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Charlie

Wild Welsh summer wedding inspiration with foxgloves and ferns

Charlie

Wild Welsh summer wedding inspiration

When is comes to sustainable, eco-friendly weddings I always look to the seasons and the place where a wedding is to take place. This beautiful wild Welsh wedding shoot organised by Ness of TogetherNess Weddings does exactly that – she was inspired by the hedgerows and meadows in June for this wild Welsh summer wedding inspiration shoot.

“With local and seasonal in mind, I took my inspiration from hedgerows in June hoping to create a sense of hazy summer moments mixed with the bright pinks of our native flowers at this time of year. I hoped to highlight the simple yet exceptional beauty that can be created by combining the talent of local artisan business’s with what our doorstep nature has to offer.”

This wild Welsh summer wedding inspiration shoot is full of foxgloves, ferns, and natural fabrics set against a backdrop of a whitewashed chapel and a meal in a meadow.

Ness used her expert styling skills and collaborated with a small team of talented Welsh wedding suppliers and artisans to create this beautiful wedding shoot. I hope it encourages you to look to the place and season in which you are getting married for inspiration.

TogetherNess Weddings is a Recommended Supplier of The Natural Wedding Company directory. Find out more about them here.

Charlie

Favourite Natural Wedding Details: favours, table plans, wedding cakes, DIY projects, transport & children-friendly weddings

Charlie

Natural Wedding Details

For the third part of our Real Wedding Favourites mini series we are bringing you are Favourite Natural Wedding Details. As you might imagine, choosing ‘favourites’ in this category is really hard. It’s also a lot down to personal preference. My suggestion is to enjoy browsing through our blog archive for inspiration for your wedding details.

All our picks are chosen from the very first Real Wedding we featured up until spring of this year. You can find all the links to our Real Wedding Favourites here.

Our Favourite Wedding Favours

Hot Chocolate Mugs with a Vintage Welsh ‘Love Teaspoon’

Nik was one of our first TNWC Real Brides and together with her husband Chris they created a true-to-them chilled out wedding at their home. We followed many of the details that Nik created for their wedding, but it was hot chocolate inspired wedding favours that I really loved.

Nik decorated a mug for each guest that they served hot chocolate in at their wedding, and gave the mug along with a vintage teaspoons with the words ‘LLwy Garu’ (Welsh for ‘love spoon’) stamped onto it as wedding favours. Useful and beautiful.

Charlie’s favourite wedding favours come from Nik and Chris’ chilled out rustic coastal farm wedding. Vintage teaspoons from Rescue & Revive and mugs hand decorated by the bride. Photography by Pete Cranston Photography.

Nik’s wedding dress was also one of our favourites, which you can see in our Natural Wedding Styles post.

Charlie

A romantic Flower Fairy inspired wedding with gypsophila flower crown and woodland themed wedding reception

Charlie

I had another blog feature planned for today, but then I found out it is my colleague Samantha’s fourth wedding anniversary today, and naturally I felt that sharing some snippets from her beautiful wedding was much more appropriate.

Samantha came into my life a couple of years ago when I was looking for someone to become a blog features writer – up until that point it had just been me running The Natural Wedding Company directory and writing the blog. I loved her enthusiasm and obvious love for weddings, I loved that she had become a mum at a similar time to me and had a little boy near in age to my little girl, and I loved that she had been inspired by childhood books The Flower Fairies for her wedding.

Whilst we don’t get to see each other very much because we live at opposite ends of the country, she has become such an important part of my life and the fabric and future of The Natural Wedding Company. So today while she celebrates four years of marriage with her husband Paul, our blog will celebrate that day four years ago when they said their “I do’s”.

