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Charlie

TNWC Real Brides: Lisa’s handmade napkins and bunting, vintage crockery collecting and other last minute wedding preparations

Charlie

For any of our regular readers you’ll probably have realised that our lovely TNWC Real Bride Lisa is now married, however she got so busy in the lead up to her wedding day that it’s only now post-wedding and post-honeymoon that she’s been able to fill us in on the final aspects of her wedding planning.

Over to Lisa to tell us more…

Vintage crockery, stamping, bunting, lots of napkins and trying to get ahead…

In the run up to our big day, we realised that a lot of the things we wanted to do could only be done at the very last minute, such as our favours which were Welsh cakes, the flowers (which Tom’s mum was growing) the drinks for the drinks dispensers etc. We also found that we were still coming up with ideas even up until the eleventh hour! Below are some of things we did manage to do in advance (thankfully!!).

The hunt for vintage crockery

For our reception we had beautiful Kata tents, if you are not familiar with them they are a type of interlocking tipi and are absolutely beautiful inside. You could pretty much leave them as they are without doing very much decoration, I can imagine them to look stunning with very simple table settings and lighting. However I have always had my heart set on a very colourful, mismatch of styles filling the tables and all around.

Charlie

TNWC Real Brides: Miriam’s sharing her homemade wedding details of tartan bunting and a personalised save the date stamp

Charlie

The lovely Miriam and John are getting married this coming Saturday! So excited for them both and fingers-crossed this incredible British weather hangs around for them.

So over to Miriam for her last pre-wedding blog post…

DIY weddings stitch by stitch

One of my favourite things about The Natural Wedding Company blog is that there are so many beautiful homemade creations from other brides for your wedding and beyond. With our wedding looming very close I am starting to realise how much I will miss all the planning, researching and creating that has occupied most of my brain-space for the last 18 months. Having this creative outlet in my otherwise very science-oriented life has been wonderful, and I will surely miss it – but luckily I will have John and our new married home to carry on the next creative adventure!

Like many brides, physically creating aspects of our Big Day and researching novel ideas has hugely spurred on the crescendo of excitement towards the day, so I thought it would be good to share some of the homemade or personally designed aspects that are not too difficult to incorporate into a wedding to ensure that intimate feel for your guests.

Personal by design

There are some fantastic suppliers out there who will go the extra mile to create something handmade and personal for your wedding, without stretching yourself too far trying to do absolutely everything by yourself (as I am prone to attempting!). I was very lucky to find Noolibird via The Natural Wedding Company, who crafted this beautiful personalised stamp that we used to make our save-the-date cards, and might use somewhere in our home post-honeymoon decorating.

Charlie

TNWC Real Brides: Kerry’s sharing details of her brown card wedding festival programmes and hessian crafting

Charlie

It is so lovely to be joined by a new group of brides-to-be for the TNWC Real Brides series here on the blog. Last time we heard about Kerry and Nick’s initial plans for their festival inspired wedding, and today Kerry is back with more details on the crafting they’ve been up to.

Over to Kerry to dish the details…

Planning, Making and Gluing

So, it’s May, the last 5 months have been spent; planning, meeting, researching, making and gluing.

We spent hours deliberating over the invites (featured in my last blog post). We both had different ideas of what we wanted, so it was quite tricky to find a middle way. In the end we decided on a PDF printable from STH Blue on Etsy.

Niki customised one of her standard invites especially for ‘Kipstival the Wedding’ and we LOVED it, it’s so personal to us and unique. We liked the postcard RSVP idea, and have had lots of lovely responses back already.

Festival Wedding Programme

The next piece of stationery we created was the programs. We wanted to create something which would inform our guests of what’s happening next. A kind of playlist of the day, as it will be broken up into various sections around the farm. This introduced our first conundrum – what are our timings for the day?

