Blog: Planning
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TNWC Real Brides: Vicky tells us about her locally sourced wedding meal and ‘help yourself’ popcorn dessert table

Charlie

TNWC Real Brides: Vicky tells us about her locally sourced wedding meal and 'help yourself' popcorn dessert table

Locally sourced wedding meal details from real bride Vicky

A weddig topic close to my heart – food! In the past I think wedding food has often been an after-thought, but more and more it’s becoming something that couples really put a lot of thought into. Here are Vicky and Steve’s plans for their wedding feast!

>> View Vicky and Steve’s DIY village fete wedding here <<

Over to Vicky…

A hog roast with handmade cutlery packages for guests

The food and drink we’ll be serving at the wedding is at the forefront of my mind at the moment as we firm up numbers and start to make the final purchases.

We decided from the very start that we wanted to keep it quite simple to help save the budget for other areas and keep the day relaxed. In the end we settled on a cream tea reception followed by a hog roast is the evening.

The hog roast was easy to organise as our best man’s father-in-law does these as a sideline to his farming. A quick chat on the beach, followed by an impromptu dance lesson (only in Devon!) and we had booked a hog and ram roast with a few roast potatoes thrown in the bottom for good measure. Excellent!

We’ve put together a little bag for each guest to pick up before they eat which have a napkin, wooden cutlery and a hand wipe in. They have been decorated with a personalised stamp which we found on Etsy.

Paper bag eco-friendly wedding picnic cutlery

A cream tea wedding reception

After that came the trickier task of finding a company to do the cream tea for us. Lots of the caterers we approached seemed keen to sell us their idea of what we wanted rather than what we wanted. A simple cream tea became a full-scale afternoon tea. It all sounded amazing but it wasn’t what we wanted.

Thankfully a friend then recommended the lovely Hannah and Sima from The Kitchen Table in Totnes. They have been brilliant, sticking to what we wanted, answering many questions about scone sizes (seriously, how did I turn into someone who worried about the size of a scone?) and even talking us down on quantities.

Even better they are advocates of using local produce, which fits our day perfectly. They will provide the mini pasty canapés, sit down cream tea and all the salads and rolls for the evening do, plus some vegetarian options. Their food looks beautiful and I can’t wait to try it all.

Salad with edible flowers

Victoria sponge wedding cake

They also put us in touch with Queen Bee Cakes, who make the most amazing wedding cakes and are a supplier on The Natural Wedding Company. Sadly they were already booked for our weekend leaving us with no choice but to try and re-create something similar ourselves.

So my lovely Mum and Aunt have gamely taken on the challenge of making the cake. From reading about other weddings I know this is quite common but my Mum is not the most expert of cooks, once serving up a dessert of sausage pie and custard – don’t ask!

Her cakes, however, are normally really good and with the amount of practice runs she’s been doing I’m sure it’ll be great, even if we won’t fit into our dresses any more! She will be making two sponges, which will sit on top of a fruit cake which my Aunt is busy soaking with brandy.

I’m planning on adding a liberal scattering of flowers and icing sugar to make it look pretty! Hopefully it will eventually turn out something like these cakes.

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Charlie Charlie

TNWC Real Brides: Fern’s plans for an afternoon tea reception with homemade scones and cake

Charlie

TNWC Real Brides: Fern's plans for an afternoon tea reception with homemade scones and cake

Real bride Fern shares her plans for an afternoon tea reception

Fern’s post today is full of lovely recipes (lemon and blueberry drizzle cake anyone?) and some great vintage finds, including an old seed tray her dad has upcycled into a drinks tray for their wedding. Go get inspired!

>> View Fern and Dominic’s woodland bird and country flower inspired wedding here <<

Over to Fern…

Collecting for our afternoon reception

We really wanted to have an afternoon reception rather than an evening one for our guests who will not be attending the whole event to celebrate with everyone straight away. The National Trust have allowed us exclusive use of the Old Stable Courtyard at Montacute House for us to serve refreshments for our guests and park our wedding car, but guest will be free to access the grounds as they wish.

