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Charlie Charlie

Natural handmade mini soap wedding favours

Charlie

Now that looks almost good enough to eat…

These delightful little foil wrapped goodies are in fact handmade soaps and bath melts, made Emily Lucas who runs Green Spirit from her home in Oxfordshire.  I’m a huge supporter of small businesses run by creative individuals, and on top of that Emily has a committment to sourcing eco-friendly ingredients and packaging.

The adorable wedding favours are handcrafted from vegan ingredients and natural essential oils – each one is made to order and wrapped in a tiny square of foil (available in a range of colours).  Not only can you choose the colour of the foil to match your colour scheme, but Emily also lets you choose your own fragrance.

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An eco-friendly beach wedding with natural handmade decorations

Charlie

Today I have some beautiful inspiration for anyone planning an eco-friendly, rustic beach wedding.  Lucy Dyer is a wedding planner who has a really hands-on approach, often making table plans and seating cards as well as doing the decor.  She created this castaway, rustic island inspired wedding at a beachside restaurant.

The brief from the couple was lots of natural decor, no plastic and manmade products – they wanted it organic and natural.  Lucy spent months gathering driftwood and shells from the surrounding beaches, which she used to decorate the venue.

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Our rustic country wedding – the ceremony

Charlie

I’m excited to be back on track with sharing the full details of our wedding day – it is so lovely to hear that people are enjoying hearing the trials and tribulations of how it all came to be.

So with church decked out with frothy cow parsley, slender young hornbeams, country roses and lit only by candlelight, the only thing missing was me.  The bride.  It’s been mentioned before, but I was 20 minutes late to my wedding.


Image: Mark Tattersall

By now, Nick was getting pretty antsy, Alex the best man was playing his role and winding Nick up (do you remember the photo at the bottom of this post?), and every time the church door opened everyone would look up in anticipation.  This I’ve all heard.   First my mom and little brother Freddie entered.

Then the music started.  We (meaning me) had fallen in love with a piece of harp music from Rebecca Joy Sharp called ‘Scattered Lad’.  The first time I heard I knew that this was what I wanted to walk into the church to.  It encompassed the feeling of how I wanted my wedding to be – it felt celebratory, it was twinged with an old fashioned country tune, and just utterly beautiful.


Image: Mark Tattersall

Of course, we’d rehearsed a couple of times at what point I wanted to start walking in, but standing outside the church with my dad as Izzy and the flowergirls filed in, I completely forgot it all.  Emily and Isla the two flowergirls were so sweet, I was just sad not to see them myself, as they walked in scattering dried petals.


Image: Mark Tattersall

Izzy my gorgeous sister disappeared in – I swear I got tunnel vision, I don’t remember seeing anything inside that church.


Image: Mark Tattersall

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Handmade wedding stationery from a natural wedding bride-to-be

Charlie

I swap emails with some lovely girls who are planning their wedding, and often they share with me some of the handmade details they are making.  Following on from these lovely floral luggage tag ‘save the dates’ from reader Charlie, I have some more wedding stationery to share this evening.


Image: Allister Freeman Photography

These invitations and envelopes are made by Caroline, one of my readers and bride-to-be, and her fiancée Mark.  Firstly a big congratulations – they are getting married next week on 8th October!

For their invitations they used these free printable bunting invites from Wedding Chicks – you can even select your own colour scheme.  They decided to stick the invitations into cards, and also included a photo from their pre-wedding photo shoot (see all the photos here) that had all the RSVP information on the back of it.

The envelopes they lined themselves, with husband-to-be Mark busy with the tube of Pritt Stick.  Caroline told me they even had someone ask them where they got the envelopes from – a sure sign you’ve created something beautiful.  Although Caroline said that they wanted their friends and family to realise it was in fact their hard efforts on Friday night that had created these pretty envelopes!

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Edible woodland inspired wedding cake decorations

Charlie

It’s hard to believe these extraordinary creations are edible – yes, those leaves are edible.  These are handcrafted sugar decorations, from Andie’s Speciality Sweets, which I think would look beautiful on a simply white wedding cake and would be sure to wow your family and friends.

I have picked a selection of my favourite autumn inspired decorations to share with you…

Edible Wild Sugar Mushrooms

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Cake love: an English country flowers wedding cake

Charlie

For me this cake is quintessentially English country wedding all over.  If I was going to have a tiered wedding cake it would look like this, simple white layers (I love the tiny dots of icing) stuffed with seasonal English flowers.

From my limited knowledge of flowers I can spot Peonies, Cow Parsley, Blue ‘Love in a Mist’, Roses, and Lady’s Mantle.  I also think the addition of those tendrils of Honeysuckle really add an extra prettiness to this already beautifully decorated cake.

This gorgeous wedding cake with its English garden flowers has been decorated by Rachel from Catkin FlowersCatkin Flowers is one of the wonderful businesses on the directory who grows their own flowers for brides looking for seasonal wedding flowers.

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Get involved with the Love My Dress ‘Vintage Wedding Gallery’

Charlie

Wow – what an incredible and super lovely idea from Annabel at Love My Dress.  She is creating a gallery of vintage wedding photos on her blog that have been contributed by her readers.  She’s already posted some gorgeous photographs and is looking for lots more from the last 100 years.

I’m going home to visit my family this weekend and if my mom will let me I’m going to scan in a photo of my parents on their wedding day and submitting it to Annabel for the gallery.  I’ll make sure I post a picture here too.

I would encourage all of you to do the same, whether it be a photo of your parents, your grandparents or wider family – this is a truly lovely idea that we can all be a part of celebrating marriage through the years.

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Handmade floral luggage tag ‘save the dates’

Charlie

This is a pretty exciting blog post for me today – these gorgeous floral luggage tag style ‘save the dates’ have been made by one of my readers.  Another Charlie, who is getting married next August sent me this picture of her handmade ‘save the dates’.

These are actually from a fab free template from a website called Eat Drink Chic so if you’d like to make them yourself you can – what a fab website and resource – have a look here.

Charlie told me that they printed them onto textured card, before cutting out the luggage tags.  They bought a stamp for the back of the tags and used gardening twine for the string.  It’s lovely to hear that Charlie and her husband-to-be had a fun time making these together – Nick and I certainly had stressful moments attempting to make things together!

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Tickets for The Designer Vintage Bridal Show

Charlie

Don’t forget to get your tickets to The Designer Vintage Bridal Show in Birmingham on Saturday 8th and Sunday 9th October 2011.  There will be some fantastic suppliers of vintage and vintage inspired wedding goodness – from gowns to photographers and stationers.  In addition to all that, there are fashion shows planned and afternoon tea to enjoy.

Tickets cost £8 in advance from here, or £12 on the door.  If you’re going in a group – perhaps with your bridesmaids – they are doing a fab offer a fourth free ticket when you buy three.  Full details on the website www.designervintagebridal.co.uk.

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A Devon wedding in a tiny windswept church

Charlie

I feel very lucky to be able to share today’s wedding with you all – the wedding took place at St Michael De Rupe Church on the top of Brentor in Devon.  Not only is this tiny, windswept church one of the highest and smallest in England but it’s also very close to my heart.

My granny grew up on a farm in Brentor village that sits beneath this ancient hill.  A large part of my family come from this part of Devon, I have ridden across Blackdown (the surrounding moors) throughout my childhood, and my great granny had her 90th birthday on Brentor.

So before I get carried away with my family history, this is a special place to me – so a big thank you to photographer Sarah Falugo of Green Photographic for letting me feature this wedding.

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