Blog: save the date
Charlie Charlie

Rustic eco-chic nautical ‘tying the knot’ save the dates and invitations with hessian, lace and twine

Charlie

Rustic eco-chic nautical 'tying the knot' save the dates // The Natural Wedding Company

Nautical tying the knot save the dates

Some of my favourite emails are from brides/couples who have been inspired by the stationery I made for my own wedding – both our save the dates and our invitations. Rachel was one of those brides who got in touch to share photos of what they created and I particularly loved hers because her and her husband-to-be Lee are sailors – so the ‘tying the knot’ version of our save the dates couldn’t be more appropriate.

It is so exciting to hear that couples all over the world have been inspired by the design I created for our save the dates, and it’s pretty satisfying when emails pop into my inbox with photos attached of what everybody’s been busy creating.

>> View Rachel and Lee’s autumn lake house wedding here <<

Rustic eco-chic nautical 'tying the knot' save the dates // The Natural Wedding Company

Nautical graphics for tying the knot wedding invitations

Rachel asked her friend and designer Anne Trencher to design her a few graphics for her wedding stationery, and to choose fonts for them to use – and don’t they look beautiful!

In addition to her save the dates, Rachel also emailed me photos of her wedding stationery – an elegant design with rustic elements of hessian, lace and twine incorporated.

Rustic eco-chic nautical wedding stationery with hessian, lace and twine // The Natural Wedding Company

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Charlie Charlie

TNWC Real Brides: introducing Em and Nick’s intimate homemade wedding in a beautiful walled garden

Charlie

TNWC Real Brides: introducing Em and Nick's intimate homemade wedding in a beautiful walled garden

Introducing our third lovely TNWC Real Bride of 2015 – the lovely Em, who is also getting married in a location very special to her and Mr-to-be Nick. I love that this year’s brides-to-be have all chosen really intimate spots for their wedding, not intimate in the sense of small, but places that they know really intimately.

Over to Em to tell you more…

Intimate homemade wedding in a beautiful walled garden

Hello, my name is Em, and Nick and I are getting married on 1st August 2015…which is perhaps a little ambitious as we got engaged just before Christmas and have a LOT to do. Add to this that we are also moving house in literally weeks and it has seemed like the perfect if chaotic storm. Although we made a few decisions relatively fast, we have a lot to work out before August and the months are beginning to glide by at an alarming rate.

Our ‘ideal wedding’

Describing the wedding we would like in 5 words, I would have to go for intimate, homemade, welcoming, warm and vintage. We will be getting married at Norton Priory Gardens, which is a beautiful walled garden in Runcorn where I grew up.

Nick and I have been there a few times with my son and Nick’s step son James (who is 2), and I have been going since I was a child, so it is somewhere which we hold very dear and if anything is our theme it is associating our wedding with memories and special people.

As we are booked in August, we are – fingers crossed! – going to have a lovely late summer afternoon (!) surrounded by the flowers and bees in a site which has been occupied since the middle ages. The reception venue will then be a local village hall in Manley, as we wanted to have a country family celebration air to the proceedings, with Amy Swann my amazingly creative friend making the cake  (she initially recommended that I look on The Natural Wedding Company site!).

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Charlie Charlie

TNWC Real Brides: Miriam’s sharing her homemade wedding details of tartan bunting and a personalised save the date stamp

Charlie

TNWC Real Brides: Miriam's sharing her homemade wedding details of tartan bunting and a personalised save the date stamp

The lovely Miriam and John are getting married this coming Saturday! So excited for them both and fingers-crossed this incredible British weather hangs around for them.

So over to Miriam for her last pre-wedding blog post…

DIY weddings stitch by stitch

One of my favourite things about The Natural Wedding Company blog is that there are so many beautiful homemade creations from other brides for your wedding and beyond. With our wedding looming very close I am starting to realise how much I will miss all the planning, researching and creating that has occupied most of my brain-space for the last 18 months. Having this creative outlet in my otherwise very science-oriented life has been wonderful, and I will surely miss it – but luckily I will have John and our new married home to carry on the next creative adventure!

Like many brides, physically creating aspects of our Big Day and researching novel ideas has hugely spurred on the crescendo of excitement towards the day, so I thought it would be good to share some of the homemade or personally designed aspects that are not too difficult to incorporate into a wedding to ensure that intimate feel for your guests.

Personal by design

There are some fantastic suppliers out there who will go the extra mile to create something handmade and personal for your wedding, without stretching yourself too far trying to do absolutely everything by yourself (as I am prone to attempting!). I was very lucky to find Noolibird via The Natural Wedding Company, who crafted this beautiful personalised stamp that we used to make our save-the-date cards, and might use somewhere in our home post-honeymoon decorating.

Personalised Noolibird bird 'save the date' stamp

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Lauren Lauren

The shy bride’s guide to planning an engagement shoot – a guest post from Emma at Freckle Photography

Lauren

Beekeepers engagement shoot - photography http://www.frecklephotography.co.uk/

Today the lovely Emma from TNWC business Freckle Photography  shares her wisdom on engagement shoots. Personally I think they’re the perfect opportunity to embrace the things you love to do together and take a moment out from the craziness of  wedding planning.

I’m sure these beautiful images featuring beekeepers, vintage railway lovers and camping couples will inspire you to plan something beautiful, fun and memorable to capture the essence of you as a couple.

Over to Emma…

Whilst planning my own wedding last year, I suddenly realised that the thought of being photographed all day terrified me! Not just because I spent my life behind the lens, but because I’m a normal girl with all the usual insecurities about my wobbly bits and the way my face scrunches up a bit too much when I’m really happy.

