handmade wedding Archives - Page 7 of 12 - The Natural Wedding Company

Blog: handmade wedding

Izzy

Sarah and Sam’s old fashioned country village wedding with a pretty garden party reception on a shoestring

Izzy

Old fashioned country village wedding

I’m thrilled to be sharing another exclusive real wedding with you on the blog today – a gorgeous June wedding set amongst stunning North Yorkshire countryside. The bride Sarah, was one of the lovely girls who joined me for my TNWC 5th Birthday Party last April, so it’s especially lovely to share her wedding after hearing about their plans last spring.

For anyone planning a wedding on a ‘shoestring’ then this wedding is for you – as Sarah mentions later on, they took ideas they saw and worked out how they make it themselves. It’s a real DIY wedding on a budget, but a totally beautiful one.

Over to Sarah to tell you all about her beautiful wedding to Sam…

Sarah and her husband Sam chose the 23rd June 2012 to get married, “because it was the Saturday closest to the midsummer solstice and there’s an old English tradition of weddings on that day. We wanted an old-fashioned country wedding with an informal feel, and we tried to make everything homemade if it possibly could be.”

“The week before the wedding was a crazy whirl of preparations because it was such a DIY affair. Luckily we had a fantastic team of family, friends and neighbours who worked tirelessly to finish preparing the food and decorations.”

Charlie

TNWC Real Brides: Nik shares details of her hot chocolate wedding favours and thank you gifts

Charlie

Opening up the blog to other real brides-to-be has been one of the best decisions I’ve made. I hope you are enjoying and benefiting from the experiences, ideas and handmade projects they have been sharing here. I’m so pleased with the outcome of this new feature that I will be looking for new TNWC Real Brides to start blogging in the autumn – if you’re interested stay tuned as I’ll be posting details on the blog shortly.

We are joined today we have the lovely Nik who is planning a relaxed coastal farm wedding at her home in Wales. She’s sharing details of the fab hot chocolate wedding favours they’ve been making for their guests, and also some more personal thoughts on how she’s found planning a wedding alone a challenge.

I hope you enjoy it – over to Nik…

Arranging Favours and Thank You’s – Our Last Big Job!

With six weeks to go until the wedding, we’ve been turning our efforts to the tasks on our ‘to do’ list that are able to be done in advance. There seems to be so many things that have to wait until the week/night before the wedding, and it kind of felt as though we’d hit a bit of a ‘lull’ in the preparations, until I remembered that we hadn’t really started on one of the most important tasks – favours and gifts for our guests! Whoops.

Heart-Warming Hot Chocolate Favours

From the word go, we wanted our favours to be something practical that would be used on the day of the wedding and that could be used again and again afterwards.

After much deliberation, I had a bit of a lightbulb moment and we decided that we would make hot chocolate stirring spoons for each of our guests, complete with a DIY hand-illustrated mug to commemorate the day (inspired by the work of illustrator OhNoRachio!, whose work I covet and purchase often!).

To add a little nod to the country we now call home, we arranged for Folksy seller Rescue & Revive to handstamp vintage teaspoons with the words ‘Llwy Garu’ –Welsh for lovespoon! Lovespoons are an old Welsh tradition, although they are typically carved out of wood.

Izzy

Holly and Laurie’s English picnic wedding in Shropshire with country garden flowers and handmade details

Izzy

English picnic wedding

I have got some truly lovely exclusive real weddings coming up for you on the blog, so I do hope you’ll check back over the coming weeks to soak up all the wonderful inspiration these brides and grooms have to share.

Today’s real wedding is beautiful. I feel like I’ve got to know bride Holly over the past year or so as she emailed me a couple of times in the lead up to her wedding – not only was she inspired by my own wedding stationery, but she also won her wedding photography via a competition that I’d promoted on the blog!

Holly and Laurie got married in Shropshire on the 15th of September 2012 with a wedding ceremony held at Ludlow Castle, and followed up by a picnic wedding reception at Henley Farmhouse on the Acton Scott Estate.

Over to Holly to tell us all about their wonderful day…

“We both just wanted a really relaxed wedding where all our guests could just have fun. We wanted a day that was personal to us – we didn’t have a huge budget so we knew from the start that we would probably be doing lots of the work ourselves – with the help of our friends and family.”

“We actually found searching for a venue one of the most stressful parts of planning, we were looking for a blank canvas without lists of suppliers we had to use and we didn’t have lots of money to spend so we struggled to find somewhere. I grew up in Shropshire and loved the idea of a Shropshire country wedding.”

