Blog: rustic
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Our rustic country wedding – the boys get ready

Charlie

So we’ve done the girls getting ready, and you always see loads of photos of the bride and bridesmaids.  For today, it’s all about the boys.

On our wedding day there were four key men in my life: my dad, my little brother Freddie (aged just 15), Alex the best man, and of course Nick (the groom and my ‘husband-to-be’).

With Mark taking photos at the house of us setting up the garden and my gorgeous antique lace dress, I asked my good friend Kate if she would take some photos of the boys getting ready.

She took all these lovely photos – I’ve only just seen them and it’s so exciting to see new photos from our wedding that I’ve not seen before.

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A sneak peek of the first of our wedding photos

Charlie

Yes, this really is a photo from our wedding!  Bet some of you can’t believe it (some of my friends are ready to start a mutiny if I don’t share the photos soon!).

Really soon there will be loads of photos from our wedding here, and on Love My Dress (so excited we’re going to be featured on Annabel’s lovely blog!).  She’s posted a few sneak peek photos so do have a look.

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Do it yourself: rustic handmade wedding stationery ~ part 1

Charlie

I’ve decided to split the ‘do it yourself’ for our wedding stationery into four parts as there seemed too much to share in just one post, and I didn’t want you all nodding off.  So without further ado, here’s Part 1.

First off, you should know I did all of this in Microsoft Word.  Perhaps insane, as Word is not meant for graphic design, but it’s what I have.  I don’t have any fancy software packages, so I had to do the best that I could with what I had.  Yes, it undoubtedly caused headaches and extra time faffing about, but I got where I wanted in the end and I’m proud of my effort.

The Invitation

Inspiration

For me, our invitation needed to reflect what our wedding was going to be about.  I wanted people to get excited (hopefully!) and have a sense of what kind of wedding they were going to. 

I went through various different ideas, including sewing mini bunting onto each card, which I decided might kill me off and wasn’t a true reflection of our wedding day.  Here are the some of the ideas I was inspired by…


From left to right starting at the top: found Once Wed; Perch Papiers; Junkaholique; Ruffled; unknown; found Snippet & Ink; unknown; Heather Ross; Ruffled; found Twig & Thistle

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Charlie Charlie

Our wedding: handmade rustic wedding stationery with red and white string and luggage tags

Charlie

Like our ‘save the date’ cards, we also made all our wedding stationery.  There was an invitation, a booklet of wedding details, a RSVP postcard, and a gift envelope.  Everything was tied up together with red and white string with a tiny brown luggage tag onto which I hand-stamped our RSVP date.

I’m one of those people (I hope there are others out there!) who knows in my mind what I want something to look like, but don’t always know how to translate that into reality.  So although here you can see lovely photos of the finished invitation set, it took a lot of attempts to get them ‘right’.

All these beautiful photos are taken by the fab man who snapped our wedding photos – Mark Tattersall.

Full details on how we made them to follow shortly!  And would love to know your thoughts – anyone else as much a fan of brown card as I am?

Check back tomorrow for Part 1 of the ‘do it yourself’ series!

Images: Mark Tattersall Photography

Charlie Charlie

Do it yourself: eco-friendly brown card and raffia rustic ‘save the dates’

Charlie

Here goes with the first of my ‘do it yourself’ guides from our wedding – lots of detail, I know, but this is for anyone wishing to recreate elements themselves.

*Please note that my ‘how to’ guide is for individual, private use, and not to be used for distribution or resale. Many thanks.*

Would love to know what you think and if there’s anything else you want details of.

Our ‘save the dates’ were envelope-less and quite tiny.  I saw this fantastic idea and thought it was brilliant (some people are so talented!) – so I set about making my own version.

We used 100% recycled brown card from a wonderful website called eco-craft (we bought almost all our paper and card for wedding projects from here) – I love that this brown card is called ‘Hairy Manilla’ – very un-weddingy!

I created the design on Microsoft Word – fitting three ‘save the dates’ to one piece of landscape A4 (I’ll include full details of fonts used at the bottom of the post for anyone interested).

I wanted something simple and quite rustic looking, so we just went for text and a tiny image, similar to the cow parsley that lines the hedges in May at the time of our wedding.

It took a bit of fiddling about and printing off copies to get the text in the right place for where we wanted the folds.  The card is scored in two places, making three parts, and then sealed at the back (hence no need for an envelope).

After printing the ‘save the dates’, I used my trusty guillotine (couldn’t have got through many a moment without it – essential kit for anyone planning on making paper items for their wedding) to slice them into three.  Next I faintly drew on pencil lines for where the folds would be, then used the blade on my scissors to gently score a fold.

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Charlie Charlie

Our wedding: handmade rustic ‘save the date’ cards

Charlie

Deep breath… I have been really nervous about sharing our wedding details, but I’m finally ready to take the plunge.  Up first are our handmade ‘save the dates’.  They are quite tiny, printed onto 100% recycled brown card and don’t need an envelope.

These shots were taken by our wonderful photographer Mark Tattersall and show the ‘save the dates’ open and sealed up.

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Sneak peek: my winter woodland hen party

Charlie

Here’s a sneak peak at the upcoming photos from my hen party last weekend.  I am awaiting the full set of photos from my little sister, who took the pictures.  Can’t wait to share them all!

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A handmade vintage winter wedding

Charlie

One of our newest editions to The Natural Wedding Company directory is a photographer from the North West of England called Mark Tattersall.

Just a glance at his website and you can tell he takes exquisite pictures, so I had to share this beautiful handmade vintage winter wedding he shot.

Marie and Karl were married in the Forest of Bowland and chose a personal, DIY approach to reflect their eco-conscious principles – delightfully combined with elegant, vintage and natural touches.

Their reception was held at an organic farm in a gorgeous 17th century barn with wood burning stove.  Guests were treated to mulled wine, hot vimto and spiced biscuits made by Marie.  Everything was served in a beautiful array of mis-matched vintage tea cups and saucers.

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