Many of us love the idea of helping out the planet. The best bit? It looks as though our wedding day could be about to become more Earth-friendly than ever thanks to some stunning eco-friendly wedding decorations.

Biodegradable Straws

Plastic is one of the biggest topics in the world right now as many of us are trying to cut back on our use. One of the biggest offenders are plastic straws. Serving up drinks at your wedding might see us having to invest in a straw or two for the big day. Rather than forking out for all those harmful plastic options, it might be time to choose a biodegradable set instead. The best bit? These eco-friendly options often look more luxurious anyway.

Seed Favors

Wedding favors can be a tough topic. Some people want to go all out while others skip the tradition altogether. Thankfully, there’s an option that will keep your guests happy as well as give back to the environment. That’s right; we’re talking about seeds. Offering up bags filled with seasonal flowers will help to replenish people’s yards as well as giving the environment a little boost thanks to your big day.

Dried Confetti

Would you believe that plastic confetti can take up to 450 years to fully degrade? Have no fear; there’s an option that means you can still enjoy the confetti walk at the end of the ceremony. All you need to do is offer up bags of dried flowers instead. They can be a beautiful tradition, easily match your wedding day colors, and won’t leave any harmful residue that could affect the environment for hundreds of years. It’s perfect.

Dried Floral Arrangements

While talking about dried flowers, it might be time to think about swapping out those fresh arrangements for some dried options instead. They can help to add a little rustic edge to any boho-inspired weddings, but that’s not all. Dried flowers can be the perfect eco-friendly option as they will often be stored in local stores and won’t have to be shipped from overseas, unlike many fresh options that could be out of season at the time.

Planning your big day doesn’t mean you have to leave a significant impact on the environment. In fact, these stunning eco-friendly wedding decorations are even more breathtaking than their original counterparts.

Netflix’s latest reality TV series, Love Is Blind,  has become everyone’s favorite guilty pleasure. From the scoop on the show’s stars to how the process actually worked, here are some things you might now know about the show…

One of the season’s most shocking moments was when Damian decided not to go through with the wedding. It turns out, the couple has since reconciled. After Damian said no, Giannina reached out, they managed to talk it out, and they haven’t been apart since!

The pods were designed to facilitate a connection between two people who couldn’t see each other, from set design to camera placements, the pods were everything! If the pods didn’t work, there wouldn’t be a show. The soothing and comforting colors of the pods were all designed to allow the contestants the best chance to focus on what was on the other side of the wall – their potential matches. Everything down to the acoustics was planned, they were made to help the other sense relax into the octave of conversations.

Though the couples on Love Is Blind had 38 days to get to know each other, get engaged, and get married – they had to wait over a year to see themselves on the show and go public with their relationships. Contestant Damian Powers explained that the show was filmed in November 2018! That means that couples who ended up together had to keep their marriages a secret and off of social media for over a year, to refrain from spoiling the show’s ending.

The first dates between all of the participants were set up “speed-dating” style, which meant that everyone spent around ten minutes with each possible partner. From then on, there were no limitations on who you could talk to when you could talk to them. After the first date, the singles could talk to each other for as long as they wanted, all they needed was a production team to set it up, as they were unable to communicate with each other outside of the pods.

If Carlton Morton looked familiar to you, it’s because you have seen him on television before! The heartthrob was in an Atlanta based reality show before. He made his debut on The Real Housewives of Atlanta when he was working as Cynthia’s Bailey’s assistant way back in 2014. Carlton got into a heated argument with Kenya Moore, who had just joined the series.

As long as they followed a couple of rules, contestants were allowed to request special activities to do with their dates while they were in the pods. The Love Is Blind creators wanted participants to get to know each other in as real of a way as possible. As long as they didn’t see or touch each other, they were encouraged to be creative. They were allowed to eat dinner, play games, paint, whatever came to mind that they thought would make their date more personal.

Contestants didn’t apply to take a part of the show, they had to be invited. The show’s cast was scouted by the show’s creators via social media – through one of the more popular dating apps, Tinder, and the social media platform, Instagram. Although it may have been harder to cast the contestants this way, this route ensured that the contestants for the show were real people looking for true love and not people that were looking to reach fame through the reality show.

The editing of Love Is Blind makes it hard to understand how long the pod dates actually are. Coelen explained that the lengths of each date varied based on how far into the journey the contestants were. He confirmed in an interview with Entertainment Weekly, “They would talk to each other multiple times every day…so in the beginning, just because there were so many people we had to cycle through, they’d be short, like seven to 10 minutes.” As time went by, they would spend hours together, multiple times a day.

