Planning Archives - Page 7 of 15 - The Natural Wedding Company

Blog: Planning

Charlie

TNWC Real Bride: Myfanwy’s been preparing her reception venue and Arthur the dachshund has a new wedding coat

Charlie

It’s been a little while since we had an update from one of our TNWC Real Brides, it’s been a busy summer with three of them (Caroline, Nik and Emma) now married! Don’t forget we’re looking for the next TNWC Real Brides who are getting married in 2014 to become our new bloggers – full details here if you’re interested.

Today we have Myfanwy back with us, who is having an autumn wedding, and has been busy preparing her reception site, turning a piece of driftwood into table centres, and kitting out Arthur the dachshund with a smart new coat!

Over to Myfanwy…

Since the summer has started and all this amazing weather I’ve been finding it a little hard with working and daily trips to the beach to sit down and get some wedding stuff done!

So I thought I’d blog about our reception location first which is really looking great! We wanted our reception in a tipi, some friends of ours had theirs in a tipi and it truly was a memorable wedding, we love being outside which could largely be because we work indoors all day.

We chose a field in front of Tom’s parents home (my parents live on a hill so that ruled their house out!) and the farmer has kindly agreed we can use the field. The lovely people at Event in a Tent have been to see the field is suitable (it is phew!).

We will be having tents similar to these…

Charlie

TNWC Real Brides: Emma’s final blog post as a ‘Miss’ before her outdoor Cornish festival wedding this weekend

Charlie

Can you believe it, two of my lovely TNWC Real Brides are getting married this week! Nik and Chris are getting hitched today (!!!) in Wales (read all about their wedding plans here) and the lovely Emma and Chris will be tying the knot in Cornwall on Saturday. Even though these lovely ladies are around my own age, I still feel a bit like a mother hen with them getting married.

I hope you’ve all enjoyed their journeys and creative plans, and I’m sure we are all looking forward to hearing how it went and seeing the pictures. If you have recently got engaged or are just starting to plan your 2014 wedding, maybe you’d like to be one of my next TNWC Real Brides – full details here.

Today though, it’s over to Emma who has done one final blog post as a ‘Miss’…

I thought I would just pop by to say hello before the big day at the end of this week! We have made a few last minute decisions, one of which is probably the best last minute decision any bride could make – we booked a videographer. I had been toying with the idea for months but decided to take the plunge.

Our photographer Becca posted a link to Pete’s work on her Facebook page. We didn’t have the budget for a video but I thought it would be worth a shot to ask, firstly if he was free (only weeks before the wedding) and to see if he could do reduced coverage with a reduced price. We came up trumps as not only is he mega talented; he was free on our wedding day and did us a brilliant deal.

Charlie

Would you like to be one of our next TNWC Real Brides? We’d love you to come and share your wedding plans with our readers!

Charlie

One of the best things I’ve done on the blog is to open it up to other real brides to share their wedding planning experiences – this year I’ve already had six fabulous girlies become my TNWC Real Brides. As we head towards the autumn and their wedding days, I am looking for some new TNWC Real Brides to start blogging around September 2013.

From this year’s experience I am looking for another group of brides-to-be who’d like to share their plans for a natural, eco-friendly, seasonal, vintage and homemade wedding.

Each of this year’s TNWC Real Brides had a personalised illustration created of them and their Mr-to-be with a decorative border reflecting their wedding plans – I’m hopeful that my sister Izzy Burton who designed these will be up for doing them for my next TNWC Real Brides too!

To get an idea of what it might like to blog as a TNWC Real Bride take a look at the blog posts from our six current brides-to-be…

Charlie

TNWC Real Brides: Nik’s been busy on the farm doing DIY projects with only a few weeks until her wedding day

Charlie

Just like TNWC Real Bride Emma last week, Nik has only a few weeks to go until her wedding. Her and Mr-to-be Chris have been busy over the past few months with lots of DIY projects for their coastal farm wedding in Wales, and nothing has changed for this creative duo in these final few weeks before their big day.

Today Nik’s got a fab round-up of what they’ve been up to recently, including a lovely reveal of their beautifully restored VW Beetle, making a wedding swing, and some ‘before’ pictures of the barn that will host their wedding reception.

Over to Nik…

The farm is abuzz with life at the moment – not only have the flowers and trees begun to burst forth with summer colour to brighten the place up, but we too are frantically whizzing around doing odd jobs, trimming and pruning, clearing and tidying and generally making preparations for our wedding day on the 11th July.

There’s been so much going on it’s impossible for me to pick just one topic to write about this month, so I thought I’d share a few of the projects we’ve been getting on with.

Reg Returns!

