The wedding industry in the UK is worth around £10 billion a year; a colossal amount of money by any reckoning. The average wedding sets a UK couple back £30,000 — the cost of a house deposit, or a year travelling the world. There’s little denying that love should be celebrated and, as the co-owners of a boutique wedding dress shop in London, Belle Bridal, it’s been our life’s mission. But the question is there: can a wedding benefit more than those involved?

After years of seeing the amount of money involved in wedding planning, we’ve sought to help brides lower the cost of their wedding, without compromising on style, by stocking sample wedding dresses. Beyond the dress, however, there are so many ways to make sure that your wedding helps those less fortunate than you.

Check With Your Caterer — What Happens to Food Wasted from Weddings?

A simple way to make sure your wedding is eco-conscious — as well as helping others in the process — is by checking with your caterer beforehand about what happens with the leftovers. £230 million of edible food is thrown away every year, while eight million people are starving. Food banks and homeless shelters often won’t accept pre-cooked food, but if it’s arranged beforehand, exceptions can be made.

Finding a catering company with awareness and experience is a good start in making sure that the leftovers from your carefully chosen wedding meal are going to people who will appreciate them just as much, as your guests, if not more so.

A couple in the United States made the news recently when they decided to have rescue puppies instead of bouquets. Personally, I would want a very budget wedding dress before I let a puppy near it — however cute they may look in photos — but their wedding successfully raised awareness for an animal shelter, as well as creating some adorable wedding memories.

In the 21st century, many engaged couples either already live together, or live apart but own a lot of their own belongings and even property. This means the wedding registries of old are becoming increasingly disposable; there is no new large and empty new house to fill with stuff.

Instead of dispensing with it entirely, include others around the globe by choosing one or more charities to donate to. Because of the questionable nature of some charities — and the fact that they aren’t set up to donations as they come in — sites like The Good Beginning have been set up to act as a charity wedding registry. Whether your cause is the Amazon rainforest, a local wildlife sanctuary, or a veteran’s centre down the road, you can make sure they’re remembered on your wedding day.

If you’d rather experience your wedding charity in a more hands-on way, why not spend your honeymoon volunteering somewhere? Burma, Thailand, Ethiopia, India; many third-world countries are popular honeymoon destinations already, but the newlyweds spend their trip isolated away in a luxury hotel. Interacting with the locals will be sure to bring you many more enriching memories than just lying by the pool. It will be a wonderful way to bond and learn to work together with your new husband or wife.

A lot of volunteer programs can be quite costly, but choosing one of these over a lavish honeymoon is a fantastic to help others and really achieve something. Whether you have two weeks, two months or two years, you can find something that works for both of you. Just make sure you find a responsible volunteer program and steer clear of voluntourism.

Your big day may be ‘your’ big day, but it can also benefit tens or even hundreds and thousands of others long after your bouquet has dried up and the confetti is cleared away. By treating it as a celebration of not just your life, but life itself, you’ll cherish the memories even more. Don’t just become another statistic of someone who’s spent their life’s savings on a party. Become the person who celebrated their love of each other and the planet they’re fortunate enough to live on.