Montacute House

We are planning to serve baked refreshments following our ceremony for our guests while we have photos taken. I have been really inspired by Charlie’s afternoon tea in the garden (and part 2 here) and have spent a lot of time reading and then re-reading the posts about it to absorb every ounce of inspiration. Although Dominic and I are not going for a full English tea party, I really want some colourful vintage china to liven up the rustic picnic and trestle tables we will be using.

Montacute House

I am searching regularly through our local charity shops for vintage china, baskets and cut glass. My ultimate bargain is the green china set which I found for £9 for the lot. I love the beautiful cut glass bird, another charity shop find, who will hopefully find a nice little home for the day.

The other items are a collection of charity and vintage shop finds, were my own already, or I am borrowing from friends and family.

Vintage picnic baskets and crockery

For months, we have also collected jam jars, coffee jars and wine bottles to display our flowers and candles on the day, now filling 2 suitcases. My amazing dad has cleaned up and varnished a seed tray he had for us to hold our glasses for sparkling drinks, I’m blown away with how great it looks, and my parents have also kindly lent us some parasols to keep the sun off on the day.

Upcycled vintage seed tray for wedding drinks tray

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Charlie Charlie

TNWC Real Brides: Em’s sharing details of the floral theme that’s emerging for her summer wedding at Norton Priory

Charlie

TNWC Real Brides: Em's sharing details of the floral theme that's emerging for her summer wedding at Norton Priory

Firstly a huge apologies from me as I am so behind on this year’s Real Brides posts. The lovely Em, Fern and Vicky have been diligently sending me their posts and I haven’t been posting regularly – so apologies both to them and to my readers who have been following along. 

Over to Em…

Floral theme for summer wedding

In terms of planning, on my first blog post I thought time was going quickly; now it is positively racing past. After deciding on a venue which was dear to our hearts at Norton Priory Gardens, and sending out the ‘save the dates’ in midwinter tones, I guess I began to sit back a bit as life carried on around the wedding organisation.

The twist in our tale has been that within months of sending out the ‘save the dates’ to close friends and family, I have landed a new job and we have sold our house – effectively meaning that we are literally upping sticks to make a new life together this year. Within a couple of months, we are hoping to move, get married and start new roles; so 2015 is becoming a big year for us all!

With that in mind, I am so glad that we made key decisions early on about a relaxed quite bohemian vintage feel to the wedding and had arranged the venue and location for the ceremony early on, as this has made it much easier to style what we wanted without becoming distracted by magazines, bridal fairs and the plethora of wedding related paraphernalia!

Norton Priory Gardens

Walled garden wedding venue

As we are based at Norton Priory in the walled gardens, we were both keen to have a floral theme to the wedding that brought ‘the outside in’, and this has precluded having any real colour scheme running throughout the whole day.

There will be a palette which nods to the wedding vibe, and deciding this linked to a vintage fun look has enabled us to tone everything else around key features for our day. While we made the ‘save the dates’ ourselves, with big – and fun! – life changes afoot, we had to think practically about our choices while retaining some creative control and quirkiness.

I didn’t want to sacrifice the individuality which was important to us, and we have trawled through lots of examples of designs to find images and styles which we feel suit our personalities.

I have to say books have been invaluable – I particularly like these three which I bought second hand and therefore saved a packet, plus it’s nice to think someone is passing them on after their own wedding/crafty projects! All of these books have given me ideas about print and colour which have informed my choices for the wedding.

Book inspiration for wedding

Books – Cath Kidston’s ‘in print’, Emma Arendoski’s ‘The Handcrafted Wedding’ and Lucy Morris’ ‘The Complete Vintage Wedding Guide’ all sourced from Amazon second hand.

Bright butterfly and floral wedding invitations

The invites we are particularly happy with, and these have been sourced from Not On the High Street, from a seller called Skinny Malink in Edinburgh who has a range of beautiful designs. The colours on the day invite really ‘pop’ and reminded me of Andy Warhol designs, which seemed perfect for the beginning of summer when the gardens will be a riot of colour.

Butterfly and flower wedding invitations

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Charlie Charlie

TNWC Real Brides: Vicky’s been creating her vintage railway poster inspired invitations for her Devon wedding

Charlie

real_bride_2015_vicky

Vicky’s back today to tell us all about the fab vintage railway poster inspired wedding stationery she’s had designed – I love this idea!

