festival wedding Archives - The Natural Wedding Company

Blog: festival wedding

Charlie

Poppy and Mark’s colourful meadow festival wedding with outdoor ceremony, hay bale seating and bridesmaids in yellow maxi skirts

Charlie

Poppy and Mark’s colourful meadow festival wedding in Wales is not only full of inspiration and pretty details, but it just oozes love and fun. It’s a beautiful example of a British summer wedding at it’s best, with hay bale seating, sunflower yellow bridesmaid dresses, and romantic meadow photos.

This wedding was captured by Michael and Andrea of Bohemian Weddings, one of our recommended wedding photographers. If you’re on the hunt for photographers for your 2017 wedding, you could win your wedding photography with Bohemian Weddings this month via our blog – full details here on how to enter.

Here’s what Poppy and Mark said about them…

“We met our wonderful photographers, Michael and Andrea of Bohemian Weddings, at a friend’s wedding the previous year (Lizzy and Graeme had found them by contacting The Natural Wedding Company after being let down last minute).

We wanted to capture the feel of the day rather than have hours of posed photographs, and as we’d seen them previously we knew they would be perfect. It felt like having friends take our photos rather than official photographers, and their friendliness and ease spread to all the guests throughout the day.”

Over to Poppy to tell us more about their colourful meadow festival wedding…

Charlie

Kim and John’s fun garden party wedding on the Isle of Wight with an outdoor ceremony and a Bride vs Groom game of rounders

Charlie

When it’s so cold out and the days are short, it’s difficult to remember what the heat of summer feels like. But today we are transporting you back to a long hot day in July for this week’s real wedding. Kim and John got married at Fernhill Meadow on the Isle of Wight on a beautifully warm day in a fun garden party wedding.

On 23rd July the lovely couple, who got together on the island, held a relaxed, informal wedding. The ceremony was written by them and conducted by a friend under a rustic wooden arch, there were games of rounders and beer pong to entertain their guests, and a pretty preloved wedding dress.

We chatted to bride Kim to find out more about their fun garden party wedding, which was captured by TNWC recommended photographer Betti Confetti Photography…

Charlie

Zoe and Alex’s rustic hippy outdoor wedding with a barefoot bride in a boho wedding dress

Charlie

Oh what a beauty of a wedding this is, with this effortlessly stylish barefoot bride in her boho two-piece wedding “dress” and the outdoor ceremony beneath an archway of weathered branches. I have literally spent hours attempting to whittle down the photos I received for Zoe and Alex’s stunning wedding, but I’m sure you’ll forgive me for not doing great at cutting them down, because they are pretty awesome.

A special thanks goes out to Alice at Forage and Blossom, one of our fab recommended suppliers and the florist for Zoe and Alex. All those gorgeous white, pale cream and green bouquets, flower crowns and arrangements – those are her work. Alice is also the one who helped get this beautiful wedding to grace our pages.

Put on some music and find somewhere to get comfy, because Zoe and Alex’s wedding deserves all the time you can give it to soak up a truly special celebration. If you are worrying about all the details you need to “have” to create the wedding of your dreams, I hope that Zoe and Alex will show you that you only need a few carefully selected elements and lots of laughter. Over to Zoe…

Samantha

Amy and Alex’s colourful, handmade outdoor wedding with a floral wedding dress and relaxed Buddhist tea ceremony

Samantha

Today’s gorgeous wedding has us beaming from ear to ear, it is a incredible explosion of colour, brimming with love, laughter and personal handmade touches. This wedding truly optimises the idea of doing ‘your wedding, your way’ throwing the ‘wedding rule book’ out the window and we just love it.

You will find no big white dress or matching suits here, think floral prints, an outdoor buddhist tea ceremony, a ‘bring a dish’ buffet, and an evening full of family entertainment and you will begin to get the picture.

Alex and Amy, July 2015

Alex and Amy, who met at university, were married on a gloriously sunny day back in July last year. They wanted to create ‘a relaxed day of fun for everyone’ and they most certainly did that.

Our day was about celebrating us as a couple, our two children, our family and friends. We are very fortunate to live in a beautiful valley which was the perfect venue for our wedding.

Samantha

Matt and Jo’s relaxed outdoor Cornish wedding with a barefoot bride in a vintage wedding dress and festival inspired decor

Samantha

Relaxed outdoor Cornish wedding with a barefoot bride

We are absolutely loving Matt and Jo’s laid-back homespun wedding that we are sharing with you today. We know warm summer days currently feel like a distant memory whilst it is so dull and grey outside and Christmas is but days away, but this beautiful outdoor celebration is most definitely going to bring a little sunshine to your day.

Married this summer in the forever charming Cornwall this wedding is the ultimate in rustic, relaxed style. For starters the bride went barefoot wearing a vintage dress, the groom sported shorts and the bridemaid’s showed us how to perfectly pull off white. And that is without even touching on all the incredible festival inspired decor and the amazing locally-sourced feast that was served to the guests.