One of the most exciting parts of our wedding day is the fact that Reginald, our vintage VW Beetle, gets to act as wedding car.

Chris has owned him for over 10 years (longer than he’s known me!). One of my earliest memories of Chris is seeing him get out of Reg in a car park and thinking ‘ooh, nice car…hang on… nice owner!’ Unfortunately, when we first got engaged, Reg was rather looking his age after a few years in a damp garage and was in desperate need of a Gok Wan style makeover.

We sent him off to the paint shop for some TLC and he has come back looking pretty fabulous indeed!

I’m so looking forward to cruising down the winding lanes towards the sea after our ceremony, with tin cans rattling behind us and our ‘Just Married’ sign in the window!

Charlie

TNWC Real Brides: Emma’s been making pretty labels for her wildflower seed wedding favours

Charlie

It’s so nice to be back today with another TNWC Real Bride instalment from the lovely Emma. She has less than three weeks to go until her wedding! I’m so excited for her. If you’re new to the feature, you can read all of Emma’s blog posts here and this fab guest post she wrote all about bridal beauty.

Over to Emma…

With less than three weeks to go I am getting butterflies and bubbles of excitement. We have nearly completed the ;to do’ list and the DIY attempts have been continuing late into the evenings.

In the last few days I have been making pretty labels for our favours, which are wildflower seeds for butterflies and bees. I bought some little brown recycled envelopes last year, which have been nestled in the loft waiting to be decorated. For ages I wanted to make a lino cut to hand print each envelope, but time got away and I found a great alternative that is way less messy; some cute little oval labels from Avery, which are made from 100% recycled paper too.

There is free template software included online, which was very easy to use – I made my design in Photoshop then just copied and pasted into the template ready to print.

Chris is filling these little envelopes each with a tablespoon of wild flower seeds as I write this!

Charlie

TNWC Real Brides: Sarah’s been busy with her family working on a number of DIY craft projects for her wedding

Charlie

At about this time I will probably be meeting Susanne from The Blue Carrot in deepest Cornwall, over 300 miles from my home. If you’ve just joined us, this week I am on a TNWC South West Roadtrip travelling around Somerset, Devon and Cornwall visiting a number of the lovely wedding businesses listed in the directory.

This afternoon I have Sarah one of my TNWC Real Brides who is sharing some of her DIY projects that her and her family have been busy creating for their upcoming wedding.

Over to Sarah…

Hi everyone! In this blog I will be writing about some of the creative projects we are doing for the wedding, with less than 3 months to go everything is starting to get a bit crazy!

One of my projects is using a gorgeous old gate dad came across, we were thinking of painting it but soon decided it was perfect as it was. I’m going to use it to display picture of myself and Lee. I’m also going to decorate it with lovely trinkets and bunting along the top.

My mum has been busy making bunting, we were told we’d need 150 meters worth – my mum nearly fainted at the thought! She’s making lots of progress after lots of trouble with it – we sourced our fabric from charity shops and eBay, and I bet it will look stunning!

Charlie

Beauty is a feeling: a personal post on why one bride cancelled her wedding make-up artist

Charlie

You will probably recognise today’s guest blogger, she’s one of my lovely TNWC Real Brides, Emma, who is sharing all her wedding planning experiences with us. She recently emailed me a blog post she’d written about her experience of her wedding make-up trial as she felt it might strike a chord with some of my other bride-to-be readers. And I think it will.

I decided not to include it among Emma’s TNWC Real Brides posts as I think it needed to stand alone. If you’d like to read more about Emma’s wedding plans, you can do so here.

I also wanted to extend an invitation to any other brides-to-be out there, like Emma, who’ve had positive or negative experiences during their wedding planning and want to share them with others – you are welcome to write them up and pop them in an email to me at charlie@thenaturalweddingcompany.co.uk and I will try and feature them here on the blog.

Over to Emma…

Beauty Is A Feeling

I wanted to share with you all my experience of my make up trial and why I decided to cancel having a professional make up artist on the day, leaving me out of pocket.

I always thought that having my make up done on my wedding day would be a real treat as I so rarely wear make up and thought it would be nice to feel and look glamorous. Every bride wants to look their best on their wedding as so much attention is focused onto you and there is a little pressure to look better than you would on any other day, which is why I thought professional make up would make me look ‘more like a bride.’

I booked a trial with a local make-up artist and was looking forward to having a girly time trying out different looks. When I arrived at the studio I explained that I rarely wear much more than a bit of mascara and some tinted moisturiser and that I wanted to look really natural but have my features enhanced. The make up artist started by tweaking my brows, which turned into a full on overhaul with wax, threading and trimming with scissors… I was a little worried as I quite like my eyebrows to be natural but I trusted the make up artist as she has an excellent portfolio and is clearly very talented.

