Hello and a massive congratulations to you if you are newly engaged. We know the festive period is a very popular time of year for people to pop the question, so if this is your first time here and you are just about to start your wedding planning journey we are delighted to welcome you to our pages.

We hope that throughout the next months or years we can help assist you with everything wedding planning related and offer great ideas on how to create an eco-chic wedding. This post is designed as a guide tour of all the wonderful things you can find here at The Natural Wedding Company.

Be sure to check back next week for our Alternative Guide to Wedding Planning. We’ll be sharing our honest thoughts and advice on how to really go about planning your wedding – we promise it doesn’t include 18 month check lists or encourage teeth whitening.

Who am I?

My name is Charlie – I’m the founder of TNWC and I’ve been running it for nearly 10 years.

You can find out more about the origins of TNWC and me here.

Welcome to our Guided Tour of our Eco Wedding Directory

You’ve got engaged and are still high on the excitement of committing to your love, and now begins the (sometimes) mammoth task of planning the wedding you want. It can all be a bit overwhelming, the wedding industry often provided a checklist of what you “need” to create a wedding day, but we like to put that aside and do it our own way.

If you’ve found us then it might be because you weren’t feeling any of the other wedding blogs and inspiration. There is so much quality information on our website just waiting to be discovered, so in the spirit of feeling overwhelmed, we’ve put together a sort of guided tour to our pages. Here’s what one bride had to say about us:

“I just wanted to say thank you for your gorgeous website. With the help of your directory we have sourced a great organic caterer and commissioned some beautiful recycled silver wedding rings. I’ve also got loads of great ideas from the site for DIY decorations and flowers, and I’m even planning to have a go at making my own wedding cakes. I’m not sure how I would have managed so far without your directory. More than that, you have made the process of wedding planning (which I was rather dreading) into something meaningful and even enjoyable.”

Step 1: Get started with an account to save your favourites

*Please note this feature is not currently live*

We’d recommend that to get started and help with your planning , that you create a ‘Brides’ account. By creating an account it means you’ll be able to easily save your favourite businesses as your browse the site (just look for the heart symbol next to each listing).

To create an account, fill in your details on our Brides Sign Up page. Once you are signed up, you’ll receive a welcome email, and you’ll be able to sign into your account on the website whenever you wish. To sign in, simply enter your details into the gold ‘Sign In’ tab at the top of the page.

Once you are signed in, you can browse the directory and simply click the heart symbol next to any of the businesses you like the look of. To review your favourites, when you are signed in you can click on the gold ‘My Favourites’ tab at the top, or you’ll find a ‘My Favourites’ button on the Directory page.

When you sign up for a Brides account you’ll also receive our e-newsletter. We aim to send this out twice a month, but it may be less. You can unsubscribe from this at any time, but it’s a great way to stay up-to-date with the latest offers, new blog posts and more.

Step 2: Explore our Eco Wedding Directory

Checking out our directory is a great place to start when sourcing all those essential details you require for your big day such as your venue, photographer, stationery, flowers and so much more. We have worked hard to source and select brilliant independent businesses that have great eco-credentials.

The below image shows you the two different ways you can view our eco wedding directory – via the ‘luggage tag’ at the top OR via the directory page.

Step 3: Check out our Supplier Map for location specific wedding suppliers

If you check out our eco wedding directory page you’ll see you have the option to search by location on our Suppliers Map. When the map first opens up it will show you every business we have who are based in a specific location – not only in the UK, but also a handful in Europe.

If you’d like to see where a specific type of wedding supplier is, for example eco florists, simply refine your search on the Suppliers Map by selecting the ‘Flowers’ category from the drop down menu and click ‘Go’. Only the eco florists will show up on the map.

Step 4: Refine your search for a specific eco wedding supplier

Within each category of wedding supplier, you have the option to refine your search further by location and type or you can search by a keyword.

For example, within the Wedding Venues category, you might only want to view wedding suppliers who offer woodland wedding venues. To refine your search, you’d simply select Woodland from the ‘Item’ dropdown and click ‘Go’.

Perhaps you’d like to see if there are any Woodland Wedding Venues who are only located in Gloucestershire. Simply select Gloucestershire from the ‘Supply To’ dropdown, and Woodland from the ‘Item’ dropdown and click ‘Go’.

The below image illustrates this for you.

Step 5: Key things to look out for

There’s some key things you should look out for while browsing the eco directory pages.

Offers: The first is to look for the ‘Offer’ banner on individual listings. The ‘Offer’ banner tells you that there is an exclusive offer available from that wedding supplier for our visitors. To view the offer you just need to click through to the wedding suppliers page via the ‘Find out more…’ button.

