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Charlie

TNWC Real Brides: Lisa has been getting her guests in the festival mood with quirky invitations

Charlie

Your ‘save the dates’ and wedding invitations are often the first thing that tells your guests what to expect from your wedding – I remember when we were making ours that I really wanted them to hint at what our wedding would be like to our family and friends.

TNWC Real Bride Lisa is sharing their quirky wedding invitations with hand drawn illustrations for their festival inspired wedding in Wales. I love how they look like a ticket – perfect!

Over to Lisa to tell you all about them…

Quirky invitations to get our guests into the festival mood

There is nothing nicer than receiving mail; it’s like a little journey back in time. I don’t mean all that junk mail that litters the mat but birthday cards, Christmas cards, good old fashioned letters and my absolute favourite, invitations. I remember getting my first birthday invitation when I was very young and have loved receiving them ever since.

So for me the invitations to our big day were important, they can really set the tone of your wedding. They can fit into the colour scheme; let the guest know if it’s an elegant, traditional affair or a more quirky, unusual celebration and can really get the excitement going.

Our save the dates were free printable designs from the company that we used for our invitations, we very simply printed them on some good quality card and made them into bookmarks. I then punched a hole at the top, threaded some pretty ribbon through and made a little tie – that was pretty much it. Very simple, very economical and I felt very effective. It was from here that I explored a bit more about the company Something Kinda Cute.

For the invitations, we did really wanted to push the boat out. In my original blog I wrote that I wanted to make my own invitations to give it a real personal touch, however when I saw these particular designs I fell in love with them and thought they fitted our theme perfectly.

Charlie

TNWC Real Brides: Emma’s been booking urban wedding venues that have that natural ‘oh my!’ factor

Charlie

A warm welcome back to TNWC Real Bride Emma this week – she’s talking venues today, and I’m pretty stoked to hear all about the places they have booked for the ‘natural wedding in the city’. We share lots of lovely countryside weddings here on the blog, so it’s exciting to hear from a bride-to-be planning a natural wedding in urban spaces.

Over to Emma…

Love On Hope Street

Finding a venue that works for you as a couple is key to any wedding, and doubly so if you’re doing all the planning long distance: we live in Vancouver but are marrying in Liverpool. I wasn’t sure how much time I would have to decorate venues, so I knew I wanted something that would only need a few personal touches to make it feel like “ours”.

Having a good relationship with your venue organisers is also vital, and the friendly advice and timely email correspondence I had from our chosen venues definitely sealed the deal. As we’re marrying in our home town, we knew we would have lots of beautiful spaces to choose from, Liverpool has so many!

I was even able to visit some of them before I came to be with Shane in Canada. This was really helpful in the decision-making process: I ruled one out straight away when I saw the state of the bathrooms our guests would have to share with the bar next door!

Flexibility was also another important criteria for me: I didn’t like being given a rigid list of suppliers that we had to work with, and I discounted any venue that imposed a minimum spend.

I also knew I was looking for something that would have meaning for us, so I focused my search on the city spaces that were part of our courtship: falling in love with Shane is inextricably tied in my memory with running around the sun-splashed summer streets to meet him for our dates at cafés, bars, galleries, and theatres in the heart of the city.

Rooftops + Secret Spaces – Oh My!

Charlie

TNWC Real Brides: introducing Ellie and Jon’s relaxed and rustic wedding in the Hampshire countryside

Charlie

This week I have a few more posts from TNWC Real Brides and a great piece all about a new wedding festival package from one of our TNWC businesses – so stayed tuned!

But first up this week I get to welcome you to our fifth and final TNWC Real Bride for 2014 – her name is Ellie and she’ll be marrying her Mr-to-be Jon in a rustic wedding in Hampshire next May. I hope you enjoy hearing all about her ideas and following her plans with me.

Over to Ellie…

Jon and I met seven and a half years ago, on our first day at Uni. In fact, it would more accurate to say that we met in our first minute of Uni because, as the fates would have it (or maybe it was all thanks to traffic on the M3) he and I pulled up outside our halls of residence within about 10 seconds of each other, got chatting – and, well, the rest is history!