Charlie

TNWC Real Brides: Myfanwy tells us about her embroidered napkins, personalised vintage hankies and knitted napkin rings

Charlie

The one thing all our TNWC Real Brides have in common is that they are all creating handmade or homemade weddings to some extent, whether it be designing wedding invitations, sowing wildflower seeds around their ceremony site, making bridesmaid gifts, or brewing up elderflower champagne.

One things for sure, of all our brides-to-be Myfawny is the one whipping up a sewing storm of beautiful items for her autumn wedding to Tom. Today she shares some of her many wedding related sewing projects – from embroidering motifs onto their napkins, to personalising vintage hankies – and I’m sure that you’ll find some inspiration here for your own wedding.

Over to Myfanwy…

Vintage Tablecloths

Over the winter we did a lot of our planing and preparations including a lot of collecting. This is something we have done ever since we set the wedding date and decided on the venue.

We are not white tablecloth people! Mainly because one of us will spill something on them before the big day! We did not want round tables covered in perfect white tablecloths, at some weddings it looks great, just not ours.

Charlie

TNWC Real Brides: Nik shares details of her hot chocolate wedding favours and thank you gifts

Charlie

Opening up the blog to other real brides-to-be has been one of the best decisions I’ve made. I hope you are enjoying and benefiting from the experiences, ideas and handmade projects they have been sharing here. I’m so pleased with the outcome of this new feature that I will be looking for new TNWC Real Brides to start blogging in the autumn – if you’re interested stay tuned as I’ll be posting details on the blog shortly.

We are joined today we have the lovely Nik who is planning a relaxed coastal farm wedding at her home in Wales. She’s sharing details of the fab hot chocolate wedding favours they’ve been making for their guests, and also some more personal thoughts on how she’s found planning a wedding alone a challenge.

I hope you enjoy it – over to Nik…

Arranging Favours and Thank You’s – Our Last Big Job!

With six weeks to go until the wedding, we’ve been turning our efforts to the tasks on our ‘to do’ list that are able to be done in advance. There seems to be so many things that have to wait until the week/night before the wedding, and it kind of felt as though we’d hit a bit of a ‘lull’ in the preparations, until I remembered that we hadn’t really started on one of the most important tasks – favours and gifts for our guests! Whoops.

Heart-Warming Hot Chocolate Favours

From the word go, we wanted our favours to be something practical that would be used on the day of the wedding and that could be used again and again afterwards.

After much deliberation, I had a bit of a lightbulb moment and we decided that we would make hot chocolate stirring spoons for each of our guests, complete with a DIY hand-illustrated mug to commemorate the day (inspired by the work of illustrator OhNoRachio!, whose work I covet and purchase often!).

To add a little nod to the country we now call home, we arranged for Folksy seller Rescue & Revive to handstamp vintage teaspoons with the words ‘Llwy Garu’ –Welsh for lovespoon! Lovespoons are an old Welsh tradition, although they are typically carved out of wood.

Charlie

TNWC Real Brides: Emma’s latest crafting projects and and worries about the small things on their wedding ‘to do’ list

Charlie

So we had a little break last week from our TNWC Real Brides series – the first of our real brides, Caroline, got married on May 18th in a beautiful farm wedding (you can see a gorgeous picture of Caroline and Gareth on their wedding day here on Facebook) and I can’t wait to hear all about it.

Today we have Emma back with us, and she only has 8 weeks to go until her big day in Cornwall. These weddings are all coming so quickly! She has a couple of gorgeous craft projects to share with you all today – a pretty decorated bottles for table flowers, a homemade blackboard seating plan, and the sweetest aisle liners I’ve seen.

Over to Emma to tell you what they’ve been up to…

All The Small Things (seem to bring the biggest headache)

Up until a week ago I was feeling calm, organised and under control with the planning going swimmingly. Then suddenly with less than 8 weeks to go (EXCITED!) I started to get a bit worrisome. All the big things have been well and truly ticked off the list but the little things seem like they have started breed!

I suspect this happens to every bride and the point at which where ‘bridezilla’ may start to rear her ugly head, I can feel it bubbling beneath the surface now… I think the main problem is worrying that we will forget something! Like having enough tables for the caterer to put food on, sorting out music for the ceremony and how we are going to play it outside in the amphitheatre.

I have been worrying about things that we had slightly overlooked; like what we can feed our vegan guests when we are having a hog roast and cream tea (slight fail). The only oven on site is an outdoor pizza oven…hmmm, still to be solved.

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