Charlie

TNWC Real Brides: Emma’s latest crafting projects and and worries about the small things on their wedding ‘to do’ list

Charlie

So we had a little break last week from our TNWC Real Brides series – the first of our real brides, Caroline, got married on May 18th in a beautiful farm wedding (you can see a gorgeous picture of Caroline and Gareth on their wedding day here on Facebook) and I can’t wait to hear all about it.

Today we have Emma back with us, and she only has 8 weeks to go until her big day in Cornwall. These weddings are all coming so quickly! She has a couple of gorgeous craft projects to share with you all today – a pretty decorated bottles for table flowers, a homemade blackboard seating plan, and the sweetest aisle liners I’ve seen.

Over to Emma to tell you what they’ve been up to…

All The Small Things (seem to bring the biggest headache)

Up until a week ago I was feeling calm, organised and under control with the planning going swimmingly. Then suddenly with less than 8 weeks to go (EXCITED!) I started to get a bit worrisome. All the big things have been well and truly ticked off the list but the little things seem like they have started breed!

I suspect this happens to every bride and the point at which where ‘bridezilla’ may start to rear her ugly head, I can feel it bubbling beneath the surface now… I think the main problem is worrying that we will forget something! Like having enough tables for the caterer to put food on, sorting out music for the ceremony and how we are going to play it outside in the amphitheatre.

I have been worrying about things that we had slightly overlooked; like what we can feed our vegan guests when we are having a hog roast and cream tea (slight fail). The only oven on site is an outdoor pizza oven…hmmm, still to be solved.

Charlie

TNWC Real Brides: Caroline’s final guest post with just two sleeps until her handmade, eco-friendly farm wedding

Charlie

This is a pretty special post today – in just two days my first ever TNWC Real Bride will be getting hitched! The lovely Caroline will be getting married to her Mr-to-be Gareth this coming Saturday in Nottinghamshire. I love this weekend and time of year, it’s the same weekend two years ago that me and my Mr got married, and despite the recent rain the countryside is looking stunning.

Caroline started sharing her wedding journey with us back in February, and now three months later her big day has almost arrived. She has one last post to share with us all, and I’m delighted to hear that she’s already keen to come back and tell us all about the wedding in a couple of weeks.

For everyone who’s followed along with Caroline’s plans for a laid back, eco-friendly farm wedding, I hope you enjoy this last instalment, and if you have a moment to leave her some well wishes that would be lovely. Over to Caroline…

Wow- this is it – 2 more sleeps to go until the big day! I honestly can’t quite believe that in 2 days time I’ll be waking up on the morning of my wedding day! (It’s 5.30am as I’m writing this – have pretty much given up on sleeping beyond 5am this week – way too excited!)

I’ve managed to wangle the whole week off work, thanks to friends and family pitching in and taking care of REloved for me, so we’re properly able to enjoy this last week of getting everything ready. Gareth and I have soooooo many lists all over the house, that get a bit shorter, then a bit longer, then a bit shorter again, and now the only things left are the fun bits – the final touches, and I’m loving it!

300 Metres of Fairy Lights

We’ve decided to leave a lot of the barn decorating until Friday, after a torrential downpour last Thursday left rather a lot of puddles all over the floor (eeek!) but thank goodness, it seems that ‘normal’ rain showers are ok, as its pretty much rained every day since on and off and other than a couple of drips its all ok!

We have however been busy collecting small hay bales from a local farmer and making sofas in the barn, and a couple of nights ago Gareth asked me to go out to help him move a few of them and when I walked into the barn, he’d only gone and strung up 300 metres of fairy lights, so instead of an old cow shed, for the first time I walked into a wedding venue and it pretty much took my breath away.

Charlie

TNWC Real Brides: Myfanwy and Tom’s handmade mini milk jug wedding favours and woollen heart place names

Charlie

Our lovely TNWC Real Brides are really planning some most beautiful things for their weddings, and today Myfanwy is no exception as she tells you about the stunning wedding favours they are making (wish I was a guest at this wedding!).

This week we just have the one TNWC Real Bride post but will be back next week to hear from Caroline who is into the final countdown to her wedding which is a week on Saturday! I can’t wait to hear what’s her and her Mr-to-be Gareth are up to in their last week.

Over to Myfawny to tell us about these gorgeous wedding favours her and Tom have been making…

Within a few days of being engaged we’d decided on our favours, Tom tells it differently, he says I told him about the favours… I’m sure he volunteered!

Tom is a potter and has been for nearly 10 years now, his style is very unique and exceptionally fine pottery for hand thrown work. His normal range is exquisite kitchen ware. When we opened our tea shop Tom decided to make a range of new jugs that we could use and sell in the shop, serving milk to customers in them.

These have proven extremely popular, I personally use them as mini vases for flowers. Everyone enjoys these jugs so much and Tom told me they were relatively easy make so we’ve decided these will be our favours!

