Planning Archives - Page 9 of 15 - The Natural Wedding Company

Blog: Planning

Charlie

TNWC Real Brides: Stephanie on deciding their wedding style and choosing farmers market flowers

Charlie

Rounding up the second guest posts from our TNWC Real Brides is Stephanie talking about a subject I love – flowers. As well as revealing details of her seasonal farmers market-sourced flowers, Stephanie also shares Pinterest helped her realise the style for their wedding.

When we got engaged we began to receive a lot of questions pertaining to the style of the actual wedding: What will your colors be? Where is it going to be? What types of flowers will you have? My initial thought was “My God, we’ve only been engaged for ten seconds… I have no idea about any of these things!”

Honestly, I began to panic a little bit because I wondered if perhaps I should already have some sort of idea of what I wanted. I began to pour through blogs, wedding magazines – whatever I could get my hands on – and felt even more overwhelmed! After a few weeks of this I decided just to take a step back and relax. I realized that I was allowed to move at my own pace and all of these questions were not meant to stress me out; they were well-intended and out of pure excitement for Justin and myself.

Charlie

TNWC Real Brides: Caroline tells us about their picnic style wedding lunch and foodie favours

Charlie

Another Tuesday rolls around and I have another lovely guest blog from a TNWC Real Bride. Today Caroline who is planning an eco-friendly farm wedding is sharing her delicious sounding plans for a picnic style wedding lunch, foodie wedding favours and a pork pie wedding cake. Yum yum!

I’d advise reading this while munching a biscuit or your own lunch or you are likely to feel extremely hungry by the end of it…you’ve been warned!

Eleven weeks to go, and the lists are getting longer, hours spend asleep are getting shorter (I keep waking up in the middle of the night remembering things I have to do – it is SUCH a good idea to have a pen and paper next to the bed to write them down!). And the spare room is getting fuller and fuller of wedding related paraphernalia!

I thought that for this months blog post, I’d share our food plans with you, as planning and organising that bit is proving to be heaps of fun, and I think one of the most enjoyable and important parts of our day.

Gareth and I are both big foodies, and we try to buy locally wherever we can, and having a picnic lunch is a brilliant way to be able to use local suppliers and get to know lovely local food producers in our area. It’s also a fab way to make sure the foods amazing, even on a limited budget!

Picnic Wedding Menu

So far for our menu we’ve decided on:

Sourdough and olive bread from Welbeck Bakery, ham and smoked salmon pate from The Country Victualler, lots of homemade chutney from my lovely friend Jo, bags of Pipers Crisps, cheeses from Long Clawson Dairy (Thomas Hoe Red Leicester and Stilton), Lincolnshire poacher cheese, Mike Maloneys pork pies, salads made by my brilliant big sister (we haven’t decided quite what salads yet though!), houmous, grapes, apples and celery.

I’m sure there will be a few extras added too though, and we have a lovely farm shop just down the road who I’m sure will be having lot of last minute visits from us!

Charlie

Tribes Travel share their top 5 honeymoon destinations from secluded beaches to wildlife adventures

Charlie

Here on The Natural Wedding Company blog I’ve recently been introducing some guest bloggers in the form of my TNWC Real Brides – it’s been lovely for me to share the blog with others, and I hope you’ve been enjoying their wedding plans so far. Today I’m going to hand the blog over to one of my fab TNWC businesses to tell you all about something they specialise in – stunning, ethical honeymoons.

Amanda set up Tribes Travel with her husband 15 years ago after spending many years as a travel guide. Their ethos for Tribes Travel is all about giving you the very best holiday experience possible, whilst trying to ensure that travel is sustainable. You must check out their website for some of the wonderful holidays and trips they offer, but today Amanda is going to give you her recommendations for their top five honeymoon destinations.

Over to Amanda…

Someone in our office is getting married and we were discussing where she should go on her honeymoon. Since selling holidays and honeymoons is what we do, we of course all had definite personal views as to what would make the perfect honeymoon.

A beach came high on the list of many of us, luxury was a must, and romantic accommodation was undeniably important. We decided to forgo what some of our more active clients have chosen in the past for a honeymoon – Kilimanjaro!

Our top 5 honeymoon destinations eventually came down to the following list of exciting holidays and wonderful places to stay.

1. Luxury Kenya Bush and Beach

We are all wildlife and nature lovers, and this luxury combination of an exciting safari in the Masai Mara followed by an indulgent stay at an exclusive beach house on the southern coast of Kenya certainly worked for us. Not only is the accommodation on this honeymoon absolutely superb, personal and romantic, but you’ll end up with memories to treasure of the special places and experiences you’ll enjoy on this holiday.

