) did one nice thing – she held a candied flower workshop. We made candied lilacs, and ever since I’ve been into them. Candied flowers are perfect for a green wedding too; with many uses and eco-perks…

Crystallized Roses by Meadowsweets

• Edible candied flowers can be used as toppers for cakes, pies, sorbet, ice cream, truffles, and cupcakes.
• Bag them up and give as sweet wedding guest gifts.
• Add them atop beverages.
• Decor for many dishes such as fruit salad or around a holiday wedding table.
• They’re an inexpensive decor item and edible treat.
• They don’t create waste – they vanish into bellies and if not eaten of course they completely biodegrade.
• They taste fabulous.

Excellent flowers to crystallize for green weddings: Lilacs, violets, rose petals, cowslip, angelica, rosemary, sage, pinks, borage, primroses, and lavender. Leaves such as lemon balm, lemon verbena, mint, and bergmot can also be coated with sugar. Really, any edible plant can be crystallized. Just make sure you research which flowers and leaves are safe to eat before using them to make candied flowers.

Health matters: Flowers used for candied flowers need to be home grown or purchased from a reliable organic flower source. Flowers laced with sugar are cool – flowers laced with pesticides don’t belong at your green wedding.

My favorite flower for candied flowers.

How to make candied flowers and candied leaves:

1. Pick flowers on a sunny dry day – you don’t want wet petals.
2. Remove all stalks and white bases from petals, also remove any sharp edges, thorns, and petals that look icky. Once you coat a flower with sugar it’ll make any problems stand out.
3. Lightly beat an egg white until just foamy.
4. Dip each flower into the egg white to coat. Make sure to use plastic tweezers if holding by the petals (metal will bruise petals).
5. Dip into organic caster sugar.
6. Place on wax paper atop a wire cooling rack.
7. Place in your extremely low heated oven with the door slightly open. You can also dry flowers in a well enclosed solar oven or a hot greenhouse but note, small flowers are delicate and will blow away.
8. Once your flowers are nicely dry in the oven (not sticky or dusty to the touch) they’re done.

Candied flower storage and handling:

• If you store your candied flowers in a moisture-free, air-tight containers, at room temperature (no direct sunlight) they should last a good long while. If you’re making these for a wedding, I’d make them no more than a month in advance.
• Place your candied flowers your cake or other food item about 24-48 hours prior to the event; note – you can store these in the fridge or freezer once on a cake but store your cake uncovered. Placing a cover over may create too much moisture for the flowers.
• To attach flowers to a wedding cake use a tiny drop of icing and be careful, as your flowers are delicate.

Carrot Cake with Crystallized Pansies - for a birthday, not wedding but would be oh so cute for little wedding cakes!

More resources:

• Meadowsweets sells a Flower Crystallization Kit which includes directions, sample crystallized flower, plus the ingredients and tools needed to crystallize approximately 75 flowers.
• Edible Flowers: Desserts & Drinks
• Edible Flowers: From garden to kitchen: growing flowers you can eat, with a directory of 40 edible varieties and 25 recipes, with 350 glorious colour photographs.

Buy ready made crystallized flowers & organic edible flowers:

• Meadowsweets – offers Pansy, Viola, Johnny-jump-up, Lavender, Daisy, Cornflower, Roses and Scented Geranium Blossom.
• India Tree Candied Rose Petals
• Edible Dried Flower Petals and Fresh Edible Flowers from Langford Foods.
• India Tree Candied Violets
• Organic Edible Flower Mix – to make your candied flowers with.
• Crystallized Flower Company
• Search at Local Harvest for a nearby organic flower retailer – it’s much better and fresher to purchase local organic flowers when possible.

Pretty recipe ideas:

• Tea Cake with Candied Flowers
• A Spring Trifle – with candied lilacs
• Orange Blossom Cake with Candied Orchids
• White Cake, Orange Zest, & Crystallized Flowers

[Carrot Cake image via: http://www.flickr.com/photos/probonobaker/ / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0]