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Charlie

TNWC Real Brides: Emma tells us about her botanical inspired wedding stationery and illustrated save the dates

Charlie

It is less than a month now to Emma and Shane’s wedding – I can’t believe the time has flown by so quickly! Fingers-crossed Emma will be able to squeeze in another blog post or two if we’re lucky with a few more details about their beautiful sounding natural city wedding. You can catch up on all her posts so far here.

Today she’s sharing details of her botanical inspired invitations (I love this design so much!), so over to Emma…

Love Local, or, A Tale of Two Cities

In all aspects of our wedding we’ve aimed to make the most of the incredible pool of local talent, and our wedding invitations are no exception! Although I must admit that if I had the time and skill I would have loved nothing more than to make all of the wedding stationery myself.

It was important to us that they reflected our day and felt personal and informal – I spent an inordinate amount of time searching for “the one”. As we had a small budget for stationery, we couldn’t go the bespoke route, so I looked instead for something off-the-peg that could be customised.

Charlie

TNWC Real Brides: Miriam tells us her plans to incorporate 1920s elements into her summer wedding

Charlie

TNWC Real Bride Miriam told us in her introductory blog post that her wedding would be featuring 1920’s details, and today she is telling us more about her plans for incorporating this beautiful era into their celebrations. I was particularly excited to see mention of two TNWC Recommended Suppliers – Pyrus and Lancaster and Cornish – who are involved in their wedding.

Over to Miriam…

A nod to the 1920’s

John and I have each individually had a long love affair with the 1920’s. We both naturally suit the fashion, with his Italian heritage crying out for sharp grooming and well-fitting suits, and my frame being of the long-limbed-and-necked variety. Add to that a predilection for period films, classic jazz and Charles Rennie Mackintosh art/design, it was inevitable that some of the 1920’s would find a way into our wedding plans.

This was confirmed when John presented me with the most beautiful art deco style diamond and sapphire engagement ring, and a celebratory surprise mini-break to Paris (which I think of as a “very 1920’s” city).

Charlie

In celebration of British Flowers Week: if there’s one thing you do this week, choose British blooms for your wedding

Charlie

This week it’s all about British Flowers Week, a “week-long celebration of the wealth and variety of the Best of British cut flowers and foliage.” At The Natural Wedding Company we have been passionate about supporting British flower farmers since we started out in 2007, and seven years later we feel no different.

If you’re a bride-to-be or family/friend helping with wedding plans and you haven’t yet booked your wedding florist, this week commit to choosing British grown flowers. It’s that simple. And there is so much choice and so many inspiring florists out there dreaming up the most incredible arrangements.

Today we are here to give you a round-up of how we can help you to find that perfect British flower farmer or florist. I’m often told that The Natural Wedding Company directory helps brides to match the perfect suppliers for their wedding day: “All enquiries I get from your website are just my perfect customers – they share the same taste for natural and wild things floral”.

Coming up later in the week we will have a celebratory feature on British grown sweet peas and how you can incorporate them into your summer wedding – think lots of beautiful ideas for bouquets and arrangements.

Choose British blooms for your wedding

We have over 60 flower farmers and florists listed on the directory – and in order to show you all in one place what you can expect we’ve put together collages to showcase all of those businesses…

Lauren

Rustic floral stationery from Sarah Wants inspired by The Blue Carrot’s cutting garden in high summer

Lauren

I can’t think of a nicer outing than a visit to a working cutting garden, full of British blooms – choosing the flowers was definitely my favourite part of wedding planning! I remember visiting a local grower on several occasions and seeing little seedlings flourish into gorgeous wedding-worthy flowers was quite a privilege.

There are some wonderful florists who grow their own on the directory and if you’re lucky, you may even be invited to visit their cutting garden as part of your consultation.

When Charlie was planning the TNWC South West Roadtrip back last summer, scheduling a visit to meet Suzanne of The Blue Carrot in Cornwall was high on her priority list. You can read all about what she got up tohere.

On the day of her trip, Charlie was also joined by Sarah from Sarah Wants, an award winning wedding stationery designer and self-confessed country bumpkin who today shares with us the idyllic visit which inspired a new collection. Plus there’s an exclusive discount for TNWC readers!

Over to Sarah…

On a day of sunshine and blue skies, I met Charlie and Suzanne for a lovely lunch at the Hidden Hut just above the beach in Porthcurnick. Afterwards, I was very privileged to visit Suzanne’s beautiful walled cutting garden which was such a treat, it felt like a little hidden secret!

