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Izzy

Jaime and Dave’s relaxed spring wedding with lawn games, a seasonal bouquet and Scottish kilts

Izzy

Relaxed spring wedding

Today we are sharing Jaime and Dave’s gorgeous spring wedding in Hampshire. Fans of the outdoors, Jaime and Dave wanted their wedding to reflect the natural beauty of the gardens at Taplins Place in Hartley Wintney where they held their ceremony and reception.

Guests were entertained with giant lawn games, a coconut shy, a ‘hook-a-duck’ stall and homemade ‘Fruits of the Forest’ gin. With a wedding cake made of cheese and the relaxed ‘fete’ feel to the wedding, Jaime and Dave were able to make their wedding truly about them – nature and garden lovers.

– Izzy x

Now over to Jaime to share their beautiful wedding day with you…

Jaime and Dave got married in May this year, I love the reason why Jaime and Dave chose May for their wedding and honeymoon, “As we grow our own veg, we knew that we didn’t want to leave too much work to Dave’s Dad and his wife, who were looking after the house, our dogs and our garden. So I guess you can say that our vegetable dictated when we got married!”

Charlie

TNWC Real Brides Married! Emma’s back to tell us all about her outdoor festival wedding in Cornwall

Charlie

Charlie here writing from my maternity leave, I couldn’t not be here today to share with you this exciting blog post – it’s the first blog post from a now married TNWC Real Bride! Eeek!

So far, three of our TNWC Real Brides have got married – Caroline, Nik and Emma – and all have been busy ladies since their weddings over the summer, both honeymooning with their new husbands (!) and running their businesses. I’m utterly delighted to have Emma with us today sharing how her wedding went, and we’ve even got some of the beautiful official photographs from Rebecca Roundhill Photography of the day.

In the coming week’s we are going to be lucky enough to share with you all of the stunning photos from Emma and Chris’ Cornish outdoor festival wedding along with many more details. So do stay tuned for those!

For today though, over to Emma…

Getting married is officially the best thing ever!

Our wedding day was just perfect; it really was all we had hoped for and I can tell you it is better on the ‘other side.’

My bridesmaid and I left Plymouth on the Thursday prior to the big day with a car full of wedding regalia and hand made prettiness. We stopped off on the way to see Susanne at The Blue Carrot to collect our flowers for the table decorations. It was so lovely to see her again and she kindly showed us around her magical garden. She had chosen a wonderful array of wild and beautiful flowers for us to use to fill the collection of glass bottles.

I had chosen The Copper House in Portreath as a base for the preparations, which was a wonderful choice. On arrival we were greeted with a cream tea! I would highly recommend it to anyone wanting a complete getaway with serene and peaceful surroundings.

Charlie

TNWC Real Bride: Myfanwy’s been preparing her reception venue and Arthur the dachshund has a new wedding coat

Charlie

It’s been a little while since we had an update from one of our TNWC Real Brides, it’s been a busy summer with three of them (Caroline, Nik and Emma) now married! Don’t forget we’re looking for the next TNWC Real Brides who are getting married in 2014 to become our new bloggers – full details here if you’re interested.

Today we have Myfanwy back with us, who is having an autumn wedding, and has been busy preparing her reception site, turning a piece of driftwood into table centres, and kitting out Arthur the dachshund with a smart new coat!

Over to Myfanwy…

Since the summer has started and all this amazing weather I’ve been finding it a little hard with working and daily trips to the beach to sit down and get some wedding stuff done!

So I thought I’d blog about our reception location first which is really looking great! We wanted our reception in a tipi, some friends of ours had theirs in a tipi and it truly was a memorable wedding, we love being outside which could largely be because we work indoors all day.

We chose a field in front of Tom’s parents home (my parents live on a hill so that ruled their house out!) and the farmer has kindly agreed we can use the field. The lovely people at Event in a Tent have been to see the field is suitable (it is phew!).

We will be having tents similar to these…

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.”

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