>> View Vicky and Steve’s DIY village fete wedding here <<

Over to Vicky…

Vintage railway post inspired invitations

It is now starting to dawn on me that our wedding is a lot closer than I want it to be and there seems to be an awful lot to do!

Much to Steve’s never ending dismay I am the sort of person who buys Christmas presents in October and arrives at the airport at least 6 hours before I should, just to be safe!  Organising a wedding where lots of it can’t be done until much closer to the time is killing me!  And driving him mad – so much so he’s gone off to Scotland on a motorbike holiday for 2 weeks!

However there was one major thing I was able to tick off of my ever-increasing list last month – getting the invitations sent out.

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Who to invite to our wedding

The actual process of deciding whom to invite has probably been the hardest part of the planning process for us so far. It seems that trying not to upset anyone while keeping the numbers manageable is a tricky balance.

One of the major issues was whether we should invite children or not. If we invited everyone’s children our numbers rose by about 20 meaning we had less space to invite other close friends. In the end we decided that we couldn’t invite children and luckily all of our friends seem quite relieved by this. They all say they are looking forward to being able to relax and enjoy themselves without worrying if their children are getting bored or restless. One of my bridesmaids is so excited at the prospect of being childfree that she’s booked the grandparents for babysitting duties from the Thursday until the Sunday!

A friend to design our invitations

When we announced our engagement one of my old friends, James, immediately offered to design the invitations for us. As he’s an amazing artist there was no way we were going to say no. I’ve always loved his work and have had a particular hankering for his vintage railway style posters for a long time. This seemed like the perfect opportunity to get him to do one for us.

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Charlie Charlie

TNWC Real Brides: Fern’s ‘how to’ guide for the pretty envelopes she made for her bird and wildflower inspired wedding stationery

Charlie

TNWC Real Brides: Fern's 'how to' guide for the pretty envelopes she made for her bird and wildflower inspired wedding stationery // The Natural Wedding Company

I have just the loveliest post today from TNWC Real Bride Fern, who has not only made the most heavenly bird and wildflower inspired wedding stationery (and with my favourite brown craft card featuring!), but she has put together an easy-to-follow ‘how to’ guide for how she made the pretty envelopes. Plus she’s also shared details of how she created her different wedding stationery items. 

I just know you are going to love this wedding stationery and it’s beautiful little details. If you are on the hunt for eco-friendly materials to make items for your wedding, do check out our DIY Resources section of the directory for a great selection of businesses that we love.

>> View Fern and Dominic’s woodland bird and country flower inspired wedding here <<

How to guide for pretty envelopes

Brown craft card bird and wildflower inspired wedding stationery // The Natural Wedding Company

It is always lovely to receive special parcels and post by mail, and wedding invitations can tell you so much about a wedding. Most of the weddings we have been to, couples have handmade their invitations and I never considered doing my invites any other way, but I really wanted my wedding invitations to have a wow factor as soon as they land through the letter box. So it was clear very quickly that I was going to make my envelopes as well.

I have included a ‘how to’ guide for making envelopes below, but I will tell you about my other stationary first.

DIY Floral Envelopes

DIY guide to making your own floral envelopes // The Natural Wedding Company
Full ‘how to’ guide below!

Invitations, save the dates and RSVPs

I designed all the stationary myself in Microsoft Publisher and Microsoft Word, inspired by my finds on Pinterest. As I had decided that my envelopes would hold lots of colour it meant that I could keep my invitations more simple.

The fonts were Segeo Script used for our names on the save the dates and the rest of stationary we only used Traditional Arabic but varied use in all capitals or italics. The save the dates I made in Publisher by using the layout guides to divide the page into 8. I did for the RSVPs in Word; it is do-able but a lot fiddlier. I printed them on A4 and then cut them up with a guillotine.

Fern's bird and wildflower inspired wedding stationery // The Natural Wedding Company

The card for the invitations I found in a local shop with 10 brown kraft and 10 white sheets in. The design of my invites was dictated by this and its size. These were designed in Microsoft Word by customising the page size, even the map on the details.