Charlie

TNWC Real Brides: Myfawny has been busy designing their tea towel invitations and making confetti from old books

Charlie

For those of you keenly following the TNWC Real Brides feature you may have noticed we skipped a week last week. That’s my fault as I had become a bit disorganised following a rather nasty cold over Easter, and as such didn’t get ready in time – so apologies! I am delighted that we are back on schedule this week and have two lovely guest posts from Myfawny and Sarah.

I’ve also made it easier for you to track down all your favourite TNWC Real Brides stories, simply click on their names and you’ll be taken through to all their guest blog posts: Emma, Nik, Myfawny, Sarah, Caroline and Stephanie.

Today Myfawny is sharing details about the designs for their tea towel invitations (how great do they sound!) and making confetti – the picture of Arthur their dog helping them stamp out confetti from old books is not to be missed! Happy reading…

Easter has come and gone the season is upon us and our shop is now open six days a week until July and then seven days a week until we close five days before the wedding. The realisation that we may have bitten off more than we can chew is slowly sinking in but we are not to be defeated! So during the last month we have concentrated on invites and confetti.

Tea Towel Invitations

We wanted some unique invites – we had been lucky enough to win the TNWC competition for a personalised hand painted map of our day by the wonderful Pigeon & Quill. Alex really was a pleasure to work with and the map is truly fantastic and incorporates all the elements of our day.

Charlie

DIY project: how to make handmade recycled seeded paper flowers

Charlie

The Natural Wedding Company is lucky enough to be blessed with some fantastic small and independent businesses, who aren’t only making and selling beautiful things, but they’re also showing you how to do it too.

I’m delighted to welcome back to the blog Sharon Langsdale from TNWC business Razzle Dazzle Rose – she’s going to be showing you how to make recycled seeded paper flowers that are ideal for decorating wedding favours or invitations, and even transforming into alternative buttonholes.

Razzle Dazzle Rose sells a number of fantastic eco-friendly craft materials, specifically in my favourite brown craft card. A new addition to her shop are these paper flower kits – you can choose from recycled brown kraft paper flowers, cream vintage fleck flowers, or seeded paper flowers.

Once you have your kit, here’s how to make the flowers – over to Sharon who is using the cream vintage fleck flower kit…

Handmade Recycled Seeded Paper Flowers

Step 1 – Unpack your paper flower kit and you’ll see you have a number of die cut pieces of paper, just like these…

Charlie

TNWC Real Brides: Emma on the beginnings of their DIY wedding efforts

Charlie

I am so excited about my new TNWC Real Brides feature and I hope you are too! It’s been lovely finding out so much about other people’s weddings and being able to share all those details with you here. You can catch up on all the blog posts by clicking this link to the full TNWC Real Bride feature.

Today has her second blog post, and is going to tell us all about the start of their DIY elements to their wedding – starting with their invitations. She’s even done a how to guide on how she made some very cute cake flags! If you haven’t read Emma’s first blog post, you can find it here. Over to Emma…

This week we have reached the first of our planning milestones – we posted our invites! We both wanted personalised invitations and I love to draw so I thought I’d have a go myself. I drew the designs on watercolour paper, painted in a bit of colour and went over it in fine liner.

I photographed the paintings then added the text using Photoshop. We had them printed on recycled card at Monkey Puzzle Repro Art who are based at Mount Pleasant Eco Park. I couldn’t be more happy with the service, John was lovely and got our invites printed within 24 hours of me emailing him the artwork! The front of the invite features us in what I think I can pass off as ‘naïve cartoon style’, standing in front of the archway area we plan to have our ceremony in.

Charlie

Handmade wedding stationery from a TNWC bride-to-be printed onto ellie poo paper

Charlie

One of the nicest parts of running my own business is that I get the loveliest emails from brides-to-be and couples planning their wedding. Sometimes you even send me pictures of the sweet items you’ve been making, often inspired by things I made for my own wedding. Today one such bride-to-be has been kind enough to share her handmade wedding invitations – and the all important details on how she made them – that were inspired by my own handmade wedding stationery.

Becky was kind enough to detail down how she made each part of her wedding stationery and included some of the websites where she bought supplies from. Over to Becky to tell you about how she made her handmade wedding stationery…

The Invitations

Our wedding reception is taking place in a tipi in a field on our friends’ farm which is overlooked by the forest where Tom proposed, so we wanted the stationery to reflect this natural and beautiful setting that is so special to us.

I found a previous post on The Natural Wedding Company blog where someone had used card made out of elephant poo for their invites, which I loved the idea of, so I ordered some of the paper from The Green Stationery Company with matching envelopes.

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