We had to sit down, walk through it in our minds, and try and agree on both format and timings; we got there in the end, after a number of hours sat at the kitchen table and a few glasses of wine! Once that was sorted, we then decided on a front cover and I used old festival programs, which I’ve hoarded over the years, as inspiration for a ‘With thanks’ section on the back page.

I’d bought a pack of blank cards with natural brown envelopes from Papermania, we used the envelopes to send our invites, but had the left over cards, so I put these to good use, and had the programs printed on these. I also wanted to include a handful of confetti in the program, I’d seen a Pin on Pinterest that I liked, so I consulted The Natural Wedding Company directory and found The Confetti Farm.

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

TNWC Real Brides: Caroline tells us about making a wedding cake and getting help from family and friends

Charlie

The countdown for TNWC Real Bride Caroline has really begun – her wedding is less than a month away now so preparations are going at full tilt! Caroline, and her Mr-to-be Gareth, are planning a very homemade wedding on their farm in Nottinghamshire with a picnic lunch full of local produce. On top of it all, this month Caroline has been busy making a wedding cake for her friends wedding!

Over to Caroline to tell you what she’s been up to in the lead-up to her wedding…

Well the most exciting news this month is that the cows are out of the barns and in the fields!!!

The clean up job has officially begun! This is the bit where I gracefully bow out (I have sooooooo much crafting to do so not possibly time to get up to my elbows in cow poo!!) and leave the mucking out, power hosing and yard sweeping to the boys.

Charlie

A spring open day and photoshoot to celebrate the new cathedral size wedding yurt from Hooe’s Yurts

Charlie

The Easter weekend saw a fabulous open day hosted by Hooe’s Yurts in deepest, most beautiful Devon. They were celebrating the completion of their huge new 44ft yurt – a cathedral sized structure that can seat 120 wedding guests, or even linked to smaller yurts to create an even bigger space.

Charlie

Decorate your wedding with lace-edged and vintage fabric bunting with this fantastic discount from Devon Vintage China

Charlie

Devon Vintage China has a beautiful range of bunting – some made from vintage fabrics, others incorporating vintage doilies and some that are lined in English made cotton lace. To celebrate our 5th birthday, they are offering our readers an exclusive 10% discount on all bunting hire, which can be sent anywhere in the UK – a wonderful way to decorate your wedding venue.

They have two types of bunting – a colourful and patterned range made from a mixture of vintage and new fabrics, and a white/ivory range made from vintage cotton fabrics, some with vintage doily inserts and edged with English made cotton lace. Bunting is a wonderful way to bring cheer to your wedding venue and really ties everything together.

Charlie

Win a beautiful string of silk bunting made from vintage sarees from Ganesha

Charlie

*This competition is now closed*

I’m so jealous I can’t enter this competition today – one lucky reader is going to win this beautiful string of silk bunting made from vintage sarees. This is just one of many lovely products that you can find at Ganesha, an online shop full of handmade accessories and gifts, including vintage and upcycled, all fairly produced from Indian, Bangladesh and beyond!

Each string of bunting is 5 metres long and has about 16 flags that are 23 x 21cm. Each one is unique and a riot of stunning colours, perfect for decorating your wedding venue or tent with in true vintage eco-chic style! The picture above only shows part of one string, and I think they are a beautiful alternative to the traditional floral bunting if you are after something a bit different.

Charlie

A sweet, homemade animated ‘save the date’ and how you can make your own

Charlie

I have something very special, fun and inspiring to share with you all this afternoon – a homemade animated ‘save the date’! This was sent to me by the lovely Beth who is getting married to Ben this coming July 2012. She described it as a country-wedding inspired, budget ‘save the date’ – why don’t you watch it for yourself…

How fun is that? And it’s accompanied by a song (Crystal Fighters Plage) that seems to perfectly fit the style, and it’s short but sweet – I would be pretty excited if I was a wedding guest and this landed in my inbox. So after watching it half a dozen times I decide to ask Beth how they created it, as I was pretty sure some of your lovely readers might want to create something like it yourself.

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).

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