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Blog: handmade wedding

Samantha

Emily and George’s intimate winter wedding with literature inspired DIY decor and festive seasonal flowers

Samantha

Intimate winter wedding with literature inspired decorations

Our last real wedding for 2014, beautifully put together by Samantha…

There is something so magical about this time of year isn’t there? I just love Christmas time and all the festivities that come with it, there is an air of excitement and everything seems to have a glow about it!

It was for just this reason that Emily and George the beautiful couple from today’s real wedding chose to have a winter wedding on the 28^th December: “We love the winter, and we really wanted to play to its strengths for our wedding. With long, dark evenings and intimate, cosy family gatherings, there was a lot to work with.”

We couldn’t agree more, their wedding is so romantic and elegant, with some wonderful inspiration for those couples planning a winter wedding without wanting a bit of tinsel in sight!

There’s a gorgeous bouquet featuring succulents and rosemary sprigs by Jay Archer Floral Designs from our directory, fabulous wedding shoes, and literature inspired DIY decor. Don’t take my word for it though, read on and enjoy a little light relief from all that last minute Christmas wrapping…

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

Bridget and Jeremy’s laidback Irish wedding with a vintage wedding dress, homegrown flowers and inspiring homemade decor

Charlie

Laidback Irish wedding

Today’s wedding has been a long time coming – a long time. I feel incredibly selfish that I haven’t shared it with you until this point, and only now with the help of the lovely Samantha who is going to be helping me by writing up some of our real weddings featured on the blog. Bride Bridget has since emigrated to Australia where she works as a printmaker and artist (check out her online shop) and has recently had her first baby.

Now over to my lovely colleague Samantha who is going to tell you all about this beautiful wedding…

Today we are bringing you the beautiful, effortlessly cool wedding of Bridget and Jeremy, brimming full of homegrown details! Not only is the bride incredibly creative (wait until you see the willow arch they got married under) but their friends and family are one talented bunch, who also brought their own personal touches throughout the whole day.

From the décor and ceremony to the food, photography and entertainment, everything was lovingly curated to make a day that was so incredibly personal you can feel the love jumping out the page! So without further ado I am going to hand you over to bride Bridget who provides the most lovely rendition of their big day.

“We wanted our wedding to be fun, country, vintagey, relaxed and just very us. Our main aim was we wanted everyone to have a brilliant time. It wasn’t only a party for our wedding it was also a bit of a leaving party because a month later we left Northern Ireland and moved to Australia, so for me to be able to see and celebrate with so many friends and family before I emigrated was lovely!”

Bridget and Jeremy got married in August 2011, in a field between Bridget’s granny’s house and her mum’s weekend home:

“My granny lives in a cottage near a town called Killinchy in Ireland. I think I’ve imagined my wedding to be there my whole life. When I was growing up we went to Killinchy every weekend. Even now, if we’re home in Ireland, we go down for Sunday dinner. It is a place of childhood magic and full of family history.

My mum got married there and my brother got married there. The ceremony was held on the grass in between the two cottages and then the celebrations went on in the most amazing Nordic tipis erected in the field beyond the cottages. The tipis looked so beautiful!”

Charlie

TNWC Real Brides: Lisa’s pretty floral bridesmaid gifts and edible Welsh cake wedding favours

Charlie

We’re back with 2014 TNWC Real Bride Lisa with her final pre-wedding post on the gifts she made for her bridesmaid and their yummy edible wedding favours.

Over to Lisa to tell you more…

Bridesmaids gifts

This idea was unashamedly stolen from another lovely wedding blog called Lucy Says I Do – handmade floral dressing gowns. This looked so perfect that I really wanted it for myself and so set about copying it.

I felt this was the perfect bridesmaid gift and so choose each fabric to suite each of the bridesmaid’s personalities. With the help of my mother we spent one Sunday at our sewing machines stitching the dress gowns up.

Charlie

TNWC Real Brides: Emma’s beautiful DIY wedding details from viola pops to gold animals on their tables

Charlie

Back in July our lovely TNWC Real Bride Emma got married in a beautiful wedding in the heart of Liverpool. Emma is back today to share some stunning pictures from their wedding day and the final few details they made. In Emma’s first blog post she said:

“It might seem a contradiction, a natural wedding in the city, but I’m determined we can made it happen!” And I’m sure you’ll agree from the snippets below that her and Shane most definitely made it happen.