As you may know, the premise of Love Is Blind is that the participants cannot see each other, which also means that they cannot communicate outside of the pod. You may be wondering, how did contestants end up in the pod with the person they are interested in, well that is where the producers stepped in. The show’s producers helped arrange dates. The contestants got to pick the people they wanted to keep talking to, and if the person was interested in spending more time with them, the producers made sure they got to meet in the pods.

Contestants had much more input on their process than other reality dating shows. It was important for the producers to give the contestants the chance to control their experiences within the show’s rules. They wanted them to make the decisions and have them control their destiny, and they could do whatever they wanted other than touch and see each other. The singles weren’t given cue cards or specific talking points, and they were never interrupted and made to talk about specific things, they did what they wanted to do.

The whole process took approximately two months. They spent ten days in the pods, and then another 15 days before the couples could go back to the real world. The couples had known each other for two weeks at the time each pair got their phones back and were allowed to let their family in on the big news. They were shut off from the outside world for more than two weeks – time in which they spent getting to know each other and themselves, figuring out what was important to them.

A unique part of the dating show was that, unlike other dating shows, where contestants may fall in love with someone from another part of the country, all of the participants on Love Is Blind lived in Atlanta, Georgia. Coelen explained that production wanted the contestants to be currently residing in the same city. They wanted to make sure they had a real shot at making their love and marriage work.

Considering the contestants were all singles living in Atlanta, it would only make sense that they may have come across each other at some point. Barnett revealed that before being invited to take part in the show, he matched with one of the female contestants on a dating app. He refrained from revealing which woman it was, but we’re assuming that it wasn’t his wife, Amber. If it had been her, he probably wouldn’t have had a problem admitting it!

So how did the couples manage to keep their relationships a secret between production and the show’s debut? Considering everything is documented on social media, this seems like a bigger struggle than one could imagine – but the cast made it work. Amber and Barnett both posted photos of a trip to Italy but did so weeks apart. Cameron also did a great job by not posting much and just keeping to himself. For the couples who didn’t stay together, it was an easier task, since they didn’t have a relationship to hide!

According to the show’s creator, Coelen – a key aspect of the show’s premise was stripping the contestants of their cellphones and technology, anything that could put them in contact with the outside world. This is a basic course of action done on reality television shows. Coelen thought that the best way to get people to connect was to take away their devices, making them understand that they aren’t as disposable as they may feel through dating apps and technology that they have come so accustomed to.

The show’s creators and producers didn’t expect the process to have so much success with the couples. More couples got engaged than the show was able to feature. “As a producer, I was kind of nervous like, ‘Is anybody actually gonna get engaged? Is anyone going to make it to the altar?’ And, in the end, we actually had more couples get engaged than we were able to follow on the show.” As it turns out, eight couples got engaged at the end of the process, but only six were featured on the series.

Because of the limited resources, and the number of episodes featured in the season, there were interesting stories that the show could not cover. Coelen said that one of the more interesting stories was that of Danielle Drouin, a yoga instructor, and model, who got engaged to live-streamer, Rory Newbrough. The couple split shortly after filming wrapped, and Danielle realized she still had feelings for another cast member, Matt Thomas. The two ended up dating but ultimately didn’t last either.

Another engagement that was not featured on the show (one of the two that were not aired) was between Westley Baer, who was shown briefly talking about dating as a shorter man, and Lexie Skipper. Although the two did not continue on the show, the couple dated for three months in Atlanta. Baer made a career change that took him away from Skipper, he left everything behind and moved to Asia. Baer and Skipper talk daily, and once the hype from the show dies down, they may revisit their relationship.

When the show aired, there were rumors that Mark, the youngest single male, secretly had a girlfriend while the show was filming. He denied the rumors, stating he did not have a girlfriend the whole time, he was single before going on the show. He claimed that he was a single man, “doing his thing” and that he had never had a girlfriend before. Mark added that there was “no time” to be in a relationship during the experience of the show.

Perhaps the most disliked cast member, Jessica revealed that she tried to quit the show but wasn’t allowed to. She told EW that she had a conversation with production about leaving but was unable to. She explained, “My dog got sick too, and almost died during the show. I had so much other stuff going on.” She was frustrated that they wouldn’t let her go because she knew that she and Mark were not going last long, let alone get married.

Although the producers planned for the pods to be soundproof on a couple of the sides while allowing sound to pass through the light-up wall, they soon understood that it made the sound pass from one pod to another. To create total privacy for the contestants, they chose to make the entire pod soundproof and had the contestants communicate through speakers. They had a small speaker on the front wall, where you would hear the other person who was in the other pod. Coelen told Variety, “There’s no producers in there, there’s nobody else. It’s just you and the other person. That’s it.”

