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Charlie

Luxury yurt honeymoons and hen parties with a woodfired hot tub at Secret Cloud House Holidays in the Peak District

Charlie

When I was planning my own honeymoon I looked for places and pictures that inspired me – I wanted to take one look and think, “that’s what I want to do” or “that’s where I want to be.” That beautiful nighttime picture above of one of the honeymoon yurts at Secret Cloud House Holidays does that for me.

Secret Cloud House Holidays have a lovely selection of luxury yurts, including a brand new wooden yurt, situated in the rolling countryside of the Peak District. Their yurts are available for both honeymoons and hen parties, and there’s even a woodfired hot tub with some of the loveliest views that a hot tub could have!

A Secret Cloud House Honeymoon

At Secret Cloud House Holidays there is a choice of three yurts and a bell tent that you can choose from as your romantic bolthole. New for 2013 is Bilberry Lodge, a Scandinavian inspired wooden yurt, filled with rustic furniture, a log burning range cooker, and a cosy double bed. It is also available to book all year round so perfect for a cosy winter honeymoon.

Charlie

TNWC South West Roadtrip Day 1: Huntstile Organic Farm and Clavelshay Barn

Charlie

Wow – what a start to my trip! I’m writing this on Sunday evening, so I’ll be sharing with you this morning what I got up to on the first day of my TNWC South West Roadtrip yesterday. Hope that makes sense!

I set off from home at lunchtime with a three hour drive ahead of me to Somerset. My first stop on the TNWC South West Roadtrip was Huntstile Organic Farm – a beautiful wedding venue set in the rolling Somerset countryside. This wasn’t my first visit to Huntstile, so I’m mainly just going to share with you some pictures I took today – if you’d like to read more about what I think of Huntstile check out my previous visit.

This was Huntstile yesterday, looking super pretty in the sunshine, flowers blooming everywhere, and buzzing with people.

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.

Izzy

Sarah and Sam’s old fashioned country village wedding with a pretty garden party reception on a shoestring

Izzy

Old fashioned country village wedding

I’m thrilled to be sharing another exclusive real wedding with you on the blog today – a gorgeous June wedding set amongst stunning North Yorkshire countryside. The bride Sarah, was one of the lovely girls who joined me for my TNWC 5th Birthday Party last April, so it’s especially lovely to share her wedding after hearing about their plans last spring.

For anyone planning a wedding on a ‘shoestring’ then this wedding is for you – as Sarah mentions later on, they took ideas they saw and worked out how they make it themselves. It’s a real DIY wedding on a budget, but a totally beautiful one.

Over to Sarah to tell you all about her beautiful wedding to Sam…

Sarah and her husband Sam chose the 23rd June 2012 to get married, “because it was the Saturday closest to the midsummer solstice and there’s an old English tradition of weddings on that day. We wanted an old-fashioned country wedding with an informal feel, and we tried to make everything homemade if it possibly could be.”

“The week before the wedding was a crazy whirl of preparations because it was such a DIY affair. Luckily we had a fantastic team of family, friends and neighbours who worked tirelessly to finish preparing the food and decorations.”

Charlie

Join The Natural Wedding Company for our South West Roadtrip visiting some fab wedding businesses along the way

Charlie

The Natural Wedding Company – that’s me (Charlie) and my baby bump – are going on a roadtrip! Starting on Sunday 9th June I will be driving from my home in Cheshire, all the way down the country and into Somerset, Devon and Cornwall, finishing up in a little bit of Gloucestershire and Wiltshire about 10 days later.

Along my way I’m going to be stopping off at a number of the fantastic businesses that you can find listed on The Natural Wedding Company directory. There are many more fab wedding suppliers down in the South West than I am possibly able to see in 10 days, but I am doing my best to see as many as I can and report back to you, my lovely readers, about what I find.

