Blog: wedding stationery
Charlie Charlie

Creating a handmade style ‘save the date’ for the uncrafty bride

Charlie

vintage inspired save the date stamp

There has been quite a bit of talk in the wedding blog world about those couples who want a handcrafted feel to their wedding whilst not feeling they are particuarly crafty or creative.  For any brides out there feeling like they’re not creative enough, or don’t have the time to be handcrafting wedding stationery, then this stamp (or one like it) could be your answer.

There are lots of businesses offering custom made or personalised stamps, but I thought this design was particularly nice and it gives you more than just your names or address.  Stamped in black onto my *favourite recycled brown craft card it would still have that handmade feel.  This beautiful stamp (costing under £30) is made by Etsy seller Love To Create Stamps who are based in Florida but ship worldwide.

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Charlie Charlie

Getting married in 2012? Win custom made letterpress ‘save the dates’ from Artcadia

Charlie

The wonderful Vici-Jane from Artcadia is giving away up to 100 custom designed letterpress ‘save the date’ cards with envelopes to one lucky winner.  All you have to do is go to the Artcadia website, pick your favourite ‘save the date’ design from the collection, and leave a comment about it on their blog.

As the winner, you’ll not only be able to pick whether you have your ‘save the dates’ digitally or letterpress printed, but you’ll also be able to choose from any of their designs or get one custom-made.

The closing date in October 31st and the winner will be contacted by November 5th 2011. So what are you waiting for all you 2012 couples? Don’t forget to mention in your blog comment that you heard about it at The Natural Wedding Company.

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Charlie Charlie

Handmade wedding stationery from a natural wedding bride-to-be

Charlie

I swap emails with some lovely girls who are planning their wedding, and often they share with me some of the handmade details they are making.  Following on from these lovely floral luggage tag ‘save the dates’ from reader Charlie, I have some more wedding stationery to share this evening.


Image: Allister Freeman Photography

These invitations and envelopes are made by Caroline, one of my readers and bride-to-be, and her fiancée Mark.  Firstly a big congratulations – they are getting married next week on 8th October!

For their invitations they used these free printable bunting invites from Wedding Chicks – you can even select your own colour scheme.  They decided to stick the invitations into cards, and also included a photo from their pre-wedding photo shoot (see all the photos here) that had all the RSVP information on the back of it.

The envelopes they lined themselves, with husband-to-be Mark busy with the tube of Pritt Stick.  Caroline told me they even had someone ask them where they got the envelopes from – a sure sign you’ve created something beautiful.  Although Caroline said that they wanted their friends and family to realise it was in fact their hard efforts on Friday night that had created these pretty envelopes!

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Charlie Charlie

Handmade floral luggage tag ‘save the dates’

Charlie

This is a pretty exciting blog post for me today – these gorgeous floral luggage tag style ‘save the dates’ have been made by one of my readers.  Another Charlie, who is getting married next August sent me this picture of her handmade ‘save the dates’.

These are actually from a fab free template from a website called Eat Drink Chic so if you’d like to make them yourself you can – what a fab website and resource – have a look here.

Charlie told me that they printed them onto textured card, before cutting out the luggage tags.  They bought a stamp for the back of the tags and used gardening twine for the string.  It’s lovely to hear that Charlie and her husband-to-be had a fun time making these together – Nick and I certainly had stressful moments attempting to make things together!

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Charlie Charlie

Exquisitely illustrated eco-friendly wedding stationery

Charlie

This post is long over due – I met the lovely Nia of Nia Fiori at the Love My Dress Summer Soiree back in August and I just adore her stunning illustrated cards.  What’s particularly fab, is she’s brought out a range called ‘Friendly Fiori’ which is eco-friendly.

Nia was kind enough to send me one of her cards and they are really lovely – the simple palette of colours, the black text against the brown card, and the odd bit that glistens makes for a beautiful handmade card.

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Charlie Charlie

Featured in Simply Beautiful Magazine with a step-by-step guide to making my ‘save the date’ cards

Charlie

I am so excited to share with you that I’m in a real life magazine.  Never did I imagine 7 years ago when I started dreaming up what became The Natural Wedding Company that I would be featured in a glossy magazine.

You can find me in the September issue of Simply Beautiful Magazine sharing details about our wedding stationery and a step-by-step guide with never-seen-before photos of how to make my ‘save the date’ cards.  I created this especially for the magazine so very excited to share it.

There’s also some of my top tips for having a greener wedding and saving money while you’re at it – so if you’re interested in having a read, get down to your local WHSmith and get a copy.  Would love to know what you think if you’ve had a read.

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Charlie Charlie

Sneak peek of the new wedding stationery designs from Emily&Jo

Charlie

Emily&Jo design beautiful wedding stationery combining stunning patterns and classic typography.  They are about to launch their new website and have been kind enough to share with me and you some of their gorgeous new designs.

They are keen to keep their business green and use FSC accredited or recycled papers for all their stationery and employ no bleaching, all things that are better for the environment and as they tell me “make trees smile.”

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Charlie Charlie

Plantable seeded paper for eco-friendly wedding stationery

Charlie

I can remember the first time I came across flower seeded paper, it was way back when I was first starting out with The Natural Wedding Company.  It only ever seemed to be available in America, and even now it never seems to appear that often in the UK, so it is truly lovely to see these fab products from one of our businesses, Favour Haven.

The idea that you can create something beautiful from the paper and then plant it and have pretty flowers grow from it, is in my opinion, wonderful.  Favour Haven sells these lovely favour tags, which come in four designs, are available in different colours and can be personalised for your wedding with your names and date.

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Charlie Charlie

Do it yourself: rustic handmade wedding stationery ~ part 1

Charlie

I’ve decided to split the ‘do it yourself’ for our wedding stationery into four parts as there seemed too much to share in just one post, and I didn’t want you all nodding off.  So without further ado, here’s Part 1.

First off, you should know I did all of this in Microsoft Word.  Perhaps insane, as Word is not meant for graphic design, but it’s what I have.  I don’t have any fancy software packages, so I had to do the best that I could with what I had.  Yes, it undoubtedly caused headaches and extra time faffing about, but I got where I wanted in the end and I’m proud of my effort.

The Invitation

Inspiration

For me, our invitation needed to reflect what our wedding was going to be about.  I wanted people to get excited (hopefully!) and have a sense of what kind of wedding they were going to. 

I went through various different ideas, including sewing mini bunting onto each card, which I decided might kill me off and wasn’t a true reflection of our wedding day.  Here are the some of the ideas I was inspired by…


From left to right starting at the top: found Once Wed; Perch Papiers; Junkaholique; Ruffled; unknown; found Snippet & Ink; unknown; Heather Ross; Ruffled; found Twig & Thistle

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Charlie Charlie

Our wedding: handmade rustic wedding stationery with red and white string and luggage tags

Charlie

Like our ‘save the date’ cards, we also made all our wedding stationery.  There was an invitation, a booklet of wedding details, a RSVP postcard, and a gift envelope.  Everything was tied up together with red and white string with a tiny brown luggage tag onto which I hand-stamped our RSVP date.

I’m one of those people (I hope there are others out there!) who knows in my mind what I want something to look like, but don’t always know how to translate that into reality.  So although here you can see lovely photos of the finished invitation set, it took a lot of attempts to get them ‘right’.

All these beautiful photos are taken by the fab man who snapped our wedding photos – Mark Tattersall.

Full details on how we made them to follow shortly!  And would love to know your thoughts – anyone else as much a fan of brown card as I am?

Check back tomorrow for Part 1 of the ‘do it yourself’ series!

Images: Mark Tattersall Photography