Blog: napkins
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TNWC Real Brides: Fern shares some of her handmade wedding details from napkins to paper garlands

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TNWC Real Brides: Fern shares some of her handmade wedding details from napkins to paper garlands

Real handmade wedding details

I am terribly behind for various reasons with my lovely Real Bride posts, so here is a post from Fern that she wrote in the run up to her August wedding sharing some of her handmade details like paper garlands, napkins, and table centre making. The photo of her little boy helping to paint the blackboards is just too sweet!

>> View Fern and Dominic’s woodland bird and country flower inspired wedding here <<

Over to Fern…

It’s all in the details

It’s less than five weeks to go to the wedding and I’ve officially turned into a crazy person. Not in a angry, bite your head off way, (ok only once) but in a running around the garden at 5.00 in the morning looking at pieces of wood and measuring how long my garlands are, and trying to work out which of my plants will be flowering in August kind of way.

I have had my first wedding dress fitting and we have all had our hair trial at the salon. So it’s all getting very real now. We are still working on lots of projects for the wedding so here are some sneak peeks, without giving away too many secrets.

Paper decorations

After making the envelopes for my invitations I was left with lots of strips of paper where I had trimmed the papers down to size. I was determined not to throw them away but find some way to use them to make something for the wedding. Then I found this idea (above) on Pinterest for paper garlands. I borrowed a die cutting machine and got to work changing all my strips of paper into little hearts and I have stitched them together on the sewing machine.

For the larger pieces of paper I have made some paper rosettes which, although beautiful, have required some deep engineering to stay in place.

Handmade paper rosette decorations // The Natural Wedding Company

Handmade napkins

I really don’t want too much of a colour theme at my wedding. There is some pink sneaking in to places where it counts, but I really don’t want it to be too “in your face”. I was really inspired by an idea for patterned napkins on Show Me The Pretty and decided to make my own for my wedding.

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TNWC Real Brides: Lisa’s handmade napkins and bunting, vintage crockery collecting and other last minute wedding preparations

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TNWC Real Brides: Lisa's handmade napkins and bunting, vintage crockery collecting and other last minute wedding prepartions

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

TNWC Real Brides: Lisa's handmade napkins and bunting, vintage crockery collecting and other last minute wedding prepartions

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.

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TNWC South West Roadtrip Day 7: a visit to Rowan Tree Studio

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Rowan Tree Studio crafty hen parties

I hope you’ve all had a lovely weekend – it has been mixed weather in Cornwall and Devon with a lovely day on Saturday in Padstow, but rain on Sunday up on the north coast of Devon.

On Saturday I paid a visit as part of the TNWC South West Roadtrip to Rowan Tree Studio, a lovely business run by Sarah who offers a range of crafty hen parties, as well as making wedding soap favours.

Rowan Tree Studio crafty hen parties

Rowan Tree Studio crafty hen parties

Rowan Tree Studio crafty hen parties

The afternoon I arrived Sarah was just finishing off a hen party of eighteen, who had spent a fun afternoon making a bridal trousseau.  I hadn’t heard of a bridal trousseau, but thankfully Sarah told me more about it:

“Traditionally a bride to be started making her trousseau to take into her marriage often before she had a groom in mind.  Mothers and daughters collected special toys, cherished books and family recipes to keep in a trunk or case with monogrammed linens, patchwork quilts, stationary, soaps and much more.”

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

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Izzy Burton illustration

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.

Vintage tablecloths

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