order of service Archives - The Natural Wedding Company

Blog: order of service

Charlie

TNWC Real Brides: Vicky’s gold glitter and sequin wedding cake and bar signs

Charlie

If you are reading this on Thursday, I will be playing with spring blossom at a flower crown workshop by Catkin – you can join in by following me on Snapchat (anaturalwedding) where I plan to share some pictures and maybe even a video or two of what I am up to. More pictures will follow on Instagram and Facebook.

But in the meantime, I have some gold glittery love for you all (even us natural brides often can’t say no to a splash of gold glitter can we?) with some handmade picks from TNWC Real Bride Vicky. She got married last summer but we are only just catching up with the final few bits of her homemade wedding.

You can find all her previous posts here, which include some fab DIY projects and ideas. Over to Vicky…

While I loved planning the wedding I have to admit that by being maybe a bit too organised I found the last couple of months leading up to it, dare I say it, dull! I just wanted the day to arrive.

Initially there was lots to plan and make and decide and then I hit this lull. I really wanted to get on and do things but realistically I couldn’t because everything that was left was last minute things.

Everything was piled up waiting in the spare bedroom – or ‘Wedding HQ’ as it became for the year. Even the confetti bags had been made and boxed up. Like most churches we could only use natural confetti which suited us fine so we had bought a lot of natural flower petals and popped them into bags ready for our page boy to hand out.

It was during this lull that I decided it was best to stay off websites and Pinterest, as the temptation to do and make more and more things was too great.

I did cave in and make a glitter cake sign…

A sequin bar sign…

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

TNWC South West Roadtrip Day 6: visiting the studio of Charlie Scribble

Charlie

I can’t believe that I only have two days left of visiting businesses on the TNWC South West Roadtrip (Sunday is my day off with family) – it has been an incredible week so far and I hope that you’ve enjoyed reading about my adventures.

Yesterday I had a pretty chilled day, which at nearly 29 weeks pregnant I was in need of after the busy week I’ve had. I headed from the south coast of Cornwall, across the county to just outside Wadebridge too meet up with Flo from Charlie Scribble. Flo creates beautiful wedding stationery with a very distinct style that incorporates her beautiful illustrations.

Charlie

Laura and Charlie’s relaxed and natural wedding with heavenly country garden flowers and handmade details

Charlie

Natural wedding with heavenly country garden flowers

It’s with great pleasure that I get to bring you another real wedding from a couple who planned a beautiful, handmade and natural wedding. Bride Laura used a number of TNWC businesses to help her create the wedding that her and groom Charlie dreamed of, and they were even inspired by my own handmade wedding invitations.

I know you are just going to love this wedding and I’m sure you’ll find inspiration for your own day here. So stop what you’re doing, make yourself a cup of tea and settle down to read all about Laura and Charlie’s beautiful day (and if you like specific details you’ll find links to all the suppliers at the bottom of the post)…

Laura and Charlie got married on a very rainy Saturday in July at Silchester House in Berkshire. “We wanted the wedding to be fairly informal and very relaxed. Charlie and I are very casual so it would have felt a bit false to go for something overly traditional. We tried to make the day feel like ‘us’ wherever possible.”

“We also avoided having a specific colour scheme as we wanted everything to be as organic and natural as possible. I think this approach made planning the wedding a bit more work – we ended up DIYing lots of the elements when we couldn’t find any alternatives that we liked – but seeing everything come together just as we wanted made it worthwhile.”

Charlie

Holly and Dean’s village fete wedding with a coconut shy and Morris Men

Charlie

Village fete wedding with Morris Men

This beautiful wedding photographed by Dawn Potter was inspired by the nostalgia of village fetes, and is full of fun and games for the many children who came – something I think too often gets over-looked. Holly crafted such a colorful and fun wedding that really went that extra mile for her guests.

Holly and Dean got married in the picturesque village of Loders in Dorset, with the ceremony in the village church and the reception just down the road.

The church was decorated with pretty country style flowers and the order of service is one of the most beautiful I’ve ever seen – isn’t it stunning, like a page out of a fairytale…

Charlie

The order of service for our rustic country wedding

Charlie

When you’re heavily involved in planning, organising, and making your own wedding there are so many details to consider. I found it was quite easy to get wrapped up in whether or not I should wind ivy inside the tealight lanterns on the dinner tables (ran out of time/forgot in the end!) and other details, without putting as much thought into our ceremony.

And however beautiful, pretty, rustic, handmade we want to create our weddings, however great that need for attention to small details, there wouldn’t be all that if we weren’t getting married. I think partly I put off getting to grips with the content of our wedding ceremony because it seemed an insurmountable task to craft something that was so heavy and laden with meaning.

I find myself getting so lost in trying to create meaning with words when it comes to the different ways you can say ‘I love you’, that I end up just throwing up my hands and admitting defeat – sometimes ‘I love you’ says it all. At any rate, Nick and I know how much we love and care for each other, so why fret over putting that all into words?

Well I think that it is important to give it your best shot. I’m sure that with thought and care whatever you decide on for your ceremony, whether it be traditional hymns, modern love songs, readings for children’s books or excerpt from the world’s greatest poets – it will be lovely and meaningful.

So with that preface, these are what Nick and I chose for our wedding ceremony back in May. On the first page we had a short thank you to our family and friends for coming to share the day with us, including a list of everyone’s names. We also made special mention to Nick’s granny who died a month before our wedding – she was a very special lady in our lives and we wanted to recognise that.

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