jam jars Archives - The Natural Wedding Company

Blog: jam jars

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

Crochet lace jam jar hangers to create soft twinkling lanterns

Charlie

I’m sure at some point someone will declare jam jars and their many uses at weddings “so last year” in fact, they probably already have. At any rate, I don’t care – there is something wonderfully simple and pleasing about a jam jar filled with flowers from your garden, or flickering as a lantern in the evening with a tealight – whether it’s at your wedding or in your home. Especially knowing that in a previous life it contained jam, honey, chutney or some other condiment.

Charlie

Our rustic country wedding – setting up the garden on morning of the wedding

Charlie

It has been so lovely to have our wedding featured on Love My Dress, but I know that some of my readers would like to see more detail, and there’s so many lovely photos it seems a shame not to share more of them.

Our wedding ceremony was due to start at 4.30pm, but we’d invited our guests to have afternoon tea in the garden from 3pm. This meant we had all morning to get ready, which for a wedding at home was all about everyone pitching in to help set up. So with less than an hour before people were due to start arriving this is what we were doing…

The tents were already up, but we had to get all the tables laid up. This is our lovely friend Kate, who along with her husband Tim set out all the crockery and place settings (among a long list of other things!)…

We hung lots of the jam jar lanterns we’d made from the tents, tying them on with twine…

Here’s Tim setting out more lanterns around the garden and hanging them from trees…

Charlie

Your help needed – where do I start with blogging about our wedding?

Charlie

1. Crafty DIY paper items
2. Collecting cow parsley
3. Sign painting
4. Jam jar lantern making

So I’m completely overwhelmed by the magnitude of trying to share photos and details of our wedding. I just don’t know where to start and decided the best option would be to ask where you think I should start.

Today we have finally seen the ‘official’ photographs taken by Mark Tattersall, which will obviously follow shortly (and are incredible!), but there were so many DIY projects, handmade elements, collecting of gorgeous treasures in the lead up to our wedding that I want to share those too.

I’ve included a selection of images here as examples (saving all my favourite bits for later).

5. Building an ice cream cone holder
6. Collecting old bits and pieces
7. Tiny flag making
8. Freshly washed vintage crockery

Charlie

Homemade jam jar lanterns – a ‘how to’

Charlie

We have spent the last few weekends making jam jar lanterns for our wedding. I have had friends and colleagues at work saving all their jars for us, Mr Rigg has been busy soaking off all the labels and together we have been attaching wire to make handles.

They are so simple to make, just time consuming! Especially attaching the wire. They’re not particularly beautiful, the wire is a bit twisted, but I love the handmade look of them, all that glass and silver wire, and the fantastic shapes and sizes of the jars.

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