Lauren

Beautiful handmade floaty dresses for little maids inspired by an English apple orchard from Damselfly Flower Girls

Lauren

We’ve got something pretty lovely to share with you all today. Whether you’re dreaming of a flock of petal-scattering mini maids (a la Kate Moss), have an extra special little lady in your life who will be waltzing down the aisle by your side, or you simply need cheering up, then you’ve come to the right place.

TNWC business Damselfly Flower Girls is run by creative mother/daughter team Faith and Naomi, who create gorgeous eco-chic flower girl dresses designed to complement your bridal gown.

As well as some beautiful pictures from their recent photoshoot, they’ve kindly sent us a super cute video – a sneak peak behind the scenes – that might just make your day, and bring to life how pretty these dresses are.

But first, over to Faith to tell you about how the gorgeous shoot location helped to inspire the design of the dresses…

An inspirational setting

The venue for the shoot was Walcott Hall in Shropshire, a truly special place that fits perfectly with the Damselfly aesthetic. The owners are talented curators of gorgeous things and have created an elegant but homely atmosphere that is grand but not over done.

We loved the faded chintz sofas, the ancient silk carpet hanging on the wall with its pattern worn by centuries of dancing feet, and the open fires that we lit to keep our models warm. We had the early 19th century ballroom to ourselves for the day and were in our element.

Charlie

TNWC Real Brides: Kerry’s sharing details of her brown card wedding festival programmes and hessian crafting

Charlie

It is so lovely to be joined by a new group of brides-to-be for the TNWC Real Brides series here on the blog. Last time we heard about Kerry and Nick’s initial plans for their festival inspired wedding, and today Kerry is back with more details on the crafting they’ve been up to.

Over to Kerry to dish the details…

Planning, Making and Gluing

So, it’s May, the last 5 months have been spent; planning, meeting, researching, making and gluing.

We spent hours deliberating over the invites (featured in my last blog post). We both had different ideas of what we wanted, so it was quite tricky to find a middle way. In the end we decided on a PDF printable from STH Blue on Etsy.

Niki customised one of her standard invites especially for ‘Kipstival the Wedding’ and we LOVED it, it’s so personal to us and unique. We liked the postcard RSVP idea, and have had lots of lovely responses back already.

Festival Wedding Programme

The next piece of stationery we created was the programs. We wanted to create something which would inform our guests of what’s happening next. A kind of playlist of the day, as it will be broken up into various sections around the farm. This introduced our first conundrum – what are our timings for the day?

We had to sit down, walk through it in our minds, and try and agree on both format and timings; we got there in the end, after a number of hours sat at the kitchen table and a few glasses of wine! Once that was sorted, we then decided on a front cover and I used old festival programs, which I’ve hoarded over the years, as inspiration for a ‘With thanks’ section on the back page.

I’d bought a pack of blank cards with natural brown envelopes from Papermania, we used the envelopes to send our invites, but had the left over cards, so I put these to good use, and had the programs printed on these. I also wanted to include a handful of confetti in the program, I’d seen a Pin on Pinterest that I liked, so I consulted The Natural Wedding Company directory and found The Confetti Farm.

Charlie

TNWC Real Brides: Lisa has been getting her guests in the festival mood with quirky invitations

Charlie

Your ‘save the dates’ and wedding invitations are often the first thing that tells your guests what to expect from your wedding – I remember when we were making ours that I really wanted them to hint at what our wedding would be like to our family and friends.

TNWC Real Bride Lisa is sharing their quirky wedding invitations with hand drawn illustrations for their festival inspired wedding in Wales. I love how they look like a ticket – perfect!

Over to Lisa to tell you all about them…

Quirky invitations to get our guests into the festival mood

There is nothing nicer than receiving mail; it’s like a little journey back in time. I don’t mean all that junk mail that litters the mat but birthday cards, Christmas cards, good old fashioned letters and my absolute favourite, invitations. I remember getting my first birthday invitation when I was very young and have loved receiving them ever since.

So for me the invitations to our big day were important, they can really set the tone of your wedding. They can fit into the colour scheme; let the guest know if it’s an elegant, traditional affair or a more quirky, unusual celebration and can really get the excitement going.

Our save the dates were free printable designs from the company that we used for our invitations, we very simply printed them on some good quality card and made them into bookmarks. I then punched a hole at the top, threaded some pretty ribbon through and made a little tie – that was pretty much it. Very simple, very economical and I felt very effective. It was from here that I explored a bit more about the company Something Kinda Cute.

