handmade wedding Archives - Page 6 of 12 - The Natural Wedding Company

Blog: handmade wedding

Izzy

A how to guide to make your own pretty linen and lace pocket wedding favours filled with dried petals from The Brides Table

Izzy

We are really getting spoilt at the moment with lovely guest posts from some of our recommended wedding suppliers, and today we have another DIY project to inspire all you crafty brides. If you are looking for wedding favour ideas to make, then Katy and Kath at The Brides Table have a great step-by-step guide to making these pretty petal pockets.

If you love the look of these petal pocket wedding favours but don’t feel crafty enough to have a go making them yourself, or if you already have a wedding ‘to do’ list as long as your arm, then visit The Brides Table website where you can buy them instead. They would also make beautiful bridesmaid gifts.

Over to Katy and Kath…

These petal pocket favours are filled with dried petals or lavender and not only do they smell divine, they look so pretty too!

You could ask your family and friends to save flowers from their gardens for you to use (roses work particularly well). Just before the petals drop, collect them on a tray and leave to dry in the sun or on a very low heat in your oven.

Izzy

DIY guide to creating painted clothes peg name cards for your homemade wedding from A Alicia Handmade

Izzy

Today’s guest blog post is another fab DIY guide, this time from the lovely Anna who is the designer behind A Alicia Handmade. She has put together this ‘how to’ guide for making peg name cards, and also has lots of advice on how to give them your own style!

Without further ado, it’s over to Anna…

Hi, I’m Anna and I’m a designer-maker and author of craft/interiors how-to book Make it Your Own. The idea behind the book was to encourage anyone trying the projects to explore and develop their own design style, to literally make the projects their own, and I think this principle couldn’t be more important in planning your wedding.

Whatever kind of day you’re planning – from a big do with loads of guests to a tiny ceremony followed by chips and champagne in a lovely old pub (mine was the latter option!) – it’s such a beautiful opportunity to explore who the two of you are.

Charlie

Designing and creating bespoke bridesmaids dresses with an English Country Garden theme from Lucy Says I Do

Charlie

I’m delighted that the incredibly creative Lucy from Lucy Says I Do, a recommended TNWC supplier who designs beautiful wedding stationery, will be joining us for a series of guest blog posts whilst I’m off on maternity leave. Lucy had a stunning wedding that was featured on Love My Dress and she booked wedding photographer Mark Tattersall after seeing his photos of our wedding.

Lucy created so many lovely things for her wedding, that I’m really excited to share some of them here with you – I just know you’re going to be inspired. Love Charlie x

Over to Lucy…

I knew I wanted to make dresses that suited the wedding, so my thoughts were: English Country Garden, summery, fun, and natural. In addition to this I wanted the girls to feel really special when wearing them, so they needed to be high quality, feminine, soft and elegant.

My sister (one of my lovely bridesmaids) and I designed the bridesmaids’ dresses together. We decided to design the print as an English country garden story. When developing the design I created an ‘English Country Garden’ inspiration board to help focus my ideas for the print. Here’s my print inspiration board:

Taking different natural elements of the English Country Garden idea we developed the print to include lots of detail including: flowers, fruits and insects. I loved the way the print developed, and the way that every time you looked at it you’d notice something different. Including the little bumblebees! We made sure we incorporated botanical elements such as the strawberry plant, but we balanced this with soft painterly effect flowers to make sure the print maintained a softness, like that of wild flowers.

Here’s a sample piece of the print, how many different elements can you spot?

Izzy

Make your own edible flower wedding favours from flowerpot muffins to floral marshmallows and petal studded chocolates

Izzy

Today we have a great post from Jan of Maddocks Farm Organics with some great tips on how to create your own wedding favours using edible flowers. There are some truly beautiful ideas that are sure to inspire you to create some fab homemade wedding favours.

Over to Jan to tell us how to create these beauties…

Whilst increasingly popular, wedding favours are yet another expense and can be very pricey if they are not to look cheap and tacky.

An easy way around this is to make your own. Not only do they look much nicer but they also add a personal touch and can be a fraction of the price of commercial alternatives. Here are a few suggestions which are all very straight forward to make so it is job that could be delegate to the future mother-in-law or chief bridesmaid!

Flowerpot Muffins

These are a sweet idea for a rustic themed garden wedding. I used a classic Mary Berry recipe (you can’t improve on Mary perfection!) but any good quality chocolate cake recipe will do or you could use a rich chocolate mousse if you prefer. The mini silicone flower pots are available from Lakeland and other online retailers.

The choice of edible flower is important if you want the ‘plants’ to hold well. Tagetes and Dianthus are particularly good for this but cornflowers also work if you add them at the last minute. We also used springs of rosemary to add to the foliage.

Floral Marshmallows

Marshmallows make a lovely wedding favour and running some edible flower petals through the mix ensures that they are as individual as your wedding.

Charlie

DIY bride Holly shares her top ten tips and advice for a handmade wedding

Charlie

You might remember that back in the late spring I featured Holly and Laurie’s beautiful picnic wedding that was full of creative handmade details, well today we’re lucky enough to have Holly back with us.

Holly’s sharing her top ten tips and advice for a DIY wedding and I’m sure that her advice will provide invaluable to any of you brides- and grooms-to-be who are in the stages of planning a handmade wedding.

Over to Holly…

1. Firstly (and probably most importantly) make sure you have a small army of friends and family who are willing and kind enough to help out and don’t be afraid to ask for help.

In his speech my husband Laurie described our friends as the ‘games makers’ of our wedding and they really were- we couldn’t have done it without them!