Contestant Rory said that as time went on, the contestants would use their time in the pods to have friendly conversations or get advice from someone. Rory explained that girls would often cry during their friend-dates with him because he was so sympathetic. He explained that it was like a therapy session and that girls would say, “I have a date with Rory tonight, bring the tissues.”

When you aren’t allowed to see the person you’re talking to, you have to come with creative ways to describe yourself. What better way to describe yourself than by using famous faces to paint a better picture of yourself? While filming, contestants would say they look like certain celebrities to describe their appearance to their potential partners. During an interview, one of the show’s hosts, Vanessa Lachey, implied that some of the contestant’s doppelganger claims weren’t as accurate as they had hoped.

True to every juicy reality television show, Love Is Blind was loaded with drama. It continued even after the show ended. During the show’s reunion episode, Amber had no problem calling Jessica out, calling Jessica fake as she continued to bring up the way she behaved throughout the show. Jessica acknowledged that she was wrong and apologized. She apologized to Amber for continuing to pursue Barnett throughout the show.

Couples told Coelen that they loved falling asleep in the pods with the person they were talking to, they wanted to spend as much time as possible with that specific person. Since contestants could stay as long as they pleased in the pods, some dates turned into nap dates. In an interview, Coelen added that contestants would sometimes have to be reminded to take breaks to eat, do interviews or even sleep – they were so invested in their potential partners, they would often forget there was a world outside!

The Love Is Blind hosts happen to be real-life couple Nick and Vanessa Lachey. They were more involved in the show than viewers, and fans were able to see. Both Nick and Vanessa spent tremendous amounts of time talking to the contestants about their feelings. In between the pod dates, the hosts would sit down and talk with the contestants. It’s a shame these scenes were not incorporated in the show. We would have loved to see what they had to say!

Kenny and Kelly never planned to marry by the end of the show, and they were both adamant about it. They got engaged to extend the experiment – they both felt committed to it. They believed they were going to continue dating after Love Is Blind ended, the communication between them was open, they were on the same page throughout the whole process. That was until the wedding day when Kenny admitted he was emotionally unavailable and couldn’t continue the relationship. Kelly felt very rejected, she explained that that wasn’t a part of their plan, she felt blindsided.

Contrary to popular belief that participation on a reality television show means you’re going to be living a luxurious lifestyle during the experimental pod part of the show, the contestants weren’t sleeping in lavish quarters. Kenny Barns opened up about the experience, “The first four days we filmed on average I’d say 18 to 20 hours. We slept in trailers, and they were correctional facility beds. The design was to just strip us down from our comfort level.”

Believe it or not, the Love Is Blind cast started with around 50 contestants. Over the 10-day “pod period,” some of the participants were sent home, narrowing the show’s cast to about 20 to 25 singles. It became evident to the show’s producers that from the group of 50 people, some were gravitating towards other people more than others. They decided to focus more attention on the people that were connecting, allowing them more time to get to know each other.

Planning a wedding with someone they had only known for ten days and had never seen face to face before sounds out of this world! Fans may be asking themselves – were the cast members obligated to make it to the altar? According to the show’s creator, they were not. They could choose to do whatever they decided was right for them, the wedding day decisions were up to them, as the whole process was. Coelen admitted, being there on the wedding day, knowing these people and their stories, he had no idea what was going to happen.

Despite skepticism from viewers, the show’s marriages are legally binding, Lauren explained that it was not for television, it was their lives. So who paid for the weddings? A Netflix spokesperson revealed that production supplied some of the basics, but because these are their real weddings, it was up to them as to how they decide to spend their money. If the couples went over budget while planning their wedding, it was up to them to cover the expenses.

When opening up about their experiences with fellow castmates, some of the contestants compared being on the show to living in sororities and fraternities. Lauren Speed said that the women on the show created a “sisterhood,” explaining, “We bonded through this once-in-a-lifetime experience. How else would we explain this to other people? No one else would understand. We all shared that, and it created a family.” Fellow contestant, Mark Cuevas said the same for the men’s side explaining that it felt like a frat house, but that there were more emotions involved.

Wine, soda, and various snacks were always provided to the show’s contestants – some utilized these perks more than others. You weren’t the only one that noticed that there was almost always a wine glass in Jessica’s hand. At one point, she even let her pup drink from her wine glass. Jessica was aware of the habit as well. In the reunion episode, she addressed the fact that she was drinking too much throughout the show’s production.

Love Is Blind became Netflix’s number-one trending program the day after the finale aired. Critics have called it toxic, intensely tragic, and extremely addictive. Dubbing itself a “social experiment,” the dating show has caused quickly become one of the streaming network’s most talked-about series. Both the finale and the reunion were full of surprises, and the series was quickly renewed for a second and third season. Despite its major success, Coelen has revealed that there will be some changes in the upcoming seasons.