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Charlie

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!

Charlie

Our rustic country wedding – across a field of buttercups and down the church path

Charlie

It feels like a while since I posted the last installment of our wedding, and I feel rather ashamed that I’m taking so long and dragging it out – you all must be bored of hearing about it by now. If readers, you’d like it shorter and snappier, please tell me.

One of the loveliest parts of our wedding, is that my parents house (where we had afternoon tea and the reception would be held) is at the end of the church path. This meant, everyone could walk, myself included – no fancy vintage cars frothy with ribbons or stretch limos for me.

Thankfully the weather had been dry the week before our wedding, so my dad had mown a path from the back of their garden across the corner of the field and to the church path.

Charlie

Vintage silk saree bunting

Charlie

I came across this stunning silk bunting made from vintage sarees on one of the businesses listed on the directory. Ganesha is a fair trade shop that sells gorgeous gifts, accessories and bits for your house – but this bunting really stood out.

I’m beginning to feel like I’m a bit bunting-ed out, the stuff is all over the wedding world, you feel like you won’t ever see an original piece of bunting and that it’s only ever floral or Cath Kidston-inspired. Then you stumble across bunting like this, which is not only made from vintage silk, but it’s also recycling an unloved product, and on top of this each string is unique.

Lovely at a wedding, but also perfect for a hanging in your bedroom. Yey for interesting and different bunting!

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…

Charlie

Do it yourself: rustic handmade wedding stationery ~ part 1

Charlie

I’ve decided to split the ‘do it yourself’ for our wedding stationery into four parts as there seemed too much to share in just one post, and I didn’t want you all nodding off. So without further ado, here’s Part 1.

First off, you should know I did all of this in Microsoft Word. Perhaps insane, as Word is not meant for graphic design, but it’s what I have. I don’t have any fancy software packages, so I had to do the best that I could with what I had. Yes, it undoubtedly caused headaches and extra time faffing about, but I got where I wanted in the end and I’m proud of my effort.

The Invitation

Inspiration

For me, our invitation needed to reflect what our wedding was going to be about. I wanted people to get excited (hopefully!) and have a sense of what kind of wedding they were going to.

I went through various different ideas, including sewing mini bunting onto each card, which I decided might kill me off and wasn’t a true reflection of our wedding day. Here are the some of the ideas I was inspired by…

From left to right starting at the top: found Once Wed; Perch Papiers; Junkaholique; Ruffled; unknown; found Snippet & Ink; unknown; Heather Ross; Ruffled; found Twig & Thistle

Charlie

Our wedding: handmade rustic wedding stationery with red and white string and luggage tags

Charlie

Like our ‘save the date’ cards, we also made all our wedding stationery. There was an invitation, a booklet of wedding details, a RSVP postcard, and a gift envelope. Everything was tied up together with red and white string with a tiny brown luggage tag onto which I hand-stamped our RSVP date.

I’m one of those people (I hope there are others out there!) who knows in my mind what I want something to look like, but don’t always know how to translate that into reality. So although here you can see lovely photos of the finished invitation set, it took a lot of attempts to get them ‘right’.

All these beautiful photos are taken by the fab man who snapped our wedding photos – Mark Tattersall.

Full details on how we made them to follow shortly! And would love to know your thoughts – anyone else as much a fan of brown card as I am?

Check back tomorrow for Part 1 of the ‘do it yourself’ series!

Images: Mark Tattersall Photography

Charlie

Pretty Vintage crockery and accessories perfect for an understated rustic country wedding

Charlie

I’m so excited to share these beautiful, elegant and understated vintage pieces from Pretty Vintage. As well as a gorgeous selection of earlier vintage crockery (think 1900’s – 1940’s) Lucy also hires out picnic blankets, deck chairs, lawn games and tin baths. I’m in heaven!

Pretty Vintage has just joined the directory and I am so eager to share with you some of the pretty items you can hire. I got rather carried away looking through the gallery – but just feast your eyes on these…

Dainty teacups and saucers.

Tin baths and glass vases.

Embroidered tablecloths.

Vintage croquet set.

Earthenware pots and vases.

Deck chairs, bunting and picnic blankets.

Pretty Vintage is based in Norwich and can deliver within a 60 mile radius. Lucy is happy to deliver anywhere in mainland UK just email her at contact@prettyvintage.co.uk to discuss what you’re after.

Charlie

Fantastic offer on ‘Save the Date’ cards and wedding stationery from Big Tree Stationery

Charlie

Big Tree Stationery, one of the eco-conscious wedding stationery companies listed on the directory, is having a fantastic sale on ‘Save the Date’ cards and wedding invitations.

For a limited time only you can get 10% off these products, so why not check out some of their fab designs like these country fete bunting inspired invites…

Or these letterpress designs that come in a range of funky colours…

Charlie

My winter woodland hen party

Charlie

I can’t believe that my hen party was nearly two weeks ago now – where does the time go! It was organised by two friends of mine, with a lovely lunch and afternoon tea, but the main part was a gorgeous woodland walk before having hot chocolate with marshmallows in a bell tent deep in the wood. It was perfect.

A big thank you to May and Jane for organising it, and to my friends Maria, Sophia, Kate and my mom and sister Izzy for coming to share the afternoon with me. It was lovely knowing nothing about what was planned, and a really special way to celebrate getting married.