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It has been a while since I featured an exclusive real wedding on the blog, more through my own fault than lack of them to share. Whenever I put together a real wedding feature I feel this immense sense of responsibility to the couple who’s wedding it is - after all this was their special day and I want to do my very best in portraying it here on my blog.
As a result it takes me a great many hours to put together the beautiful photographs and carefully answers questions submitted by the bride. Today’s wedding is a very gorgeous autumnal affair, that was inspired by the couples love for the countryside.
Laura and Dave got married in Stratford Upon Avon during the autumnal month of October, with a humanist ceremony. Their wedding was captured beautifully by TNWC photographer The Little Caravan Photography. Over to bride Laura to tell us more about the day…
“We both love Autumn and were keen to reflect the season, with it’s lovely cosiness and beautiful colours. We wanted it to feel personal and handcrafted – no ‘Gold Package’ all inclusive deals! And being a country girl at heart, I wanted it to feel rustic, homely and unfussy.”
The Natural Wedding Company is lucky enough to be blessed with some fantastic small and independent businesses, who aren’t only making and selling beautiful things, but they’re also showing you how to do it too.
I’m delighted to welcome back to the blog Sharon Langsdale from TNWC business Razzle Dazzle Rose – she’s going to be showing you how to make recycled seeded paper flowers that are ideal for decorating wedding favours or invitations, and even transforming into alternative buttonholes.
Razzle Dazzle Rose sells a number of fantastic eco-friendly craft materials, specifically in my favourite brown craft card. A new addition to her shop are these paper flower kits – you can choose from recycled brown kraft paper flowers, cream vintage fleck flowers, or seeded paper flowers.
Once you have your kit, here’s how to make the flowers – over to Sharon who is using the cream vintage fleck flower kit…
Handmade Recycled Seeded Paper Flowers
Step 1 - Unpack your paper flower kit and you’ll see you have a number of die cut pieces of paper, just like these…
Although we are now into April and should be seeing signs of spring, it still seems very much ‘dead’ looking around us, and I’ve even heard that we are about 3 weeks behind in the world of greenery, growth and flowers. I am dreaming of the days when we are surrounding by vibrant green, lanes of bobbing cow parsley, and all that apple blossom.
Because it seems like we have even longer this year to wait for that time, I’m going to share a little bit of spring wedding table inspiration to remind me of what it will be like…one day in the next couple of months. Although this isn’t inspiration taken from a wedding or styled bridal shoot, I think this rustic and simply laid table would be lovely for a spring wedding.
Plain white crockery, tiny vases and jugs of apple blossom, and mismatched napkins all in a neutral blue and white scheme – you can get tea towels very similar to these from Ikea – cut in half and hemmed they make great napkins, which is what we did for our wedding. I also dream of lunches like this out in the garden, perhaps this will be the year for eating outside…
Has spring sprung today?! It certainly feels like it here in Cheshire – how about with you? Anyway, with this decidedly warm and cheerful feeling outside (I even ate my breakfast on the patio!) I wanted to share a really jolly summery wedding cake today.
I chose this rough iced cake decorated with a dainty pink peony, those fab yellow billy balls (I believe that’s what they’re called?), and some delicate greenery. I really like how they’ve used the leaves to wind down the cake and used a couple of peony petals for added interest.
This afternoon is a pretty exciting one for all of you TNWC readers who entered our House of Whatnot competition to win a beautiful embroidered wedding map. It was one of the most popular competition’s we’ve run and there were so many lovely entries, which meant Sally from House of Whatnot had a really difficult time choose a winner.
As with most competition’s there has to be just one winner, and I’m delighted to announce that the lucky person who’ll be receiving their very own personalised embroidered wedding map from House of Whatnot is…
Huge congratulations to Nicola! Sally from House of Whatnot really loved all of the map details you are already incorporating into your wedding and felt one of her wedding maps would suit it well. Sally will be in touch with you shortly by email to arrange getting your map made.
Welcome to our second TNWC Real Brides guest post of the week! Today we’ve got the lovely Nik to tell us all about her beautiful DIY wedding invitations and how they created their wedding website. I’m a little bit jealous because I love the style of Nik and Chris’ invitations and think they fit so well with their coastal farm wedding.
If you’ve not read Nik’s first few guest posts, you should first read about her plans for their relaxed coastal farm wedding, and her experience of choosing an ethical wedding dress.
One of the first jobs we tackled upon choosing our chosen wedding venue was our invitations. Our announcement of plans for a summer wedding was immediately met with panic from several relatives and friends about potential holiday clashes. Getting the invites out six months in advance gave everyone plenty of time to plan their hols around the wedding, and has meant that we’ve only had one clash resulting in absent friends on the day.
Our wedding celebrations will be split into two very different parts: a very small ceremony with 25 close family and friends on the farm where we live in Pembrokeshire; and a big all day reception two days later in our home county of West Yorkshire. This gives us the best of both worlds: a relaxed, intimate ceremony where we can focus on the day and what it means, but also the opportunity to celebrate our marriage with our wider network of friends, which is very important to us.
Ceremony Invites
We planned to DIY our invites from the word go: we wanted them to be very personal, I wanted them printed on ‘green’ paper and Chris is a graphic/web designer so it seemed silly not to take advantage of that! However, in the end, we decided to buy our ceremony invites ‘off the rack’ as we realised that we just couldn’t print them at home without compromising on the quality and appearance. Lela of doodlelove was fantastic and worked with us to create a complementary design to match our theme, even incorporating the little chicken illustration that has sort of become our invitation mascot!
I have missed sharing some of my favourite finds from other wedding blogs, but am determined to get more of them back here on the blog for you. I had to share some pictures from this beautiful New Zealand beach wedding where the bride wore a stunning brown dress.
It’s so lovely and refreshing to see gorgeous alternatives to a white wedding dress, and I would have never imagined how lovely a brown wedding dress could look until I spotted this wedding. I also love how the bridesmaids wore mismatched white dresses.
The flowers from this wedding are also exquisite – not having any knowledge of native New Zealand flowers and foliage I can’t tell whether they are native nor seasonal, but they look like they should be.
