It is with great pleasure that I get to share with you the photographs from The Natural Wedding Company’s 5th birthday party that took place recently.  I’m not really sure where to start, so I’m just going to dive in and hope it all makes sense!

March saw the website’s 5th anniversary of when I first launched it, so I knew a few celebrations were in order.  As well as lots of exclusive offers and competitions on the blog, most excitingly, a party was dreamt up.

I wanted a party with a group of likeminded girls, some recently married, others still planning their wedding, so I opened up the invites to my wonderful readers.  My guests were chosen, invitations sent out, and on Sunday 15th April, my husband and I welcomed 11 of my lovely readers into my home for, what I hoped would be a fun afternoon of crafts, cake and wedding chatter.

It couldn’t have been made possible without a few key people, who I want to say a huge thank you to before I wade into all the pretty details – so a massive thank you to A Alicia Handmade, The Silver Apples, Blossom, Eat My Flowers, and Mark Tattersall .  Without these fabulous businesses, my party wouldn’t have come together and been such a success.

So onto the party!

My guests started to arrive from about 12pm, a great mixture of brides-to-be, those of us who have recently got married, and Jen who’d got married the Friday before the party!  I couldn’t believe that these 11 girls would be travelling from all around the country to spend the afternoon with me, I was so anxious that the afternoon would live up to their expectations.

From the chatter that ensured for the next 5 hours I’m hopeful it’s a sign that everyone enjoyed themselves.  We started with glasses of old fashioned lemonade complete with stripey paper straws that I’d adorned with flags.

I used my trusty roll of brown framers tape (that is gummed on one side), which I cut into strips before folding them round the straws.  I used my mini alphabet stamp set to print the words ‘hip hooray’ on each one before snipping the ends to look like a flag.

My house was full of beautiful blooms that were a gift from my lovely friend and colleague Becky at Blossom in Manchester.  I picked up a bucket full of purple anemones, pink tulips, white stocks, dusty pink ranunculus and some gorgeous sprays of blossom.

My lovely friend Caroline, who was one of my guests, turned up early on Sunday morning and helped me arrange of the flowers in a random assortment of my earthenware pots and old milk bottles.

I also foraged in the local hedgerows the evening before and supplemented the flowers with hawthorn, blackthorn blossom, white dead nettles, and another pretty white flower that I don’t know what it is.

A party isn’t really a party without bunting, and I’d had an idea to create a mini paper bunting.  So I stayed up late Saturday night to actually make this idea I had in my head.  I bought two different wrapping papers – one colourful floral paper and the other more subtle with geometric patterns – which I folded into strips and then cut out into rough squares.

Using double-sided sticky tape, I folded and stuck the wrapping paper flags around some turquoise yarn, alternating the different papers.  I chose the yarn because I wanted something that would hang nicely even with the very light paper flags and it worked brilliantly.  This we then strung all round the room.

The fantastic Sarah and Kate of The Silver Apples created a delicious spread for our lunch and set it up on their beautiful vintage crockery.

There were salads and tarts, roasted baby potatoes, cheeses, and bread wrapped in brown paper.  I used some of the brown paper flags left over from our wedding to label them up – I couldn’t have imagined a prettier spread of food.

We all sat down at long wooden trestle tables with a hessian table runner – another leftover from our wedding.

After we finished lunch, the lovely Anna of A Alicia Handmade, who had travelled all the way up to Manchester from London, ran one of her hen party craft workshops with us.

That’s me and Anna outside my house

The week before Anna had been busy making clay decorations – hearts and stars – which we then painted in pretty patterns after some guidance from Anna.

We started out testing our painting skills on paper, following some designs supplied by Anna, and there was much giggling when those of us less able with a paint brush went wrong.  Those of us down one end of the table decided that the girls at the other end had all the artistic talent as some of their designs were exquisite!

That’s me!

Whilst we painted there was a lot of nattering about weddings and the stresses that come with them.  It was lovely to share experiences of family dramas, stubborn in-laws, and the hours spent crafting for our weddings.

I had always wanted to have a mixture of brides-to-be and wives as I thought it would be lovely to bring likeminded people together and share our experiences.  I would so love to organise another party like this again in the future as the swapping of ideas and experiences seemed to go down so well.

And here’s all of us with some of our finished creations!

Claire, Kirsty, Claire, Karen, Sarah, Hatty, Jen, Caroline, me, Anna, Faye & Lydia

Once we’d finished painting, we enjoyed dainty teacups of hot chocolate topped with cream and marshmallows, made by my lovely (and patient!) husband.  We used my favourite Montezuma’s Dark Hot Chocolate, which if you’ve never had and love hot chocolate you must try.  It’s so delicious!

The party was finished off with an utterly scumptious Honey and Lavender birthday cake baked by The Silver Apples girls.  Sarah and Kate had also decorated the cake for me using the items I’d collected especially for it – it was inspired by this cake.

The cake was adorned with dainty edible flowers that were posted to me as a gift from the fab Sarah of Eat My Flowers – they arrived carefully packaged between layers of soft cotton to protect them, and included violets, primroses and cowslips.  The pale beeswax candles came from Little Cherry, a new business about to join the directory, and the flags I made myself from wooden skewers and ribbon.

We lit the candles, I said a HUGE thank you to everyone who’d come, and then we munched on cake and chattered some more.  There was only one thing left to do before everyone started their journeys home, which was to take a group shot outside my house as a lovely reminded of the girls I got to celebrate where I’ve got to with my little business.

Everyone headed home with a pretty brown paper parcel of Cinder Toffee Brownies (SO good!) made and gifted by The Silver Apples girls.  It seems a number of us shared them with our lucky husbands – what were we thinking?!

I will never, ever forget this day.  It was lovelier than I could have ever dreamt, and I was just so overwhelmed by the support from my businesses and the fab group of girls who travelled by car and train to join me in my celebration.  I hope that they are no longer just my ‘readers’, but instead friends, and I can’t wait to see some of the photos from their lovely up-coming weddings.

My kind neighbours must also be briefly mentioned, as they helped us with less glamorous elements of the party, like storing our sofas in their garage to make room for the long trestle tables, and helping us collect 12 chairs to seat everyone.  It’s time’s like this when you realise what lovely people you have around you.

The final thank you has to go to my long-suffering husband, Mr Rigg.  He was outstanding on the day and in the lead-up with everything we had to do to get our little house ready for the party.  We stayed up late together building cupboards and painting walls, and we had a marital dispute on Sunday morning over whether seriously knotted paper bunting could be rescued.

Through it all he’s supported me in this dream to create this website, he’s listened to an infinite amount of hours of wedding chatter, and put up with 12 giggly girls on a Sunday afternoon.  Thank you Mr Rigg!

All images taken by Mark Tattersall for The Natural Wedding Company – if you’d like to share them please make sure you credit them properly.

{ Party Details }

Photography: Mark Tattersall
Catering & Cake: The Silver Apples
Craft Workshop: A Alicia Handmade
Flowers: Blossom
Edible Flowers: Eat My Flowers
Beeswax Birthday Candles: Little Cherry
Cake Flags: Made by The Natural Wedding Company
Brownie Favours: The Silver Apples
Paper Bunting: Made by The Natural Wedding Company
Vintage Crockery: The Silver Apples