blackboard Archives - The Natural Wedding Company

Blog: blackboard

Charlie

Romantic rainy Cornish wedding shoot with rustic and vintage styling in the grounds of a cutting garden

Charlie

I have literally poured over this shoot for hours in a bid to narrow down the beautiful images – there are just too many that I wanted to share. This romantic rainy Cornish wedding shoot features a real couple, a vintage bike, spring florals, and a stunningly decorated ceremony arch.

More and more I’m seeing inspiration shoots that use real couples, and I think it is so refreshing. Just like the fairytale woodland shoot we recently featured, that also featured a real-life couple, the images today just ooze with love and genuine warmth and fun. That’s what I want to see from an inspirational wedding shoot. I want to be inspired by that authenticity against a backdrop of gorgeous and interesting props and styling. I have a feeling that’s what you would like to see as well.

Having spent many of many childhood holidays in Devon and Cornwall, this shoot captures everything I associate with this magical area on a wet rainy day – the damp vibrant moss, the moody greys, and splashes of colour, a palette taken straight from the towering hedgerows of these counties.

So it’s with a huge thank you to the lovely Gemma from Box and Cox Vintage Hire down in Cornwall that I get to share all this loveliness with you. She styled the shoot and showcased some of her collection of vintage hire items, including their new wooden arch which was so spectacularly dressed. The location was The Cornish Cutting Garden and they also created the stunning florals. Over to Gemma to tell you more…

Charlie

TNWC Real Brides: Fern shares some of her handmade wedding details from napkins to paper garlands

Charlie

Real handmade wedding details

I am terribly behind for various reasons with my lovely Real Bride posts, so here is a post from Fern that she wrote in the run up to her August wedding sharing some of her handmade details like paper garlands, napkins, and table centre making. The photo of her little boy helping to paint the blackboards is just too sweet!

>> View Fern and Dominic’s woodland bird and country flower inspired wedding here <<

Over to Fern…

It’s all in the details

It’s less than five weeks to go to the wedding and I’ve officially turned into a crazy person. Not in a angry, bite your head off way, (ok only once) but in a running around the garden at 5.00 in the morning looking at pieces of wood and measuring how long my garlands are, and trying to work out which of my plants will be flowering in August kind of way.

I have had my first wedding dress fitting and we have all had our hair trial at the salon. So it’s all getting very real now. We are still working on lots of projects for the wedding so here are some sneak peeks, without giving away too many secrets.

Paper decorations

After making the envelopes for my invitations I was left with lots of strips of paper where I had trimmed the papers down to size. I was determined not to throw them away but find some way to use them to make something for the wedding. Then I found this idea (above) on Pinterest for paper garlands. I borrowed a die cutting machine and got to work changing all my strips of paper into little hearts and I have stitched them together on the sewing machine.

For the larger pieces of paper I have made some paper rosettes which, although beautiful, have required some deep engineering to stay in place.

Handmade napkins

I really don’t want too much of a colour theme at my wedding. There is some pink sneaking in to places where it counts, but I really don’t want it to be too “in your face”. I was really inspired by an idea for patterned napkins on Show Me The Pretty and decided to make my own for my wedding.

Samantha

Claire and Andrew’s secluded woodland wedding with rustic chic handmade details, giants tipis and festoon lighting

Samantha

Secluded woodland wedding with giant tipis and festoon lighting

Set among the woods with a swoon-worthy sunset as a backdrop today’s beautiful rustic chic wedding of the gorgeous Claire and Andrew is pure wedding magic! Stunning creative homemade details, tipi tents from TNWC recommended supplier Papakata with festoon lighting and page boys in bow ties are just a few of the many things I am sure you are going to love about this wedding.

A summer wedding in Yorkshire

Claire and Andrew were wed in the summer in South Yorkshire on a gloriously sunny day. Their reception venue having never before been used for that purpose, required meticulously planning from scratch to create the beautiful day we are sharing with you today.

With bride Claire being a designer by profession, you can understand how it all was executed so perfectly and you are guaranteed to find some fantastic do-it-yourself inspiration along the way. So on that note it is over to the lovely lady herself, beautiful bride Claire with all the details from their big day.