For the invitations, we did really wanted to push the boat out. In my original blog I wrote that I wanted to make my own invitations to give it a real personal touch, however when I saw these particular designs I fell in love with them and thought they fitted our theme perfectly.

Charlie

TNWC Real Brides: Emma’s been booking urban wedding venues that have that natural ‘oh my!’ factor

Charlie

A warm welcome back to TNWC Real Bride Emma this week – she’s talking venues today, and I’m pretty stoked to hear all about the places they have booked for the ‘natural wedding in the city’. We share lots of lovely countryside weddings here on the blog, so it’s exciting to hear from a bride-to-be planning a natural wedding in urban spaces.

Over to Emma…

Love On Hope Street

Finding a venue that works for you as a couple is key to any wedding, and doubly so if you’re doing all the planning long distance: we live in Vancouver but are marrying in Liverpool. I wasn’t sure how much time I would have to decorate venues, so I knew I wanted something that would only need a few personal touches to make it feel like “ours”.

Having a good relationship with your venue organisers is also vital, and the friendly advice and timely email correspondence I had from our chosen venues definitely sealed the deal. As we’re marrying in our home town, we knew we would have lots of beautiful spaces to choose from, Liverpool has so many!

I was even able to visit some of them before I came to be with Shane in Canada. This was really helpful in the decision-making process: I ruled one out straight away when I saw the state of the bathrooms our guests would have to share with the bar next door!

Flexibility was also another important criteria for me: I didn’t like being given a rigid list of suppliers that we had to work with, and I discounted any venue that imposed a minimum spend.

I also knew I was looking for something that would have meaning for us, so I focused my search on the city spaces that were part of our courtship: falling in love with Shane is inextricably tied in my memory with running around the sun-splashed summer streets to meet him for our dates at cafés, bars, galleries, and theatres in the heart of the city.

Rooftops + Secret Spaces – Oh My!

Lauren

Build your own bespoke ‘Wedfest’ wedding festival celebration with Cariad Canvas and Wedding Tipi

Lauren

I love camping. There’s no better setting than the great outdoors to allow you time and space to unplug, live simply and take pleasure in the smallest of details. Writing today’s post reminded me why we chose tipis for our own wedding – the laid-back atmosphere they instantly create and the freedom to choose a location put them right at the top of our list.

These days, families and friends are so often spread out across the country and beyond, it’s no surprise that many couples want to make the most of having everyone in one place and turn their wedding into to a weekend long celebration.

If you’re considering this for your wedding but don’t know where to start, then we have good news for you. Fabulous TNWC business Cariad Canvas, who provide luxury canvas accommodation for guests, have teamed up with Wedding Tipi to create packages that offer couples their very ‘pop up’ wedding festival.

Charlie

TNWC Real Brides: introducing Ellie and Jon’s relaxed and rustic wedding in the Hampshire countryside

Charlie

This week I have a few more posts from TNWC Real Brides and a great piece all about a new wedding festival package from one of our TNWC businesses – so stayed tuned!

But first up this week I get to welcome you to our fifth and final TNWC Real Bride for 2014 – her name is Ellie and she’ll be marrying her Mr-to-be Jon in a rustic wedding in Hampshire next May. I hope you enjoy hearing all about her ideas and following her plans with me.

Over to Ellie…

Jon and I met seven and a half years ago, on our first day at Uni. In fact, it would more accurate to say that we met in our first minute of Uni because, as the fates would have it (or maybe it was all thanks to traffic on the M3) he and I pulled up outside our halls of residence within about 10 seconds of each other, got chatting – and, well, the rest is history!

Much of what we have always had in common revolves around the countryside. Both of us are grandchildren of farmers (his grandparents were beef farmers in South Devon, mine sheep farmers on Anglesey) and, for that reason, we’ve spent much of our time together walking, camping, sailing, cutting logs, building chicken houses and generally looking for any excuse to be outside, ideally in foul weather (you can take the girl out of Wales, but you can’t take Wales out of the girl)!

A Proposal in a Thunderstorm

It’s then unsurprising that Jon, in a story that splits audiences down the middle along the lines of a) how mad they are and b) how well they know us, chose to propose after a 12 mile hike, on the top of a hill in the Peak District and in the middle of a thunder storm (the picture below was taken a few hours later)! It was magical and, although few believe me, I will swear until my dying day that the storm cleared and a rainbow came out within minutes of me saying ‘yes’!

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