Blog

Charlie

A warm welcome to our latest team member and an update on the imminent arrival of my tiny person

Charlie

Today’s a pretty big day for me – it’s officially the start of my ‘maternity leave’ – whatever that might mean when you are single-handedly running your own business. I have just 3 weeks until our baby’s due date, and it’s time for me to start trying to unwind and focus on this tiny person’s arrival.

The past few weeks you might have noticed it’s been very quiet on the blog, in fact, I think it’s the longest period of time I’ve ever left it without blogging something new. I can’t wait to start sharing more ideas and inspiration with you all – I’ve missed you!

But this morning I want to introduce you to the newest member of The Natural Wedding Company – my sister Izzy, who’s going to be running the directory and blog whilst I take my maternity leave.

Charlie

Exquisite ‘Springtime’ and ‘Vintage Dream’ wedding cakes with handcrafted sugar flowers from Amy Swann Cakes

Charlie

I have a lovely bit of wedding cake inspiration for you today. These stunning cake designs were created by Amy who runs Amy Swann Cakes, and who is also one of our fab recommended suppliers on the directory.

Amy is incredibly talented at creating some of the most realistic and beautiful sugar flowers I’ve ever seen. You might recall this incredible wildflower wedding cake design of Amy’s I featured last autumn, and despite recently welcoming twin baby girls into her family, she has still been busy dreaming up these lovely designs for her clients.

Charlie

Behind-the-scenes at our seasonal wedding hair flowers shoot with The Garden Gate Flower Company

Charlie

Last week I shared all the gorgeous photos from my seasonal wedding hair flowers mini shoot with The Garden Gate Flower Company – if you haven’t seen them already and are dreaming of wearing flowers in your hair at your wedding, click here right now for a heady dose of floral inspiration.

As much as I love sharing all the pretty pictures to inspire you for your weddings, I also like to show the real ‘behind-the-scenes’ stuff that goes into a wedding shoot and the small businesses that put in all the hard work. Today I’ve got all the behind-the-scenes photos from my day at The Garden Gate Flower Company, beautifully captured on film by Taylor & Porter Photographs.

I’m going to hand you over to Maz from The Garden Gate Flower Company who will tell you their experience of the day…

“A misty, typically Cornish day back in June was positively brightened by Charlie from The Natural Wedding Company who stopped off on her TNWC South West Roadtrip. We had a little workshop of our own and focused on hair. Charlie has totally sparked a new interest in native grasses (or … errm, weeds to us gardeners: until now? I am totally embracing the ‘can’t beat them join them’ aspect of this idea!).”

Charlie

TNWC Real Brides: Emma’s final blog post as a ‘Miss’ before her outdoor Cornish festival wedding this weekend

Charlie

Can you believe it, two of my lovely TNWC Real Brides are getting married this week! Nik and Chris are getting hitched today (!!!) in Wales (read all about their wedding plans here) and the lovely Emma and Chris will be tying the knot in Cornwall on Saturday. Even though these lovely ladies are around my own age, I still feel a bit like a mother hen with them getting married.

I hope you’ve all enjoyed their journeys and creative plans, and I’m sure we are all looking forward to hearing how it went and seeing the pictures. If you have recently got engaged or are just starting to plan your 2014 wedding, maybe you’d like to be one of my next TNWC Real Brides – full details here.

Today though, it’s over to Emma who has done one final blog post as a ‘Miss’…

I thought I would just pop by to say hello before the big day at the end of this week! We have made a few last minute decisions, one of which is probably the best last minute decision any bride could make – we booked a videographer. I had been toying with the idea for months but decided to take the plunge.

Our photographer Becca posted a link to Pete’s work on her Facebook page. We didn’t have the budget for a video but I thought it would be worth a shot to ask, firstly if he was free (only weeks before the wedding) and to see if he could do reduced coverage with a reduced price. We came up trumps as not only is he mega talented; he was free on our wedding day and did us a brilliant deal.

Charlie

Delicate and romantic seasonal wedding hair flowers – beautiful alternatives to the flower crown

Charlie

A couple of weeks ago I was travelling around Devon and Cornwall visiting TNWC businesses, and as part of that roadtrip I got to spend a whole day with the lovely ladies at The Garden Gate Flower Company (you can read more about it here). We had made plans to do a little shoot of seasonal wedding hair flowers, and despite the fact that it was a wet and windy day on the farm, we were undeterred.

Flower crowns have been a popular wedding trend for over a year now, and don’t seem to be going away any time soon. Whilst I absolutely love them, I noticed they were getting bigger and bolder, and felt that I would never have felt confident or comfortable to pull off a flower crown like that for my wedding. It got me wanting to share some inspiration for more subtle and understated hair flowers, yet still incredibly beautiful.

Becca and Maz at The Garden Gate Flower Company equally loved the idea, especially as they’ve had more and more brides this year asking for more demure hair flowers, so it was a great opportunity to try out their ideas. We were joined on this wild June day by Louise and Teo from Taylor & Porter Photographs who have captured Becca and Maz’s designs exquisitely.

Louise and Teo have recently relocated to Cornwall and their photography business Taylor & Porter Photographs is quite special – why? Because they only shoot on vintage cameras using film. With at least six of us huddled in the polytunnel at The Garden Gate Flower Company for the shoot, it was pretty magical listing to the whizz and click of Louise and Teo’s vintage cameras.

Somehow I ended up ‘modelling’ a number of the hair flowers, which wasn’t my intention, but my long hair wound me up in the styling seat when Becca and Maz’s friend who was going to model for us had to leave early. I am not one for having my photo taken, especially when I’m not prepared with a bit of make-up and less windswept hair – I’m hoping the hair flowers are so stunning you don’t even notice me!