Here’s to celebrating true love (these two are truly my idols when it comes to romance – you’ll see what I mean from Paul’s proposal) and to living out our girlhood dreams of being Flower Fairies. Put on a suitable romantic song, turn it up loud and enjoy this sweet celebration of marriage. Over to Samantha for a few snippets from her wedding…

A wedding inspired by The Flower Fairies

I have deep down (ok, not that deep down) always wished to be a flower fairy, therefore wanted to create the feeling of a magical world in the depths of the woods for everyone to enjoy. Luckily Paul didn’t even bat an eyelid when I suggested that we go for a woodland inspired ‘theme’ which would feature giant strawberries.

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

TNWC Real Brides: Emma’s final blog post as a ‘Miss’ before her outdoor Cornish festival wedding this weekend

Charlie

Can you believe it, two of my lovely TNWC Real Brides are getting married this week! Nik and Chris are getting hitched today (!!!) in Wales (read all about their wedding plans here) and the lovely Emma and Chris will be tying the knot in Cornwall on Saturday. Even though these lovely ladies are around my own age, I still feel a bit like a mother hen with them getting married.

I hope you’ve all enjoyed their journeys and creative plans, and I’m sure we are all looking forward to hearing how it went and seeing the pictures. If you have recently got engaged or are just starting to plan your 2014 wedding, maybe you’d like to be one of my next TNWC Real Brides – full details here.

Today though, it’s over to Emma who has done one final blog post as a ‘Miss’…

I thought I would just pop by to say hello before the big day at the end of this week! We have made a few last minute decisions, one of which is probably the best last minute decision any bride could make – we booked a videographer. I had been toying with the idea for months but decided to take the plunge.

Our photographer Becca posted a link to Pete’s work on her Facebook page. We didn’t have the budget for a video but I thought it would be worth a shot to ask, firstly if he was free (only weeks before the wedding) and to see if he could do reduced coverage with a reduced price. We came up trumps as not only is he mega talented; he was free on our wedding day and did us a brilliant deal.

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: 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

Decoration details from a romantic Paris inspired wedding from one of our blog readers

Charlie

I really wanted to share some inspiration from this wedding because not only is it beautiful but because I’m very familiar with the lovely lady whose wedding it was. The bride, Brigitte, is one of my lovely readers who whilst planning her wedding was always leaving me sweet comments on my blog posts and Facebook page – it’s so nice to be able to become familiar with one of my readers like that.

Brigitte got married in July at Goldbrick House in Bristol and had the styling help of Kirsten, the talent who is The Little Wedding Helper to make her ideas a reality. To honour Paris, the city they got engaged in Brigitte and her fiance Graham included some nice French touches to their day, which had such a romantic feel to it. What I particularly loved was Brigitte’s table decorations and floral arrangements – you often see weddings inspired by Paris, but I think this one captures that essence the nicest.

Charlie

Wildflower Favours is offering a 10% discount on all their products including seed packet favours and plantable papers

Charlie

Wildflower Favours create a wide range of eco-friendly wildflower seed packet favours and plantable seeded paper favours and invites, as well as stocking lots of handmade and recycled paper, favour boxes and other favour supplies perfect for a natural wedding. Until the 31st March 2012 they are offering our readers 10% off all their products.

Teresa from Wildflower Favours explains why wildflowers are so important, “British native wildflowers are in decline and this has a knock-on effect on our natives bees, butterflies and moths who rely on the wildflowers for their survival. By incorporating wildflowers into your wedding invites, favours etc you are helping to preserve our native wildflower and wildlife, and also encouraging your guests to garden in a more biodiversity-friendly way”

Charlie

Printable floral tags for gifts, place cards or save the dates

Charlie

I don’t usually squeeze in a lunchtime post, but I really wanted to share this find as I thought it would appeal to a lot of you. These beautiful floral tags are offered free to download and print from Packagery, all you need is a printer, some card and a pair of scissors. There is such a wonderful choice of recycled cards available now, so do check out the DIY section on the directory for a list of where you can buy it from.

I thought they could be used for everyday gift giving, customised into ‘save the dates‘ (I have a fab handmade luggage tag ‘save the date’ idea coming soon) or perhaps as place names for your wedding guests. Any other suggestions on how these could be used?

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