2. Make sure you have a willing fiancé.

Creating a handmade wedding isn’t a one person task, it will take up lots of your free time so make sure you work together. My husband Laurie helped me out so much with all the handmade elements of our wedding – he put up with me spending hours reading wedding blogs and chugging away at my sewing machine, he also spent a whole weekend printing out and tying up invitations and made dozens of gorgeous paper flowers.

3. Spend some time gathering inspiration before you start.

There are so many ideas out there that it can feel a little overwhelming sometimes. Spend some time gathering inspiration so you know the kind of wedding you want and you have an idea of how it will all tie together. Pinterest is such a useful tool and it is full of beautiful images and ideas.

There are also a few blogs I would recommend; The Natural Wedding Company for ideas and wonderful suppliers, Junkaholique for gorgeous vintage styling (and their wedding is one of the loveliest I’ve ever seen!), and Green Wedding Shoes for a dose of eco-friendly wedding loveliness from the USA.

Charlie

Would you like to be one of our next TNWC Real Brides? We’d love you to come and share your wedding plans with our readers!

Charlie

One of the best things I’ve done on the blog is to open it up to other real brides to share their wedding planning experiences – this year I’ve already had six fabulous girlies become my TNWC Real Brides. As we head towards the autumn and their wedding days, I am looking for some new TNWC Real Brides to start blogging around September 2013.

From this year’s experience I am looking for another group of brides-to-be who’d like to share their plans for a natural, eco-friendly, seasonal, vintage and homemade wedding.

Each of this year’s TNWC Real Brides had a personalised illustration created of them and their Mr-to-be with a decorative border reflecting their wedding plans – I’m hopeful that my sister Izzy Burton who designed these will be up for doing them for my next TNWC Real Brides too!

To get an idea of what it might like to blog as a TNWC Real Bride take a look at the blog posts from our six current brides-to-be…

Charlie

TNWC Real Brides: Nik’s been busy on the farm doing DIY projects with only a few weeks until her wedding day

Charlie

Just like TNWC Real Bride Emma last week, Nik has only a few weeks to go until her wedding. Her and Mr-to-be Chris have been busy over the past few months with lots of DIY projects for their coastal farm wedding in Wales, and nothing has changed for this creative duo in these final few weeks before their big day.

Today Nik’s got a fab round-up of what they’ve been up to recently, including a lovely reveal of their beautifully restored VW Beetle, making a wedding swing, and some ‘before’ pictures of the barn that will host their wedding reception.

Over to Nik…

The farm is abuzz with life at the moment – not only have the flowers and trees begun to burst forth with summer colour to brighten the place up, but we too are frantically whizzing around doing odd jobs, trimming and pruning, clearing and tidying and generally making preparations for our wedding day on the 11th July.

There’s been so much going on it’s impossible for me to pick just one topic to write about this month, so I thought I’d share a few of the projects we’ve been getting on with.

Reg Returns!

One of the most exciting parts of our wedding day is the fact that Reginald, our vintage VW Beetle, gets to act as wedding car.

Chris has owned him for over 10 years (longer than he’s known me!). One of my earliest memories of Chris is seeing him get out of Reg in a car park and thinking ‘ooh, nice car…hang on… nice owner!’ Unfortunately, when we first got engaged, Reg was rather looking his age after a few years in a damp garage and was in desperate need of a Gok Wan style makeover.

We sent him off to the paint shop for some TLC and he has come back looking pretty fabulous indeed!

I’m so looking forward to cruising down the winding lanes towards the sea after our ceremony, with tin cans rattling behind us and our ‘Just Married’ sign in the window!

Charlie

TNWC Real Brides: Emma’s been making pretty labels for her wildflower seed wedding favours

Charlie

It’s so nice to be back today with another TNWC Real Bride instalment from the lovely Emma. She has less than three weeks to go until her wedding! I’m so excited for her. If you’re new to the feature, you can read all of Emma’s blog posts here and this fab guest post she wrote all about bridal beauty.

Over to Emma…

With less than three weeks to go I am getting butterflies and bubbles of excitement. We have nearly completed the ;to do’ list and the DIY attempts have been continuing late into the evenings.

In the last few days I have been making pretty labels for our favours, which are wildflower seeds for butterflies and bees. I bought some little brown recycled envelopes last year, which have been nestled in the loft waiting to be decorated. For ages I wanted to make a lino cut to hand print each envelope, but time got away and I found a great alternative that is way less messy; some cute little oval labels from Avery, which are made from 100% recycled paper too.

There is free template software included online, which was very easy to use – I made my design in Photoshop then just copied and pasted into the template ready to print.

Chris is filling these little envelopes each with a tablespoon of wild flower seeds as I write this!

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: Myfanwy tells us about her embroidered napkins, personalised vintage hankies and knitted napkin rings

Charlie

The one thing all our TNWC Real Brides have in common is that they are all creating handmade or homemade weddings to some extent, whether it be designing wedding invitations, sowing wildflower seeds around their ceremony site, making bridesmaid gifts, or brewing up elderflower champagne.

One things for sure, of all our brides-to-be Myfawny is the one whipping up a sewing storm of beautiful items for her autumn wedding to Tom. Today she shares some of her many wedding related sewing projects – from embroidering motifs onto their napkins, to personalising vintage hankies – and I’m sure that you’ll find some inspiration here for your own wedding.

Over to Myfanwy…

Vintage Tablecloths

Over the winter we did a lot of our planing and preparations including a lot of collecting. This is something we have done ever since we set the wedding date and decided on the venue.

We are not white tablecloth people! Mainly because one of us will spill something on them before the big day! We did not want round tables covered in perfect white tablecloths, at some weddings it looks great, just not ours.

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