The day was beautifully captured and shared with us by TNWC directory business, Sarah Brittain Edwards Photography.

Retorrick Mill outdoor wedding venue

Matt and Jo chose the beautiful Retorrick Mill in Cornwall as their wedding venue, a place close to their hearts.

”We used to live in Cornwall but moved back to Leicestershire when we had our children so we felt we had to get married in Cornwall as it was where it all began! We had stayed at Retorrick Mill the previous summer. We were camping and loved how laid back the venue was. The owner, Wilf, is equally as laid back and friendly.”

Samantha

Kerry and Nick’s festival farm wedding with a humanist ceremony, homemade wedding cake and a Citroen van bar

Samantha

Festival farm wedding

It’s a very exciting wedding we have to bring you today, with a bride that will need little introduction. It’s the fabulous, fun-filled, festival-themed family affair of TNWC Real Bride Kerry and her now husband Nick! We’ve shared in the planning and now we can revel in the gorgeousness that is their big day!

Kerry and Nick got married on 9th August this summer at TNWC Recommended Supplier Cowparsley Weddings at Roughmoor Farm, Somerset; which they described as an ‘amazing venue’ and we couldn’t agree more!

Now go grab a cup of tea (or a cider to get you into the spirit of things), take a break and enjoy the wonderful words shared by Kerry…

Charlie

TNWC Real Brides: Kerry shares the details of her many hen parties including a joint hen-stag do to Glastonbury Festival

Charlie

For our 2014 TNWC Real Brides we have just Kerry and Nick left to get married in August – I can barely believe it, this year has gone so fast! Kerry is sharing the details of what became a hen-a-thon with four hen parties (including a hen and stag do at Glastonbury Festival).

Over to Kerry to tell you more…

Nick and I originally said we weren’t going to have hen and stag do’s. The very idea of such an event is to “celebrate” your last night of freedom prior to becoming man and wife; however we’ve been together for 15 years and didn’t see the need, so we opted for Glastonbury Festival instead.

However, my bestmate and bridesmaid Raz had other ideas. She convinced me I needed something a bit more hen-like. So I gave her a date and a list of names and off she went, organising a surprise extravaganza! I was instructed to make my way to Covent Garden for lunch at Dishoom a fantastic Bombay café, which was followed by a Michael Jackson dance lesson at Pineapple Dance Studio.

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: Lisa has been getting her guests in the festival mood with quirky invitations

Charlie

Your ‘save the dates’ and wedding invitations are often the first thing that tells your guests what to expect from your wedding – I remember when we were making ours that I really wanted them to hint at what our wedding would be like to our family and friends.

TNWC Real Bride Lisa is sharing their quirky wedding invitations with hand drawn illustrations for their festival inspired wedding in Wales. I love how they look like a ticket – perfect!

Over to Lisa to tell you all about them…

Quirky invitations to get our guests into the festival mood

There is nothing nicer than receiving mail; it’s like a little journey back in time. I don’t mean all that junk mail that litters the mat but birthday cards, Christmas cards, good old fashioned letters and my absolute favourite, invitations. I remember getting my first birthday invitation when I was very young and have loved receiving them ever since.

So for me the invitations to our big day were important, they can really set the tone of your wedding. They can fit into the colour scheme; let the guest know if it’s an elegant, traditional affair or a more quirky, unusual celebration and can really get the excitement going.

Our save the dates were free printable designs from the company that we used for our invitations, we very simply printed them on some good quality card and made them into bookmarks. I then punched a hole at the top, threaded some pretty ribbon through and made a little tie – that was pretty much it. Very simple, very economical and I felt very effective. It was from here that I explored a bit more about the company Something Kinda Cute.

For the invitations, we did really wanted to push the boat out. In my original blog I wrote that I wanted to make my own invitations to give it a real personal touch, however when I saw these particular designs I fell in love with them and thought they fitted our theme perfectly.

Lauren

Build your own bespoke ‘Wedfest’ wedding festival celebration with Cariad Canvas and Wedding Tipi

Lauren

I love camping. There’s no better setting than the great outdoors to allow you time and space to unplug, live simply and take pleasure in the smallest of details. Writing today’s post reminded me why we chose tipis for our own wedding – the laid-back atmosphere they instantly create and the freedom to choose a location put them right at the top of our list.

These days, families and friends are so often spread out across the country and beyond, it’s no surprise that many couples want to make the most of having everyone in one place and turn their wedding into to a weekend long celebration.

If you’re considering this for your wedding but don’t know where to start, then we have good news for you. Fabulous TNWC business Cariad Canvas, who provide luxury canvas accommodation for guests, have teamed up with Wedding Tipi to create packages that offer couples their very ‘pop up’ wedding festival.

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