Blog: cow parsley
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Beth and Robert’s spring Devon farm wedding with foraged wildflowers, yurts and a feast of local food

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Bride and groom in spring meadow // Jennie Hill Photography // The Natural Wedding Company

Beth and Robert’s spring Devon farm wedding is overflowing with many of my wedding “favourites”. Favourites such as…getting married in May, spring wildflowers, and yurts. Captured by our friend Jennie Hill Photography, this down-to-earth wedding is a real family affair, with a sprinkling of handmade details and pretty touches.

Although the wedding was held at the family farm in Devon, it is dotted with elements that share the couples love of Scotland. As we sit here in March with hints of warmer weather and spring flowers starting to bloom, I’m certain this spring Devon farm wedding is going to get you dreaming of spring.

Devon farm wedding with yurts // Jennie Hill Photography // The Natural Wedding Company

English spring wildflower bouquet // Jennie Hill Photography // The Natural Wedding Company

Forget-me-nots for a spring Devon farm wedding // Jennie Hill Photography // The Natural Wedding Company

Country bride and groom in vintage car // Jennie Hill Photography // The Natural Wedding Company

Spring Devon farm wedding with wildflower bouquet // Jennie Hill Photography // The Natural Wedding Company

A spring wildflower bouquet with bluebells and forget-me-nots // Jennie Hill Photography // The Natural Wedding Company

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A Day in the Life of Bride and Bloom: crafting wedding flowers from Worcestershire fields to beautiful seasonal bouquets

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A Day in the Life of Bride and Bloom: crafting wedding flowers from Worcestershire fields to beautiful seasonal bouquets // Bride and Bloom // Paper Angel Photography // The Natural Wedding Company

I am always so delighted when our flower farmers get in touch to say they have a set of A Day in the Life photos to share with our readers. Bride and Bloom are one of our newest additions to our eco wedding directory, and whilst I do get to visit a number of our recommended suppliers, it’s always nice to find out more in these kind of features.

You can see ‘behind the scenes’ with a number of our other flower farmers by visiting our A Day in the Life archives, or for similar posts check out our Meet the Maker series. What I particularly love about today’s feature, is that fellow mum and flower farmer Hannah, had her little girl along to help her pick flowers for the wedding.

What’s also special about this feature, is that at the end of the post we’ve shared photos from the wedding that Hannah of Bride and Bloom was working on in her A Day in the Life. Over to Hannah to share her day in the life at Bride and Bloom…

Armful of dahlias // Bride and Bloom // Paper Angel Photography // The Natural Wedding Company

A Day in the Life of Bride and Bloom: crafting wedding flowers from Worcestershire fields to beautiful seasonal bouquets // Bride and Bloom // Paper Angel Photography // The Natural Wedding Company

A Day in the Life of Bride and Bloom: crafting wedding flowers from Worcestershire fields to beautiful seasonal bouquets // Bride and Bloom // Paper Angel Photography // The Natural Wedding Company

A Day in the Life of Bride and Bloom: crafting wedding flowers from Worcestershire fields to beautiful seasonal bouquets // Bride and Bloom // Paper Angel Photography // The Natural Wedding Company

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Hanna and Guy’s storybook inspired spring garden wedding with a marching band and humanist blessing beneath a tree

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Hanna and Guy's storybook inspired spring garden wedding with a marching band and humanist blessing beneath a tree // Images for Life // The Natural Wedding Company

Today’s wedding is just making me long for those lush spring days when the English countryside is covered in cow parsley and buttercups. Hanna and Guy were inspired by childhood storybook’s and fairytales, with fun details dotted throughout their wedding, which took place in a beautiful family garden.

We adore this kind of wedding, with its down-to-earth feel, involvement by family and friends, and those magical moments – in this case a marching band leading the bride and groom through a field of cow parsley (see below). This wedding was beautifully captured by our friend Joanna Ornowska of Images for Life, one of our TNWC Recommended Suppliers. Over to Hanna to tell you more about her whimsical storybook garden wedding…

Wedding procession with a marching band through a meadow // Images for Life // The Natural Wedding Company

Rustic wedding picnic // Images for Life // The Natural Wedding Company

Vintage wedding marquee in a meadow // Images for Life // The Natural Wedding Company

Fairytale inspired wedding // Images for Life // The Natural Wedding Company

Back garden wedding // Images for Life // The Natural Wedding Company

Hanna and Guy's storybook inspired spring garden wedding with a marching band and humanist blessing beneath a tree // Images for Life // The Natural Wedding Company

A back garden wedding inspired by childhood stories

I liked the idea of having a wedding that was as tailored to our personalities and values as possible, and so the idea of using a venue that was licensed for civil ceremonies and had already hosted countless big days was immediately dismissed. Instead, we decided to have a humanist blessing in Guy’s mum’s glorious two-acre back garden, which is somewhat incongruously hidden away behind a suburban bungalow in rural Cambridgeshire.

We’re both passionate about traditional children’s stories and so we chose to follow a loose ‘storybook’ theme, transforming the garden into a magical fairytale land that we jokingly called ‘Ermine Island’.