We decided to trim all the corners to tie in with the envelopes, hole punch and tie together with ribbon. I then also made an afternoon invitation in the same way by customising the page size to A5 and then putting amended details inside. I printed everything at home on my own printer. It has cost around £35 for everything, not including postage, but I still have things left over for other projects.

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Charlie Charlie

TNWC Real Brides: introducing Em and Nick’s intimate homemade wedding in a beautiful walled garden

Charlie

TNWC Real Brides: introducing Em and Nick's intimate homemade wedding in a beautiful walled garden

Introducing our third lovely TNWC Real Bride of 2015 – the lovely Em, who is also getting married in a location very special to her and Mr-to-be Nick. I love that this year’s brides-to-be have all chosen really intimate spots for their wedding, not intimate in the sense of small, but places that they know really intimately.

Over to Em to tell you more…

Intimate homemade wedding in a beautiful walled garden

Hello, my name is Em, and Nick and I are getting married on 1st August 2015…which is perhaps a little ambitious as we got engaged just before Christmas and have a LOT to do. Add to this that we are also moving house in literally weeks and it has seemed like the perfect if chaotic storm. Although we made a few decisions relatively fast, we have a lot to work out before August and the months are beginning to glide by at an alarming rate.

Our ‘ideal wedding’

Describing the wedding we would like in 5 words, I would have to go for intimate, homemade, welcoming, warm and vintage. We will be getting married at Norton Priory Gardens, which is a beautiful walled garden in Runcorn where I grew up.

Nick and I have been there a few times with my son and Nick’s step son James (who is 2), and I have been going since I was a child, so it is somewhere which we hold very dear and if anything is our theme it is associating our wedding with memories and special people.

As we are booked in August, we are – fingers crossed! – going to have a lovely late summer afternoon (!) surrounded by the flowers and bees in a site which has been occupied since the middle ages. The reception venue will then be a local village hall in Manley, as we wanted to have a country family celebration air to the proceedings, with Amy Swann my amazingly creative friend making the cake  (she initially recommended that I look on The Natural Wedding Company site!).

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Charlie Charlie

TNWC Real Brides: introducing Vicky and Steve’s DIY Devon country village wedding

Charlie

TNWC Real Brides: introducing Vicky and Steve's DIY Devon country village wedding

Plans for a DIY Devon country village wedding

It’s really lovely to be back again to introduce you to our second TNWC Real Bride of 2015 – Vicky – who is getting hitched this summer to her Mr-to-be Steve. I really love how hands-on Vicky and Steve seem to be with creating their wedding (helpful when your Mr is a builder!) and that they have chosen their home village as the spot to hold their celebrations.

>> View Vicky and Steve’s DIY village fete wedding here <<

Over to Vicky to tell you more…

A proposal in Greece

Hi my name is Vicky and I will be marrying my fiancé, Steve, this summer.  Steve and I have been together for over 6 years now and much to the relief of our friends and family we are finally getting married this July.

Steve proposed last year in Skopelos, outside the church from Mamma Mia, with a beautiful ring he’d bought in secret. It totally floored me. I’m not sure what actually amazed me more, the proposal (I’d have staked a lot of money on that never happening after 6 years!), the fact he had managed to get the ring to Greece without losing it or that he’d been confident enough to tell practically everyone we knew what he was planning – even announcing it in the village pub before he left!

Typically he waited until the very last day of the holiday before asking me, leaving our families at home convinced he’d changed his mind at the last moment! Once I’d got over the shock I finally remembered to say yes and started crying – which pretty much carried on all day! As you can see from the photo!

TNWC Real Brides: introducing Vicky and Steve's DIY Devon country village wedding

Planning a Devon village wedding

Since then it’s been full steam ahead with the wedding planning. I can’t honestly say I had any real idea of what our wedding would be like when we started planning it, we probably had more idea of what we definitely didn’t want. Steve didn’t want it to be in a hotel where we had to fit in around them and I didn’t want it to be too prescriptive with a set colour scheme and matching outfits etc.

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Charlie Charlie

TNWC Real Brides: introducing Fern and Dominic’s natural woodland bird and wildflower inspired wedding in Somerset

Charlie

TNWC Real Brides: introducing Fern and Dominic's natural woodland bird and wildflower inspired wedding in Somerset

Plans for a natural woodland bird and wildflower inspired wedding

I am pretty excited today to be introducing you to the first of our TNWC Real Brides for 2015! It’s that fun time of the year when emails start to drop into my inbox sharing all kinds of wonderful plans and handmade details from these brides-to-be in the run up to their weddings.