Over to Emma…

Three months ago Shane and I said “I do!” in a city wedding in Liverpool with a natural, handmade flair. The day itself was full of smiles, laughter and love, and I’m looking forward to telling you all about it and sharing more of our photographs soon! But first, I want to share some of the personal and handmade elements we brought to our day.

Viola pops and meaningful keepsakes

It was important to us to make our wedding as personal as possible, not just in terms of reflecting who we are but letting our guests know what a significant part of the day – and our lives – they are.

Something that was quite a simple idea but very popular was the name tags I made using my granddad’s old typewriter. I was very close to my grandparents growing up and they’re sadly not with us anymore, so despite the fact it’s not in the best shape I was determined to use my granddad’s vintage Olympia and not just any old typewriter!

I bought some lovely cream luggage tags from a local craft store and typed the names directly onto them, but the black ink smudged terribly no matter what we tried. After a bit of trial and error, I found that the red typewriter ribbon smudged much less so I typed them in red ink instead!

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

Claire and James’ rustic Easter wedding in the Cotswolds with an egg hunt for the kids and lots of homemade details

Charlie

Rustic Easter wedding

What could be more appropriate for this week than a pretty homemade wedding held on Easter Sunday complete with spring flowers and an Easter egg hunt? I hope you agree, so I am delighted to be able to share Claire and James’ beautiful wedding which has all those elements.

Over to Claire…

“As we’d chosen to have a spring Easter wedding in a barn in the beautiful Cotswolds, we decided that a rustic Easter country themed wedding was for us – nice and relaxed with lots of fun.

April has always been a favourite month of ours and Easter a family favourite time growing up. As all our family and friends would have to travel, we decided to give them the opportunity to have a mini break to the Cotswolds and an Easter egg hunt sealed the deal!”

“I’m slightly embarrassed to admit this – but I started planning my wedding day (probably like others) years and years ago! James (Jim) and I had been together 12 years when we got married so he gave me plenty of time to start a scrapbook (no Pinterest back then!). Some of the thoughts I’d had never changed and made it to being part of the day – particularly the theme.”

“Our day was rustic country and Easter themed, bursting with creative touches, many of which we’d made ourselves. There were handmade clay birds, beautiful flowers, tree slices, bales of hay, milk churns, birch tealight holders, homemade chutney, chalkboard signposts, handmade stationery and printed linen, planted wellies, rusty letters, old French crates, Easter photo props, a lucky dip and chocolate eggs galore!”

“There is so much inspiration out there, but mostly we felt inspired to create a day that reflected our love for nature and relaxed natural style.”

Charlie

TNWC Real Brides: introducing Emma and Shane’s natural wedding in the city

Charlie

Recently we saw the final ‘just married’ post from last year’s TNWC Real Brides – I am so sad to say ‘goodbye’ to those lovely ladies who made such an inspiring contribution to the blog. But today is a wonderful day, because I get to introduce to you the first of this year’s TNWC Real Brides.

We have five brides-to-be who are going to be blogging about their upcoming weddings over the next few months, I have been privy to reading all about their plans already and can’t wait to get them sharing all their lovely ideas with you. This morning I’m going to hand you over to the first of our TNWC Real Brides – Emma – who has a rather sweet long distance love story, in fact very similar to my own (apart from it was me that moved thousands of miles away to Vancouver shortly after meeting my now husband).

I do hope you are looking forward to following this year’s TNWC Real Brides, so it’s over to Emma to tell us all about her plans for a natural wedding in the city…

Long Distance Love

It was on one of our first dates that Shane told me he was planning to emigrate to Canada. Our love story began as an office romance, flirting over cups of tea in the staff kitchen. It took me a while to realise that he actually liked me and it wasn’t until he moved in for a kiss at a cocktail bar one night that I was convinced!

We fell in love in the summer of 2010 ~ giddy, breathless, starry-eyed love ~ but at the end of the summer, just as he promised he would, he got on a plane and flew 5,000 miles away!

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