Charlie

TNWC Real Brides: Sarah has been dreaming up a very vintage afternoon tea for their homemade wedding

Charlie

Welcome back to another fab guest post from one of our TNWC Real Brides. Today we’re joined by Sarah who is planning a homemade child-friendly wedding to her Mr-to-be Lee. She’s been a very busy lady (along with her mum) collection a mass of vintage china for their wedding, as I’m sure many of you are…

Hi everybody!

So much has changed since I wrote my last blog post, it would seem that as the wedding gets closer our plans and ideas develop and change.

But one thing we have set in stone is our plans for wedding food, which from the start of our planning we have always been pretty certain of what we wanted.

After the service we will be having an afternoon tea, which fits in perfectly with our relaxed theme for the day. We will be having a selection of sandwiches, sweet and savoury pastries along with scones and other sweet treats. There will also be coffee and a selection of teas served with the meal. This will all be served on vintage china cups and saucers and vintage cake stands which my mum has been collecting for a few months now!

Charlie

TNWC Real Brides: Myfanwy on brewing up homemade elderflower champagne and crafting origami flowers

Charlie

It’s that lovely time of the week when we get to hear from one of the TNWC Real Brides. Today, Myfanwy is sharing details of the homemade elderflower champagne that her and her Mr-to-be Tom have been brewing up for their wedding. She’s also done a great ‘how to’ guide for these pretty origami flowers she’s been making from old book pages.

If you’re new to the TNWC Real Brides feature, you can read Myfanwy’s first guest post here on her plans for a creative vintage-inspired wedding. I hope you enjoy Myfanwy’s latest update…

It’s been a busy few weeks finalising the bid decisions for the wedding, the catering, the dress, the DJ! These are things we wanted to get done over the winter before our shop re-opens at Easter.

So now the major details are pretty much done this leaves plenty of time for us to make and prepare the little handmade details that we feel are important to us. We’ve made a list (got to love a list!) of tasks to do each month.

Making elderflower champagne

February’s list included starting off the elderflower champagne and making origami paper flowers. We have decided to have a drinks reception when we arrive the tipi’s for people to help themselves. We thought of having some bottles of local beer, the inevitable Pimms and really wanted something else a little bit different. Our friends had made some elderflower champagne a couple of years ago and we’d rally enjoyed it. It’s lucky we looked into making it so early on, we hadn’t realised that once bottled it needs to stand for 3-4 months!

Equipment was really easy to get hold of in fact Dorset Homebrew sell and elderflower champagne making kit with a recipe and all the equipment you need to get started on you first brew. Or of course the River Cottage recipe is really easy to get hold of online – we plan on trying this one when elderflower is in bloom.

Charlie

TNWC Real Brides: Nik shares her experience of choosing an ethical wedding dress

Charlie

Today we have the lovely Nik from Little House in Town back with us to share the next stage in her wedding adventure. If you haven’t already read her introduction guest post about her plans for a relaxed coastal farm wedding then do take a look.

Nik has recently taken up The Wartime Wardrobe Challenge which is a year long ethical clothes rationing project, designed to make those taking part think about how we use our clothes and where they come from. As such, she is ‘rationed’ on how many items of clothes she can buy for the year, which as you can imagine could prove tricky when you are on the hunt for a wedding dress!

Over to Nik to tell us more…

Choosing an ethical wedding dress: from dream to reality

Looking at my reflection in the Coast fitting room mirror, I suddenly became aware that everyone around me had gone very silent. Turning around to face my mum and two bridesmaids, I was met with a sea of beaming smiles.

“That’s it,” said my mum. “That’s the one.”

I’d found my wedding dress.

Charlie

TNWC Real Brides: Emma on the beginnings of their DIY wedding efforts

Charlie

I am so excited about my new TNWC Real Brides feature and I hope you are too! It’s been lovely finding out so much about other people’s weddings and being able to share all those details with you here. You can catch up on all the blog posts by clicking this link to the full TNWC Real Bride feature.

Today has her second blog post, and is going to tell us all about the start of their DIY elements to their wedding – starting with their invitations. She’s even done a how to guide on how she made some very cute cake flags! If you haven’t read Emma’s first blog post, you can find it here. Over to Emma…

This week we have reached the first of our planning milestones – we posted our invites! We both wanted personalised invitations and I love to draw so I thought I’d have a go myself. I drew the designs on watercolour paper, painted in a bit of colour and went over it in fine liner.