Much of what we have always had in common revolves around the countryside. Both of us are grandchildren of farmers (his grandparents were beef farmers in South Devon, mine sheep farmers on Anglesey) and, for that reason, we’ve spent much of our time together walking, camping, sailing, cutting logs, building chicken houses and generally looking for any excuse to be outside, ideally in foul weather (you can take the girl out of Wales, but you can’t take Wales out of the girl)!

A Proposal in a Thunderstorm

It’s then unsurprising that Jon, in a story that splits audiences down the middle along the lines of a) how mad they are and b) how well they know us, chose to propose after a 12 mile hike, on the top of a hill in the Peak District and in the middle of a thunder storm (the picture below was taken a few hours later)! It was magical and, although few believe me, I will swear until my dying day that the storm cleared and a rainbow came out within minutes of me saying ‘yes’!

Charlie

TNWC Real Brides: introducing Kerry and Nick’s Somerset festival farm wedding

Charlie

Our fourth TNWC Real Bride is Kerry, who is marrying her Mr of fifteen years this summer at the beautiful Cowparsley Weddings in Somerset – one of our fab recommended wedding venues and a pretty special place that I visited last summer.

Over to Kerry to tell you all about it…

Hmmmm, how should I start?….Ummm, well – I’m Kerry (Hi!) my friends call me Potts (my surname’s Potter….not for much longer). I’m 36 and I’m marrying my long term boyfriend, Nick this August (eek). We’ve been together 15 years this year, and already have our little family made with our kids; Amber (9) and Finn (7).

Nick and I met on a Monopoly pub crawl in London back in September ’99. We hit it off straight away, and saw each other every weekend from then on, until I went to Thailand for the millennium with my best friend. Whilst I was away we realised we had something kinda cool going on, so when I got back we moved in together.

After 4 years, 5 house moves, a fair few festivals and a few more crazy nights out, we discovered we were pregnant with our first child; Amber. We suddenly had to grow up, so we bought a flat in Hackney and settled down. Sixteen months later, we were pregnant again, this time with Finn. By now we felt it was time to leave the city and decided to head for the country, so in 2008 we up sticks and move to Taunton in Somerset.

Charlie

TNWC Real Brides: introducing Miriam and John’s summery Scottish wedding with 1920s touches

Charlie

TNWC Real Bride number three is Miriam, a lovely bride-to-be who I have ‘known’ for a while via my social media networks. I was pretty excited when she applied to be one of this year’s TNWC Real Brides and I love the sound of her wedding plans and am sure you will too.

Over to Miriam for all the details so far…

Hello! My name is Miriam and I am very excited to marry my wonderful fiance John on the 26th of July 2014. We first met two years ago in Edinburgh, when I was working as a vet in nearby Falkirk and he was teaching at a primary school in the city. Since then there have been several big life changes for both of us.

I now live in Bodmin in Cornwall, where we will eventually settle into married life together, and John is spending two years teaching overseas in Qatar. He returns for good just a month before the Big Day. To make things even more complicated we have settled on the gorgeous venue choice of Dryburgh Abbey near Melrose in the Scottish Borders, 350 miles from me and 3500 miles away from John.

It might not be easy organising a long-distance wedding, but we enjoy a challenge! With our families being an eclectic mix of Italian, Scottish and Irish we have lots of traditional family influences, and will certainly have a ceilidh and a piper (with a family connection as John’s dad runs a piping school in Edinburgh).

John proposed in the most modern way possible – via Skype! I was obviously over the moon, even more so when he returned at the Easter holidays with surprise Eurostar tickets to Paris as an (unnecessarily) compensatory big romantic gesture. We adore the sophisticated, romantic, carefree air of Paris and hope to have brought a piece of this back for our wedding, to fuse with our love of Scotland (especially Edinburgh) and the beautiful British countryside.

Charlie

TNWC Real Brides: introducing Lisa and Tom’s Welsh country folk festival wedding

Charlie

It’s time to introduce you to our second TNWC Real Bride of the year – her name is Lisa and she’s getting married to her Mr-to-be Tom this coming July in South Wales. As well as sharing some of her lovely wedding plans, we have another sweet love story today.

Over to Lisa…

I am and never have been one to be rushed, so when my long term partner Tom asked me to marry him back in June 2012 I knew that our engagement was going to be a long term affair. It’s not that I didn’t want to get married in a year, it’s just I always wanted a DIY wedding and knew that this would take time.

