There’s a version of the wedding industry where every event is a rival, every supplier is a competitor, and every conversation happens with one eye on the door. We don’t work in that version, and we don’t want you to either.
At the Sustainable Wedding Alliance, we believe collaboration is key. Not collaboration as a buzzword, but the practical, sometimes uncomfortable, always rewarding work of businesses choosing to work together rather than against each other. It’s written into how we operate, and this year it shows up in a very concrete way: we’ve teamed up with Wed Pros Live London on a joint event discount, because we believe the two events complement each other, and we don’t want anyone to miss out on attending both.
Practising what we preach
Collaboration isn’t something we ask of others and skip ourselves. Our founder, Michelle Miles, serves as a board advisor for the UK Wedding Association, contributing her sustainability expertise to the wider industry conversation, because a sustainable wedding industry won’t be built by one organisation alone. She trains, she advises, she shows up in rooms run by other people, and she encourages our members to do the same.
And we support other industry events. Not just in words, but in the way we talk about them and the way we’ve built this discount. We actively encourage people to attend events that will help them run successful, sustainable businesses, whatever the focus of the event, because every good conversation you have makes your business, and the industry around you, stronger.
Different events, same foundations
Here’s something we think gets lost: even when an event isn’t about sustainability, the important elements often run through it anyway. Events focused on business growth talk about profit, and profit done well is inseparable from the people it employs and the planet it depends on. Events about marketing are really about understanding people: what couples care about, what they value, what earns their trust. Events about technology touch the planet too, in the energy it uses and the systems it changes.
People, planet and profit: the three pillars of sustainability don’t need an event to name them to be present. But there is one thing we believe deserves a dedicated day.
That’s what the Sustainable Wedding Summit is for
The Sustainable Wedding Summit 2027, on Monday 25 January at Kings Place, London, exists to focus squarely on sustainability: to bring together wedding pros and businesses that care about people and planet and want to run successful, purpose-driven, profit-making businesses. A day of doing, not a day of sitting: workshops where you work on your actual business, insightful talks (short and honest, no hour-long keynotes here), and a partner showcase of vetted suppliers who can help you put sustainability at the heart of what you do.
This year’s theme is profit, because a business that can’t pay its own way can’t afford to operate responsibly. Sustainability is people, planet and profit together, and the Summit is where we work on all three, deliberately, in the same room.
Industry round tables, and a bigger conversation about collaboration
At the Summit we’ll be running industry round table sessions: real conversations between people who do the same work, about the challenges in their sector and what to do about them. Venues, florists and farmers, stylists and planners, celebrants, photographers and more, in small groups where everyone gets a voice and nobody hides at the back.
And we’re taking the collaboration theme further: we’re inviting industry leaders to be part of a wider discussion around collaboration in the industry. Not a panel of talking heads, but a genuine conversation about how the wedding industry works together: how we share knowledge, how we lift each other rather than compete, and how we build an industry where a rising tide genuinely lifts all boats.
The joint discount, because we mean it
We’ve agreed a joint event discount with Wed Pros Live London. Book your place at the Summit with SWA, and receive a discount to use when booking your Wed Pros Live ticket. Two events, two days of working on your business, one industry getting stronger. We think that’s worth celebrating.
Wed Pros Live London takes place on Monday 22 March 2027 at The Tower Hotel, and it’s a day of business education, marketing and sales masterclasses and connection, for wedding pros who are done playing small. Our Summit is your sustainability day; their stage is your marketing and sales focus. Together they give you the right start to 2027.
Book your place at the Sustainable Wedding Summit
Check out Wed Pros Live, London
Collaboration is the point
A sustainable wedding industry isn’t built by one business, one organisation or one event. It’s built by thousands of businesses making better decisions, and by the industry choosing, over and over, to work together. That’s why we collaborate, that’s why we support other events, and that’s why we’d love to see you in January, and in March, and wherever good conversations about this industry are happening.
What collaboration has given us
It’s worth pausing on what collaboration has actually made possible, because it’s easy to treat the word as decoration and miss the substance. The Sustainable Wedding Alliance exists because wedding businesses wanted to work through the sustainability question together rather than each reinventing the wheel alone. Our accreditation framework has been shaped by the businesses who put themselves through it, our Carbon Literacy Training has trained hundreds of professionals because members kept bringing their colleagues and their industry friends, and the card game we built with Small99 happened because two organisations saw a gap neither could fill on their own. The events we run, including the Conscious Connections series we host in partnership with other companies, exist because collaboration multiplies what a small team can offer. Every one of those things started with a conversation that could just as easily have been a competitor assessment.
That’s the quiet argument of this whole piece: the collaborative instinct pays. It pays in knowledge you’d never have gained alone, in trust that turns into referrals, and in an industry that gets easier to work in for everyone. The businesses we see thriving are rarely the ones guarding their patch. They’re the ones who share generously, refer confidently, and turn up for each other, and who find that the industry turns up for them in return.
How to start, if this isn’t how you operate
If your instinct has always been to keep your cards close, collaboration can feel like a risk, so here’s the low-stakes version. Recommend a supplier outside your usual list, simply because they’re right for the couple. Share one genuinely useful thing you learned this season, in a post, a newsletter or a conversation with a peer. Go to an event run by people who aren’t your customers, and ask questions instead of pitching. Say the thing you’d normally keep to yourself about how the industry could work better, ideally in a room where someone with the power to change it is listening. None of that costs you your edge. All of it makes the industry around you a place where good businesses can do well, and that is very much the point.