I photographed the paintings then added the text using Photoshop. We had them printed on recycled card at Monkey Puzzle Repro Art who are based at Mount Pleasant Eco Park. I couldn’t be more happy with the service, John was lovely and got our invites printed within 24 hours of me emailing him the artwork! The front of the invite features us in what I think I can pass off as ‘naïve cartoon style’, standing in front of the archway area we plan to have our ceremony in.

Charlie

TNWC Real Brides: introducing Stephanie and Justin’s homepsun vintage fiesta wedding by the sea

Charlie

It’s that time again to introduce to you another lovely TNWC Real Bride – and today’s couple are all the way over in the USA! It’s really lovely to bring you a couple planing a wedding in a different part of the world, and I hope you enjoy following their wedding plans as the year goes on.

If you’ve missed any of the other introduction, you can find them all by clicking TNWC Real Brides. Now, over to Stephanie to tell you all about how her and Justin met and their plans for their wedding…

Stephanie + Justin: 21st September 2013, Rhode Island, USA

Justin and I crossed paths our freshman year of college. One afternoon, we happened to be in the same dorm for a meeting, but neither one of us could muster the courage to say hello. After that year Justin transferred to another University, so it’s no wonder I never saw the mysterious handsome guy around campus again. Nearly five years later, we ended up meeting through our mutual friend Billy and the rest, as they say, is history. I really love telling people we had been attracted to one another from a distance so many years ago; it’s as if the universe somehow conspired to bring us together…it’s the hopeless romantic in me, I think.

Anyhow, our relationship initially moved really quickly and, much to the horror of my parents, we were living together in no time. Since then, our relationship has taken us backpacking throughout South East Asia, on surf trips throughout Central America, and living in three different states. We have built a strong bond founded on unconditional support and have shepherded one another through some really difficult times.

Charlie

TNWC Real Brides: introducing Caroline and Gareth’s laid back eco-friendly farm wedding

Charlie

It’s pretty exciting to be into the third week of introducing you to my TNWC Real Brides – so far we’ve met Emma and Chris, Nik and Chris, Myfanwy and Tom, and Sarah and Lee. If you haven’t yet read about their wedding plans, grab a cup of something hot and enjoy a lovely read all their different ideas.

This week I have two more TNWC Real Brides to welcome, starting today with Caroline who is marrying her Mr-to-be Gareth on their family farm in Nottinghamshire. I love that Caroline dreamed of being a farmers wife and ended up falling in love with a farmer – happy reading everyone!

Caroline + Gareth: 18th May 2013, Nottinghamshire

As soon as I met Gareth I had a sneaky feeling he was ‘the one’ – I’ve always had a little dream of living a simple life and being a farmers wife, surrounded by the smell of freshly baked bread, with roaring fires, and of course reality isn’t actually quite like that – the smell of bread is usually overpowered by the smell of cows, and being woken up at 4am each morning as the boys start work isn’t always brilliant when you fancy a little lie in on a Sunday , but I still love it just as much as I always thought I would!

Charlie

TNWC Real Brides: introducing Sarah and Lee’s homemade child-friendly wedding

Charlie

This week I’ve already introduced TNWC Real Bride Myfawny who’s planning a creative and vintage inspired wedding celebration with her Mr-to-be Tom (oh and Arthur the dachshund!), so today it’s ‘Real Bride’ number 4 – the lovely Sarah.

Sarah and Lee are getting hitched in Nottinghamshire and are making their wedding a child-friendly (they have two cuties called Ava and Archie) and homemade affair – I can’t wait to hear all about it as their plans unfurl.

I’m also really excited because I met Sarah’s mum Susan last summer on the Catkin cut flower course (she’s growing lots of flowers for their wedding!). So it’s over to Sarah to tell you all about their plans so far…

Sarah + Lee: 24th August 2013, Nottinghamshire

Hi my name is Sarah Milner I am 26 and engaged to the handsome Lee Broadhurst who turns 30 on Christmas day! We have 2 children Ava who’s 5 and Archie who is 21 months old. Our wedding is taking place on August 24th 2013, we are tying the knot at the gorgeous old vicarage in Elkesley – it’s a beautiful old building which is a private home in which they allow 12 weddings a year to take place.

The ceremony would take place inside the house and afterwards we move into the marquee set in the beautiful gardens where we are having an informal tea party for guests and a BBQ later in the evening. It’s the perfect setting for the relaxed, homemade, family wedding we really desire.

My lovely mum is playing a big part in my day, she is growing and arranging the flowers for the big day. She is also making hand knitted toy dogs as favours for young guests, handmade lavender bags for the ladies and we are still deciding what to do for the men!

Rachel from Catkin Flowers showing my mum and Charlie from The Natural Wedding Company how to make a hand-tied bouquet:

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