Enough talking, over to the flowers…

Charlie

Would you like to be one of our next TNWC Real Brides? We’d love you to come and share your wedding plans with our readers!

Charlie

One of the best things I’ve done on the blog is to open it up to other real brides to share their wedding planning experiences – this year I’ve already had six fabulous girlies become my TNWC Real Brides. As we head towards the autumn and their wedding days, I am looking for some new TNWC Real Brides to start blogging around September 2013.

From this year’s experience I am looking for another group of brides-to-be who’d like to share their plans for a natural, eco-friendly, seasonal, vintage and homemade wedding.

Each of this year’s TNWC Real Brides had a personalised illustration created of them and their Mr-to-be with a decorative border reflecting their wedding plans – I’m hopeful that my sister Izzy Burton who designed these will be up for doing them for my next TNWC Real Brides too!

To get an idea of what it might like to blog as a TNWC Real Bride take a look at the blog posts from our six current brides-to-be…

Charlie

A fabulous 20% discount on all wedding stationery collections from Paper Themes including chalkboard inspired invites

Charlie

For any of you brides- and grooms-to-be who are on the hunt for your wedding stationery then today I have an exclusive offer to share with you from one of our recommended suppliers, Paper Themes.

Paper Themes are offering our readers a fabulous 20% discount on all their wedding stationery, which includes wedding invitations, evening invitations, order of service, thank you cards, RSVPs, and place cards.

I particularly like these chalkboard style invitations…

Mike from Paper Themes told me a little bit more about what they do and offer: “We offer a collection of traditional, modern and contemporary wedding invitations, all of which can be fully personalised to include the details of your big day. All our invitations are made to order in the UK to the highest standards using only the highest quality materials, delivered to your door in a beautiful presentation box complete with complimentary envelopes.”

Charlie

TNWC Real Brides: Nik’s been busy on the farm doing DIY projects with only a few weeks until her wedding day

Charlie

Just like TNWC Real Bride Emma last week, Nik has only a few weeks to go until her wedding. Her and Mr-to-be Chris have been busy over the past few months with lots of DIY projects for their coastal farm wedding in Wales, and nothing has changed for this creative duo in these final few weeks before their big day.

Today Nik’s got a fab round-up of what they’ve been up to recently, including a lovely reveal of their beautifully restored VW Beetle, making a wedding swing, and some ‘before’ pictures of the barn that will host their wedding reception.

Over to Nik…

The farm is abuzz with life at the moment – not only have the flowers and trees begun to burst forth with summer colour to brighten the place up, but we too are frantically whizzing around doing odd jobs, trimming and pruning, clearing and tidying and generally making preparations for our wedding day on the 11th July.

There’s been so much going on it’s impossible for me to pick just one topic to write about this month, so I thought I’d share a few of the projects we’ve been getting on with.

Reg Returns!

One of the most exciting parts of our wedding day is the fact that Reginald, our vintage VW Beetle, gets to act as wedding car.

Chris has owned him for over 10 years (longer than he’s known me!). One of my earliest memories of Chris is seeing him get out of Reg in a car park and thinking ‘ooh, nice car…hang on… nice owner!’ Unfortunately, when we first got engaged, Reg was rather looking his age after a few years in a damp garage and was in desperate need of a Gok Wan style makeover.

We sent him off to the paint shop for some TLC and he has come back looking pretty fabulous indeed!

I’m so looking forward to cruising down the winding lanes towards the sea after our ceremony, with tin cans rattling behind us and our ‘Just Married’ sign in the window!

Charlie

TNWC Real Brides: Emma’s been making pretty labels for her wildflower seed wedding favours

Charlie

It’s so nice to be back today with another TNWC Real Bride instalment from the lovely Emma. She has less than three weeks to go until her wedding! I’m so excited for her. If you’re new to the feature, you can read all of Emma’s blog posts here and this fab guest post she wrote all about bridal beauty.

Over to Emma…

With less than three weeks to go I am getting butterflies and bubbles of excitement. We have nearly completed the ;to do’ list and the DIY attempts have been continuing late into the evenings.

In the last few days I have been making pretty labels for our favours, which are wildflower seeds for butterflies and bees. I bought some little brown recycled envelopes last year, which have been nestled in the loft waiting to be decorated. For ages I wanted to make a lino cut to hand print each envelope, but time got away and I found a great alternative that is way less messy; some cute little oval labels from Avery, which are made from 100% recycled paper too.

There is free template software included online, which was very easy to use – I made my design in Photoshop then just copied and pasted into the template ready to print.

Chris is filling these little envelopes each with a tablespoon of wild flower seeds as I write this!

Charlie

Chloe and Nick’s relaxed seaside Devon wedding with natural seasonal ‘just picked’ flowers and a jasmine flower crown

Charlie

Relaxed seaside Devon wedding

I am really delighted to be bringing you another exclusive real wedding to the blog today. This wedding was shared with me via the lovely Chloe from BareBlooms, a TNWC flower farmer, as it was not only a wedding she did the flowers for, but she was also a guest as the bride (also called Chloe) and groom are friends of hers.

Bride and groom Chloe and Nick were really relaxed about their wedding day and wanted a simple celebration with just a few lovely details – it’s quite refreshing when it’s so easy to get bombarded by detail heavy weddings seen on so many wedding blogs.

Over to bride Chloe to share their pretty wedding day with you…

Chloe and Nick got married last June in Devon, which they chose because it was the place where they met: “Nick was at Dartington College of Arts and I was working in Exeter, my mum, stepdad and gran live in Exeter and all our friends are mostly based in the south of England, so we felt that Devon was a natural choice.”

Seasonal wedding ideas:

Spring

Summer

Autumn

Winter

DIY + Inspiration

Real Weddings

Suppliers + Products

Browse the blog:

Planning

Advertise

Get your eco wedding business listed on our directory