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Charlie

TNWC Real Brides: Emma’s beautiful DIY wedding details from viola pops to gold animals on their tables

Charlie

Back in July our lovely TNWC Real Bride Emma got married in a beautiful wedding in the heart of Liverpool. Emma is back today to share some stunning pictures from their wedding day and the final few details they made. In Emma’s first blog post she said:

“It might seem a contradiction, a natural wedding in the city, but I’m determined we can made it happen!” And I’m sure you’ll agree from the snippets below that her and Shane most definitely made it happen.

Over to Emma…

Three months ago Shane and I said “I do!” in a city wedding in Liverpool with a natural, handmade flair. The day itself was full of smiles, laughter and love, and I’m looking forward to telling you all about it and sharing more of our photographs soon! But first, I want to share some of the personal and handmade elements we brought to our day.

Viola pops and meaningful keepsakes

It was important to us to make our wedding as personal as possible, not just in terms of reflecting who we are but letting our guests know what a significant part of the day – and our lives – they are.

Something that was quite a simple idea but very popular was the name tags I made using my granddad’s old typewriter. I was very close to my grandparents growing up and they’re sadly not with us anymore, so despite the fact it’s not in the best shape I was determined to use my granddad’s vintage Olympia and not just any old typewriter!

I bought some lovely cream luggage tags from a local craft store and typed the names directly onto them, but the black ink smudged terribly no matter what we tried. After a bit of trial and error, I found that the red typewriter ribbon smudged much less so I typed them in red ink instead!

Charlie

TNWC Real Brides: Emma tells us about her botanical inspired wedding stationery and illustrated save the dates

Charlie

It is less than a month now to Emma and Shane’s wedding – I can’t believe the time has flown by so quickly! Fingers-crossed Emma will be able to squeeze in another blog post or two if we’re lucky with a few more details about their beautiful sounding natural city wedding. You can catch up on all her posts so far here.

Today she’s sharing details of her botanical inspired invitations (I love this design so much!), so over to Emma…

Love Local, or, A Tale of Two Cities

In all aspects of our wedding we’ve aimed to make the most of the incredible pool of local talent, and our wedding invitations are no exception! Although I must admit that if I had the time and skill I would have loved nothing more than to make all of the wedding stationery myself.

It was important to us that they reflected our day and felt personal and informal – I spent an inordinate amount of time searching for “the one”. As we had a small budget for stationery, we couldn’t go the bespoke route, so I looked instead for something off-the-peg that could be customised.

Charlie

TNWC Real Brides: Emma’s been booking urban wedding venues that have that natural ‘oh my!’ factor

Charlie

A warm welcome back to TNWC Real Bride Emma this week – she’s talking venues today, and I’m pretty stoked to hear all about the places they have booked for the ‘natural wedding in the city’. We share lots of lovely countryside weddings here on the blog, so it’s exciting to hear from a bride-to-be planning a natural wedding in urban spaces.

Over to Emma…

Love On Hope Street

Finding a venue that works for you as a couple is key to any wedding, and doubly so if you’re doing all the planning long distance: we live in Vancouver but are marrying in Liverpool. I wasn’t sure how much time I would have to decorate venues, so I knew I wanted something that would only need a few personal touches to make it feel like “ours”.

Having a good relationship with your venue organisers is also vital, and the friendly advice and timely email correspondence I had from our chosen venues definitely sealed the deal. As we’re marrying in our home town, we knew we would have lots of beautiful spaces to choose from, Liverpool has so many!

I was even able to visit some of them before I came to be with Shane in Canada. This was really helpful in the decision-making process: I ruled one out straight away when I saw the state of the bathrooms our guests would have to share with the bar next door!

Flexibility was also another important criteria for me: I didn’t like being given a rigid list of suppliers that we had to work with, and I discounted any venue that imposed a minimum spend.

I also knew I was looking for something that would have meaning for us, so I focused my search on the city spaces that were part of our courtship: falling in love with Shane is inextricably tied in my memory with running around the sun-splashed summer streets to meet him for our dates at cafés, bars, galleries, and theatres in the heart of the city.

Rooftops + Secret Spaces – Oh My!

Charlie

TNWC Real Brides: introducing Emma and Shane’s natural wedding in the city

Charlie

Recently we saw the final ‘just married’ post from last year’s TNWC Real Brides – I am so sad to say ‘goodbye’ to those lovely ladies who made such an inspiring contribution to the blog. But today is a wonderful day, because I get to introduce to you the first of this year’s TNWC Real Brides.

We have five brides-to-be who are going to be blogging about their upcoming weddings over the next few months, I have been privy to reading all about their plans already and can’t wait to get them sharing all their lovely ideas with you. This morning I’m going to hand you over to the first of our TNWC Real Brides – Emma – who has a rather sweet long distance love story, in fact very similar to my own (apart from it was me that moved thousands of miles away to Vancouver shortly after meeting my now husband).

I do hope you are looking forward to following this year’s TNWC Real Brides, so it’s over to Emma to tell us all about her plans for a natural wedding in the city…

Long Distance Love

It was on one of our first dates that Shane told me he was planning to emigrate to Canada. Our love story began as an office romance, flirting over cups of tea in the staff kitchen. It took me a while to realise that he actually liked me and it wasn’t until he moved in for a kiss at a cocktail bar one night that I was convinced!

We fell in love in the summer of 2010 ~ giddy, breathless, starry-eyed love ~ but at the end of the summer, just as he promised he would, he got on a plane and flew 5,000 miles away!

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