I know many other brides to be who would have easily managed everything that I am trying to do within a year but that just isn’t me. I felt as though I wanted to relish and savour my engagement and by making it last over two years I felt I was relieving some of the pressures and stresses that I was determined to avoid.

Charlie

TNWC Real Brides: introducing Emma and Shane’s natural wedding in the city

Charlie

Recently we saw the final ‘just married’ post from last year’s TNWC Real Brides – I am so sad to say ‘goodbye’ to those lovely ladies who made such an inspiring contribution to the blog. But today is a wonderful day, because I get to introduce to you the first of this year’s TNWC Real Brides.

We have five brides-to-be who are going to be blogging about their upcoming weddings over the next few months, I have been privy to reading all about their plans already and can’t wait to get them sharing all their lovely ideas with you. This morning I’m going to hand you over to the first of our TNWC Real Brides – Emma – who has a rather sweet long distance love story, in fact very similar to my own (apart from it was me that moved thousands of miles away to Vancouver shortly after meeting my now husband).

I do hope you are looking forward to following this year’s TNWC Real Brides, so it’s over to Emma to tell us all about her plans for a natural wedding in the city…

Long Distance Love

It was on one of our first dates that Shane told me he was planning to emigrate to Canada. Our love story began as an office romance, flirting over cups of tea in the staff kitchen. It took me a while to realise that he actually liked me and it wasn’t until he moved in for a kiss at a cocktail bar one night that I was convinced!

We fell in love in the summer of 2010 ~ giddy, breathless, starry-eyed love ~ but at the end of the summer, just as he promised he would, he got on a plane and flew 5,000 miles away!

Charlie

TNWC Real Brides Married! Stephanie’s back to tell us all about her homepsun vintage fiesta wedding by the sea

Charlie

Here we are with our final blog post from our 2013 TNWC Real Brides. Today we are back with Stephanie, our lovely bride in the USA, to share all about her wonderful wedding day.

It has been such a lovely journey with last years ‘real brides’ it is somewhat sad to say goodbye to them with this final post. But, we are about to embark on a whole load of new wedding planning adventures with our 2014 TNWC Real Brides! So excited!

So it’s over to Stephanie to tell you all about her wedding – it’s more like a real wedding feature with all the stunning photos she’s sent me from her photographer Red Anchor Photo…(and don’t miss the skateboarding groom!)

Okay, maybe I’m slightly biased, but I’d have to say my wedding weekend goes down in history as the greatest weekend ever. About four months later and I am still buzzing with the love and beautiful energy my (now) husband and I felt that weekend surrounded by family and friends. The day of our wedding also happened to be the windiest day in history, but more about that later.

Charlie

TNWC Real Brides Married! Nik’s back to tell us all about her relaxed coastal farm wedding

Charlie

This lovely TNWC Real Bride has become someone I consider as a friend, so it’s been a real treat to hear all about her wedding day (and I’ve been buried in all her ‘official’ wedding photos recently which will soon be gracing these blog pages). Nik and Chris had, what I think was a very chilled out and down-to-earth wedding (two in fact!) back in July, with champagne on the beach and lots of animal appearances on the farm where they live in Wales.

Over to Nik…

Six Months On

Recently we celebrated our six month wedding anniversary (ok, I know, not technically an anniversary, but nice to acknowledge it all the same). By a happy coincidence, it turned out our wedding caterer, Trehale Farm, were hosting their annual wassail on the same night, so it seemed quite fitting for us to go along to toast the apple trees, drink cider, eat great food and commemorate our first wedded milestone.

Charlie

TNWC Real Brides Married! Sarah’s back to tell us all about her homemade child-friendly wedding

Charlie

The fifth of our six TNWC Real Brides is here today to tell us about her lovely summer wedding. Sarah married Lee back in August with a very homemade wedding full of child-friendly touches. After the seasonal wedding flowers all grown by Sarah’s mum, my favourite part is the duck race!

Over to Sarah…

Married at last! Our wedding was back in August. The chaos began on the eve of the wedding…

In the morning me and my now husband went to my mum’s house, where, along with my mum and dad, my brother, his wife and my mum’s best friend were all ready and raring to go with the wedding day prep. All of the flowers we used were homegrown by my mum so we set to work on bouquets, buttonholes and vase arrangements for the tables. After a spot of lunch we loaded my dad’s van with all our wedding day goodies and headed to venue to set up.

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