Follow My South West Roadtrip

The whole aim of this roadtrip is not only for me to get to meet some of these businesses in person, but also to share pictures and details with you. I’m going to be taking my camera, my phone and my laptop, and each and every place I visit I’ll be capturing in pictures, words, and maybe even video (if I can figure that out!).

Each day I’ll be retreating to a B&B to write up my day’s visits, which you’ll then be able to read the following day on the blog.

As well as documenting my South West Roadtrip on the blog, I’ll be sharing photos on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook. I’ll be tagging all my images on Instagram and Twitter with #TNWCRoadtrip so I hope you’ll follow along and join me on this epic roadtrip virtually.

Charlie

Win a beautiful springtime blossom bow tie with matching pocket square for your groom-to-be from Mama Wolf

Charlie

*This competition is now closed 00:00 12/06/13*

So far this year we’ve had some really lovely competitions on The Natural Wedding Company blog, and I must say there are more lovely ones to come. Today I’m launching a competition from new TNWC business Mama Wolf to win this gorgeous springtime bow tie and matching pocket square.

I’m particularly delighted to have a competition prize that’s for the men in our weddings. Whether you want to win it for you groom-to-be, the best man, the father-of-the-bride, or maybe even a page boy, or even if you’re not getting married and you’d like to win it for a bow tie lover in your life, then read on for how you can enter.

When spring finally arrived on our British shores this year it has been spectacular – the hawthorn leaves unfurling and blossom budding all over the place. What could be nicer for a spring wedding that this springtime bow tie and pocket square?

Made from upcycled pure cotton, like all Mama Wolf products, they have been handmade with every effort to ensure they meet their ethical selection criteria (recycled, vintage, fair-trade, organic, up-cycled and natural fibre fabric).

What’s more, Mama Wolf created this bow tie and pocket square exclusively for The Natural Wedding Company readers, so you won’t find this design anywhere else! If you’d like to enter to win this delightful set, read on below for full details of how.

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.

Izzy

Holly and Laurie’s English picnic wedding in Shropshire with country garden flowers and handmade details

Izzy

English picnic wedding

I have got some truly lovely exclusive real weddings coming up for you on the blog, so I do hope you’ll check back over the coming weeks to soak up all the wonderful inspiration these brides and grooms have to share.

Today’s real wedding is beautiful. I feel like I’ve got to know bride Holly over the past year or so as she emailed me a couple of times in the lead up to her wedding – not only was she inspired by my own wedding stationery, but she also won her wedding photography via a competition that I’d promoted on the blog!

Holly and Laurie got married in Shropshire on the 15th of September 2012 with a wedding ceremony held at Ludlow Castle, and followed up by a picnic wedding reception at Henley Farmhouse on the Acton Scott Estate.

Over to Holly to tell us all about their wonderful day…

“We both just wanted a really relaxed wedding where all our guests could just have fun. We wanted a day that was personal to us – we didn’t have a huge budget so we knew from the start that we would probably be doing lots of the work ourselves – with the help of our friends and family.”

“We actually found searching for a venue one of the most stressful parts of planning, we were looking for a blank canvas without lists of suppliers we had to use and we didn’t have lots of money to spend so we struggled to find somewhere. I grew up in Shropshire and loved the idea of a Shropshire country wedding.”

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.

Charlie

The House Meadow Open Weekend in Kent on 25th and 26th May 2013

Charlie

Coming up this weekend TNWC wedding venue The House Meadow are holding an open weekend for all you lovely brides- and grooms-to-be out there who are looking for a beautiful meadow setting for your wedding day.

If you’re looking to get married in Kent, or if you’re on the hunt for that dream spot to say your vows beneath a tree in an English meadow, then you must get yourselves along this weekend to take a look at what The House Meadow has to offer.

The House Meadow is described as “country charm in its purest form.” It’s one of those special places that can be a completely blank (and rather stunning!) backdrop to enable you to create the wedding you want. The meadow is full of beautiful details, whilst remaining rustic – something that is so often difficult to find amongst wedding venues.

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