Our first TNWC Real Bride to introduce you to is Fern, who is getting married to her Mr-to-be Dominic this August in Somerset. Both of them have a love of the countryside, and Dominic works as a forester, so they are weaving elements of woodland birds and wildflowers throughout their wedding. I can’t wait to hear more!

>> View Fern and Dominic’s woodland bird and country flower inspired wedding here <<

But for now, over to Fern to give you a little introduction to how they met and their initial wedding ideas…

real_bride_2015_fern2

How we met

Dominic and I have been together for over eight years. We met in our first week of university in one of our first lectures, introduced by a new mutual friend, Jon. After one day saving a space for Jon between us in the lecture hall for four hours without him coming, we decided that maybe we would sit next to each other from now on.

We both studied Geography and had most lectures together and got to know each other better. Over a year later, and after some shaky first dates, meaning we now affectionately hold Airplane as the first film we saw together, we finally became a couple and two years afterwards had our first flat together.

A village home in Montacute

After a few jobs, more courses and house moves later we eventually found our way to our little house in the village of Montacute, which has truly been a real home for us. We live right in the centre of this beautiful village in a secret courtyard where we know all our neighbours and are just a stones throw away from breathtaking countryside.

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Charlie Charlie

We’re on the hunt for our 2015 Real Brides – come share your plans for a natural, seasonal, eco-chic and homemade wedding

Charlie

become_a_tnwc_real_bride

I’ve been hearing a lot from recently engaged brides-to-be, and it got me thinking about how much I’ve enjoyed these past two years handing over my little space of internet to other blogging brides.

So I’d like to open my blog once again to a small group of brides-to-be who would like to share their wedding planning adventures as a TNWC Real Bride. What’s really special for me is that most of the previous TNWC Real Brides I’ve stayed in touch with and become good friends via the wonders of social media, which is pretty darned cool in my books.

I am once again looking for brides-to-be who are planning a natural, eco-friendly, seasonal, vintage and/or homemade wedding. 

Last year’s TNWC Real Brides are all married apart from Ellie, who continues to share her plans on the blog for her upcoming May wedding. You can view all the previous posts by TNWC Real Brides here, lots of them full of lovely little DIY details.

Last year’s TNWC Real Brides, from left to right: Kerry (photo Dave Owens), Miriam (photo Photos by Zoe, Emma (photo Claire Penn), and Lisa

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So, who am I looking for?

I’m searching for someone planning a 2015 (or early 2016) wedding who is…

  • Early on in their wedding planning stages or just starting out
  • Planning a wedding that is all about natural, eco-friendly, seasonal, vintage and homemade touches
  • Happy to write candidly about their wedding planning experiences
  • Able to take pictures of any details they’re making and explain how they made them
  • Happy to write something after their wedding day about how it all turned out

P.S. Although I’m a UK based blog I am happy for entries from brides all around the world.

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Charlie Charlie

TNWC Real Brides: Lisa’s pretty floral bridesmaid gifts and edible Welsh cake wedding favours

Charlie

TNWC Real Brides: Lisa's pretty floral bridesmaid gifts and edible Welsh cake wedding favours

We’re back with 2014 TNWC Real Bride Lisa with her final pre-wedding post on the gifts she made for her bridesmaid and their yummy edible wedding favours.

Over to Lisa to tell you more…

Bridesmaids gifts

This idea was unashamedly stolen from another lovely wedding blog called Lucy Says I Do – handmade floral dressing gowns. This looked so perfect that I really wanted it for myself and so set about copying it.

TNWC Real Brides: Lisa's pretty floral bridesmaid gifts and edible Welsh cake wedding favours

I felt this was the perfect bridesmaid gift and so choose each fabric to suite each of the bridesmaid’s personalities. With the help of my mother we spent one Sunday at our sewing machines stitching the dress gowns up.

TNWC Real Brides: Lisa's pretty floral bridesmaid gifts and edible Welsh cake wedding favours

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