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I am so excited about my new TNWC Real Brides feature and I hope you are too! It’s been lovely finding out so much about other people’s weddings and being able to share all those details with you here. You can catch up on all the blog posts by clicking this link to the full TNWC Real Bride feature.
Today has her second blog post, and is going to tell us all about the start of their DIY elements to their wedding – starting with their invitations. She’s even done a how to guide on how she made some very cute cake flags! If you haven’t read Emma’s first blog post, you can find it here. Over to Emma…
This week we have reached the first of our planning milestones – we posted our invites! We both wanted personalised invitations and I love to draw so I thought I’d have a go myself. I drew the designs on watercolour paper, painted in a bit of colour and went over it in fine liner.
I photographed the paintings then added the text using Photoshop. We had them printed on recycled card at Monkey Puzzle Repro Art who are based at Mount Pleasant Eco Park. I couldn’t be more happy with the service, John was lovely and got our invites printed within 24 hours of me emailing him the artwork! The front of the invite features us in what I think I can pass off as ‘naïve cartoon style’, standing in front of the archway area we plan to have our ceremony in.
I get the impression that many more couples are choosing to have their wedding ceremony outdoors – even with our temperamental British weather there are ways around it, and more and more I’m seeing simply beautiful outdoor ceremonies.
Recently on the blog I featured Christine and Joe’s wedding and they got married in a woodland glade beneath an old beech tree – it looked stunning. Their guests sat on straw bales covered with simple piece of fabric, but there are all kinds of ways to seat your guests for an outdoor ceremony.
Whilst it might be a challenge to find wooden stools as beautiful as the ones in the image above (and enough of them!), wooden benches are easier to get hold of. I’m all for considering how your guests might feel, so sitting for the duration of a wedding ceremony on a wooden bench could be uncomfortable, so I really love the idea of placing cushions on them as a comfy seat for your family and friends.
If you are handy with a sewing machine (or have a friend or family member who is) then why not sew up some simple cushion covers from fabric remnants. After your wedding you could give them away as gifts and save some to decorate your own sofas or bed with.
Who here is planning on an outdoor ceremony and how will your guests be seated?
Image: Jonathan Ong via Ruffled
Not quite wanting to give in to the colourful wedding cakes that remind us of summer, but at the same time wanting to bring a little spring cheer, I’ve chosen this romantic white wedding cake for today’s Cake Love feature.
With it’s pretty selection of white and cream blooms and dotted with sprigs of green mint, it had just the right amount of the hopefulness of warmer days, whilst being quite subtle and soft in its appearance. I am a huge fan of herbs being used for weddings, both incorporated into bouquets, buttonholes and table arrangements, and as well as decorating cakes, drinks and other edibles.
Ok. So the sun is out. It’s been out for two days now, and I have given into the dreams and whims that spring, and eventually summer might be on its way. Of course, they are always ‘on their way’ but on sunny winter days like these it is a lovely reminder.
So bursting out of all the beautiful winter wedding inspiration I have shared over the past few months, is a glimmer of late spring/early summer. These little jam jars filled with herbs (mint, oregano, flowering chives) and those gorgeous blue cornflowers might well have been snapped on a farmers market stall, but this is exactly the kind of look I love to steal for weddings.
Don’t you think they are just as pretty as anything over-the-top and extremely grand? Certainly I think so, and I have a feeling that if you’re here on my blog you probably like a similar down-to-earth, relaxed and natural style. This image makes me want to sip homemade lemonade in the garden and dig great beds of lush herbs and cornflowers with which I can fill jam jars all summer long.
Image: Beauty Everyday
One of my favourite ways to number your wedding reception tables – with homemade paper flags stuck into one of your centrepieces. I must admit now, that they are my favourite because this is what we chose to do for our own wedding tables, but they are simple to create, effective and easy to spot, and rather sweet I think.
All you need is some sticks (you could use bamboo garden canes, long twigs, or pieces of wooden dowel – which is what we used), paper and string. You could handwrite the numbers, stamp them with ink, or print them on your computer. Then it’s simply a matter of punching holes and tying them to the sticks – if you find they slip down, discretely use a little tape to hold them in place.
Images: Bayly & Moore via 100 Layer Cake
Angela who runs Petal and Twig, on of our TNWC recommended florists, sent me these photos of a winter bouquet she recently designed. Made completely from garden flowers and foliage it is cleverly constructed on a handmade moss pad with a handle of dogwood.
The bouquet itself contains hellebores, succulents, variegated Euonymous, variegated Box, ferns, Skimmia (both pink and green berried varieties), Mahonia Japonica flower sprays, Spirea, Magnolia twigs and buds, and ivy. I think it’s a really unusual and beautiful example of a winter wedding bouquet that celebrates the season.
Angela also created this posy of Paperwhite Narcissi (one of my favourite winter flowers) from the Channel Islands surrounded by two types of ivy. The green ivy leaves each wrap an individual stem of narcissi to protect their delicate heads and ensure they all face ‘up’. The bouquet is finished with a piece of antique cotton lace, a brown satin ribbon, and vintage pearls.
I am so pleased to be able to share with you these lovely examples of seasonal wedding flowers. If you like these, take a look at this pretty spring bouquet of white tulips and hyacinths or these spring arrangements in vintage teacups.
One of the nicest parts of running my own business is that I get the loveliest emails from brides-to-be and couples planning their wedding. Sometimes you even send me pictures of the sweet items you’ve been making, often inspired by things I made for my own wedding. Today one such bride-to-be has been kind enough to share her handmade wedding invitations – and the all important details on how she made them – that were inspired by my own handmade wedding stationery.
Becky was kind enough to detail down how she made each part of her wedding stationery and included some of the websites where she bought supplies from. Over to Becky to tell you about how she made her handmade wedding stationery…
The Invitations
Our wedding reception is taking place in a tipi in a field on our friends’ farm which is overlooked by the forest where Tom proposed, so we wanted the stationery to reflect this natural and beautiful setting that is so special to us.
I found a previous post on The Natural Wedding Company blog where someone had used card made out of elephant poo for their invites, which I loved the idea of, so I ordered some of the paper from The Green Stationery Company with matching envelopes.