Charlie

A fabulous 20% discount on all wedding stationery collections from Paper Themes including chalkboard inspired invites

Charlie

For any of you brides- and grooms-to-be who are on the hunt for your wedding stationery then today I have an exclusive offer to share with you from one of our recommended suppliers, Paper Themes.

Paper Themes are offering our readers a fabulous 20% discount on all their wedding stationery, which includes wedding invitations, evening invitations, order of service, thank you cards, RSVPs, and place cards.

I particularly like these chalkboard style invitations…

Mike from Paper Themes told me a little bit more about what they do and offer: “We offer a collection of traditional, modern and contemporary wedding invitations, all of which can be fully personalised to include the details of your big day. All our invitations are made to order in the UK to the highest standards using only the highest quality materials, delivered to your door in a beautiful presentation box complete with complimentary envelopes.”

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

Arrow shaped blackboard with recycled Sari hanging tie from Nkuku

Charlie

Occasionally I like to share some of my Favourite Finds on the blog, but I’m quite picky about what I think is worth sharing – I want to make sure it’s something I think you’ll really like. These chalk boards (they come in an arrow shape and a square) from Nkuku – one of my favourite online shops – are affordable, come from a company that has an ethical sourcing policy, and the hanging ties are made from recycled Sari’s.

Plus, they would be perfect for wedding signs if you don’t have the time nor inclination to make your own from wood and blackboard paint. I feel that buying items like this for your wedding is a worthwhile investment (if you are only after a few) because they have so many future uses around your home – blackboards are always useful whether it’s for writing down your shopping list or just leaving each other sweet messages.

Charlie

Our rustic country wedding – ice cream in the church yard

Charlie

It is terrible to toot your own trumpet, but this is one of the ideas that we had for our wedding that I was so pleased with. Nick and I love our food and love supporting local producers, so we always knew this was going to be woven throughout our wedding. There were moments we worried we might be overfeeding people!

We have a wonderful local farm to where we live in Cheshire that makes its own ice cream – we practically live off the stuff. Somehow we wanted to incorporate this into our wedding day, and the only place we could think of when people might need something to eat and break up any standing around was after the ceremony.

So we set about creating our own ice cream stall that would greet our family and friends as they exited the church. We commandeered a nice old trestle table from my parents, which meant we didn’t need to cover it.

Nick built a wooden cone holder by drilling holes into a plank of wood and attaching legs to it. Then I painted it with leftover paints (tester pots are great for small projects).

Charlie

Our rustic country wedding – afternoon tea in the garden before the ceremony ~ part 1

Charlie

For us, dreaming up an afternoon tea in my parent’s garden before our wedding ceremony was probably one of the best ideas we had. So often at weddings you have travelled for a couple of hours, often arriving at lunchtime or soon after, having not had a chance to eat anything and feeling a bit out of it from the car journey.

We wanted our guests to feel as relaxed as possible and well fed before getting down to the serious business of witnessing our marriage. For a start, on the invitation we told people they could arrive from 3pm, rather than saying ‘you must be here at…’ This meant there was a nice staggered arrival of family and friends, and hopefully it meant people weren’t under too much pressure to arrive by a specific time.

Charlie

Our rustic country wedding – setting up the garden on morning of the wedding

Charlie

It has been so lovely to have our wedding featured on Love My Dress, but I know that some of my readers would like to see more detail, and there’s so many lovely photos it seems a shame not to share more of them.

Our wedding ceremony was due to start at 4.30pm, but we’d invited our guests to have afternoon tea in the garden from 3pm. This meant we had all morning to get ready, which for a wedding at home was all about everyone pitching in to help set up. So with less than an hour before people were due to start arriving this is what we were doing…

The tents were already up, but we had to get all the tables laid up. This is our lovely friend Kate, who along with her husband Tim set out all the crockery and place settings (among a long list of other things!)…

We hung lots of the jam jar lanterns we’d made from the tents, tying them on with twine…

Here’s Tim setting out more lanterns around the garden and hanging them from trees…

Seasonal wedding ideas:

Spring

Summer

Autumn

Winter

DIY + Inspiration

Real Weddings

Suppliers + Products

Browse the blog:

Planning

Advertise

Get your eco wedding business listed on our directory