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What a truly seasonal British Valentine’s bouquet looks like – hellebores, daffodils, primroses, snowdrops, violets and more

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Seasonal British Valentine's bouquet - hellebores, daffodils, primroses, snowdrops, violets // Flowers from Forage For // The Natural Wedding Company

I love roses, but garden grown and in season, not on Valentine’s Day. But what does a seasonal British Valentine’s bouquet look like? We asked Anne-Marie from Forage For to make us a Valentine’s floral creation – she is quite renown for her stunning floral designs.

So from one corner of Suffolk in a walled garden, this is what was seasonal this year – and it’s worth noting that this has been a particularly unusual year, with unseasonable weather resulting in quite an array of flowers.

The above floral heart features bellis daisies, witch hazel, primroses, hellebores, snowdrops, heather, daffodils, violets, violas, scabious, muscari, blossom and cow parsley (yes really). This crazy unusual weather means that Anne-Marie still has one cow parsley plant that’s hung on all winter and is still flowering. Incredible.

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Pre-Raphaelite and Flower Fairy inspired loose and natural wedding bouquets and seasonal flower crowns

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Cornflower and fern flower crown // Flowers by Catkin // The Natural Wedding Company

Pre-Raphaelite and Flower Fairy inspired loose and natural wedding bouquets

What a treat we have today, featuring an array of beautiful floral wedding ideas inspired by dreamy pre-Raphaelite paintings and a sprinkle of fairy magic from Cicely Mary Barker’s ever-loved Flower Fairies.

Shot against the evocative backdrop of Doddington Hall, an Elizabethan manor house in Lincolnshire, the floral designs were created by our friend Rachel at Catkin, using all homegrown blooms from the walled garden she tends to on site.

Peach coloured hydrandgea and fern flower crown // Flowers by Catkin // The Natural Wedding Company

English meadow bouquet // Flowers by Catkin // The Natural Wedding Company

Moss and purple hydrangea flower crown // Flowers by Catkin // The Natural Wedding Company

Wild bridal bouquet of ox-eye daisies and cow parsley // Flowers by Catkin // The Natural Wedding Company

Pre-Raphaelite inspired wedding flowers // Flowers by Catkin // The Natural Wedding Company

Rachel is a long-standing member of the British Flowers community, so putting English grown, seasonal flowers at centre stage was vital.

The flowers she chose – garden roses, scabious, cornflowers, nigella, sweet peas, pinks, astilbe, larkspur, ammi and daisies – all contributed to the ethereal look Rachel was after, imbuing her floral creations with natural movement and texture.

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A May wedding bouquet of apple blossom, cow parsley and other exquisite English wildflowers and spring flowers

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A May wedding bouquet of apple blossom, cow parsley and other exquisite English wildflowers and spring flowers // Common Farm Flowers // The Natural Wedding Company

May wedding bouquet of apple blossom and cow parsley

If you’ve been reading this blog long enough you’ll know by now that I’m an absolute sucker for a May wedding. In fact, just the month of May in general. I love it for so many reasons – it’s my birthday month, it’s the month we got married, it’s the month of bluebells, cow parsley, hawthorn blossom, and so much more. So I am always excited when this month arrives to see what creations my fabulous flower farmer and florist friends create for May weddings.

This bridal bouquet from Common Farm Flowers caught my attention immediately at the mention of May bouquet with apple blossom – really, what could be lovelier?

A May wedding bouquet of apple blossom, cow parsley and other exquisite English wildflowers and spring flowers // Common Farm Flowers // The Natural Wedding Company

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Heavenly midsummer photoshoot in a field of cow parsley with pink rose flower crowns

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Cow parsley field

Today’s blog feature is just so pretty and I’m delighted to be able to share this series of photos from photographer Svetlana Batura (who you may recently remember from this gorgeous Lithuanian family farm wedding).  I spied them on her blog and asked if I might share them, as I know there is a good following amongst you who love cow parsley as much as I do.

These images take me back to an imagined childhood and provide some nice inspiration for bridesmaids for a relaxed wedding – long skirts, pretty blouses, flowers in their hair and a bouquet of cow parsley.  Bliss.  Enjoy…

Cow parsley bouquet

Rose flower crown

Bridesmaid cow parsley inspiration

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Our rustic country wedding – the ceremony

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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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Cake love: an English country flowers wedding cake

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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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Our rustic country wedding – a church full of cow parsley

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As voted for by you, I am moving onto the flowers in the church before continuing with our wedding ceremony.  I’m excited to share this, because I just loved how the church looked, it was more than I could have dreamed of and we did it ourselves.

If this is your first visit to the blog you can catch up on all the details so far from our wedding here.


Mark Tattersall Photography

I’ve decided to show you photos of how the church looked and then go back to how we did after.  That way I get to show off all the pretty pictures first.  At the entrance to the church we filled two old metal milk churns with cow parsley and grasses – quite a wind picked up and I love how it looked blowing in the breeze.


Mark Tattersall Photography

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