Find Out More: Second, don’t forget to click on those ‘Find out more…’ buttons for any wedding suppliers that take your interest. This takes you through to their individual page where you’ll find out loads more information about what they do, any special offers they have, links through to features about them on our blog, and more.

Heart Symbols: Thirdly, if you’ve already followed our step 1 advice and created your own Brides account, don’t forget to click those heart symbols. Next to each of the big listings you’ll see the hearts, once you’ve ‘favourited’ a wedding supplier the heart with turn pink. For the smaller listings, you’ll need to click through to their page (via the arrow next to their listing) to find their heart.

Step 6: Find out more about our Eco Wedding Suppliers

Once you have found a supplier you will want to find out more information about them. Each of our eco wedding suppliers has their own page on our website where we’ve collated all they key information we think you’d like to know.

In addition to what they do and their contact details, each business shares their eco/ethical credentials and the areas they supply. For some businesses you’ll also find a slideshow gallery, links to their social media accounts, testimonials, and links through to their features on our blog (definitely worth checking out).

If you like them, don’t forget to click the heart symbol if you have a Brides account to save them for later reference.

Step 7: Explore our Eco Wedding Blog for all your inspirational needs

Our Eco Wedding Blog is full of beautiful and useful wedding inspiration. We try and offer something a bit different in the world of wedding blogs, sharing both beautiful eco inspiration alongside behind-the-scenes and heartfelt stories.

When you go to our blog, you’ll see in the right hand column some key visual buttons to help you find what you’re looking for.

A key thing for many of our couples is planning by season. One of the first things you’ll see is a grid of four images allowing you to search our blog archives by season: Spring Wedding; Summer Wedding; Autumn Wedding; and Winter Wedding.

Our blog categories

Next you’ll find spread out buttons for each of our blog categories. They are:

DIY + Inspiration – this category is full of DIY and ‘how to’ blog posts, inspirational shoots, free downloads, and more.

Real Weddings – this category is exactly what it says it is, our full archive of every beautiful and unique real wedding that we’ve featured. Full of inspirational ideas from real couples and stories that will encourage you to do your wedding your way.

Suppliers + Products – this category showcases the eco wedding suppliers and products that we love. Here you’ll find all the eco wedding guides we’ve written, visits to our suppliers, our Day in the Life and Meet the Maker series, and more.

Planning – this category features a variety of posts that might help with your wedding planning, but not in a typical way. From all our TNWC Real Brides posts (following real brides in their wedding planning) from over the years to practical posts on taking care of yourself, budgeting, and our Dear Bride posts (heartfelt notes from wedding suppliers to their brides/couples).

TNWC News – this category covers any news from us (intern opportunies, anncouncements etc) and my personal posts.

If you are looking for something specific you can always try the search bar at the top.

Step 8: Find all our Exclusive Offers

*Please note we are not currently running offers*

We know that planning a wedding can make a big dent on your pocket. We’re very lucky that lots of our wonderful suppliers offer you, our lovely readers, exclusive offers and discounts throughout the year. In order to keep it really easy for you, you can find them on our Offers page, which you’ll find in our menu ribbon – so easy to access from anywhere on the website.

Make sure to come back and check them out as they change, or create a Brides account and you’ll receive details of them to your inbox. You will also find within our directory we highlight the businesses that who have an offer on.

Step 9: Check back regularly to our Homepage for a round-up of what’s new

Our homepage is always changing and displaying the most current news from around our eco wedding directory and blog. We’d love to recommend it as a place to check back during your wedding planning for a round-up of what’s new.

The sliders at the top share key information about latest blog features and key areas of the directory you might like to explore. There are other buttons displaying current offers, wedding suppliers you might be interested in, and the latest from the most popular blog categories.

Finally, if you have a question or are looking for something in particular, please don’t hesitate to contact us. You will find Charlie’s email address at the top of the website and our Contact Us page on the menu ribbon. We always do our best to help each individual enquiry as best we can.

Step 10: Finally, go follow us on social media

You can find us on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest – so if you use any of those social media platforms do come follow us. Facebook and Twitter are a great way to keep up-to-date with what’s featured on the blog, new wedding suppliers, and offers. Over on Instagram we like to share additional inspiration that we don’t feature anywhere else. If you’re using Pinterest to help you plan your wedding, we have a fantastic collection of wedding boards all geared towards more natural weddings.

Happy Wedding Planning

There you have our ultimate guided tour of our eco wedding directory and blog. We hope this gives you all the tools you need to get the most from the resources we have on our website. To finish off with, here’s what one of our brides had to say about our eco wedding directory and blog:

“I recently got married and found your website very useful, being environmentally conscious and wanting a homely feel wedding with lots of natural elements…I really wanted our wedding to be a reflection of us, and we have had so many people comment that it was just that, so thanks and keep on inspiring.”

Main Image: Mariell Amelie from this Rustic Boho Wedding