As for the boys, the idea of being obviously affectionate in ‘public’ and then being photographed can be equally as alarming.

Field engagement photoshoot - photography http://www.frecklephotography.co.uk/

What is an engagement shoot and why have one?

I’m sure this is a fairly normal reaction when planning a wedding, which is why I offer a photo shoot prior to the wedding. Sometimes called an ‘engagement shoot’ or a ‘pre-wedding shoot’, the aim is for you and your photographer to get to know one another, dispel any myths about having your photo taken and get some awesome and fun images in the process.

Engagement photoshoot - photography http://www.frecklephotography.co.uk/

Despite it being a bit daunting at first, I can tell you within minutes you will be enjoying yourselves. It’s a great excuse to have a bit of time out together, kiss more than you have all week and generally lark about!

Beach engagement photoshoot - photography http://www.frecklephotography.co.uk/

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Charlie Charlie

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

Charlie

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

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.

Botanical inspired wedding invitations by https://www.etsy.com/shop/FreckledStationery

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Charlie Charlie

TNWC Real Brides: Lisa has been getting her guests in the festival mood with quirky invitations

Charlie

TNWC Real Brides: Lisa has been getting her guests in the festival mood with quirky invitations

Your ‘save the dates’ and wedding invitations are often the first thing that tells your guests what to expect from your wedding – I remember when we were making ours that I really wanted them to hint at what our wedding would be like to our family and friends. 

TNWC Real Bride Lisa is sharing their quirky wedding invitations with hand drawn illustrations for their festival inspired wedding in Wales. I love how they look like a ticket – perfect!

Over to Lisa to tell you all about them…

Quirky invitations to get our guests into the festival mood

There is nothing nicer than receiving mail; it’s like a little journey back in time. I don’t mean all that junk mail that litters the mat but birthday cards, Christmas cards, good old fashioned letters and my absolute favourite, invitations. I remember getting my first birthday invitation when I was very young and have loved receiving them ever since.

So for me the invitations to our big day were important, they can really set the tone of your wedding. They can fit into the colour scheme; let the guest know if it’s an elegant, traditional affair or a more quirky, unusual celebration and can really get the excitement going.

TNWC Real Brides: Lisa has been getting her guests in the festival mood with quirky invitations

Our save the dates were free printable designs from the company that we used for our invitations, we very simply printed them on some good quality card and made them into bookmarks. I then punched a hole at the top, threaded some pretty ribbon through and made a little tie – that was pretty much it. Very simple, very economical and I felt very effective. It was from here that I explored a bit more about the company Something Kinda Cute.

For the invitations, we did really wanted to push the boat out. In my original blog I wrote that I wanted to make my own invitations to give it a real personal touch, however when I saw these particular designs I fell in love with them and thought they fitted our theme perfectly.

TNWC Real Brides: Lisa has been getting her guests in the festival mood with quirky invitations

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Charlie Charlie

Pen and ink style mini calendar save the date cards that you can print and customise yourself

Charlie

Mini calendar save the date

When I spotted this mini calendar style save the date, I loved it’s simplicity and thought that the pen and ink style would be popular with my blog readers as my own save the dates have been so popular.

So you can imagine how delighted I was when I discovered that this is in fact a free printable save the date, created by Bells & Whistles for The Pretty Blog – so you can actually go and download the design, print it off on your choice of recycled card, and add your own names and date.

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Charlie Charlie

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

Charlie

Charlie Scribble quirky rustic wedding stationery

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 Scribble quirky rustic wedding stationery

Charlie Scribble quirky rustic wedding stationery

Charlie Scribble quirky rustic wedding stationery

Charlie Scribble quirky rustic wedding stationery

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Charlie Charlie

Elegant but rustic ‘tying the knot’ save the dates inspired by my handmade wedding stationery

Charlie

Tying the knot save the dates

When someone adds one of my blog post links to there’s I get a message about it, so I was delighted when I got this one and discovered that someone had been inspired by my own save the dates.  Quite by surprise the save the dates we made for our wedding have become one of the most popular blog posts I’ve featured and many, many TNWC readers have recreated their own versions – I love seeing them all.

Elegant 'tying the knot' save the date

Most often people use the recycled brown card that I myself fell in love with, but these ones created by an American letterpress and stationery company use a white card and are equally beautiful.  The couple were inspired by the ‘tying the knot’ version of my save the dates (another ‘most viewed’ blog post) where a knot is tied in twine as you open the save the date.

Tying the knot save the date

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Charlie Charlie

Handmade wedding stationery from a TNWC bride-to-be printed onto ellie poo paper

Charlie

Ellie poo paper handmade wedding stationery

One of the nicest parts of running my own business is that I get the loveliest emails from brides-to-be and couples planning their wedding.  Sometimes you even send me pictures of the sweet items you’ve been making, often inspired by things I made for my own wedding.  Today one such bride-to-be has been kind enough to share her handmade wedding invitations – and the all important details on how she made them – that were inspired by my own handmade wedding stationery.

Becky was kind enough to detail down how she made each part of her wedding stationery and included some of the websites where she bought supplies from.  Over to Becky to tell you about how she made her handmade wedding stationery…

The Invitations

Our wedding reception is taking place in a tipi in a field on our friends’ farm which is overlooked by the forest where Tom proposed, so we wanted the stationery to reflect this natural and beautiful setting that is so special to us.

I found a previous post on The Natural Wedding Company blog where someone had used card made out of elephant poo for their invites, which I loved the idea of, so I ordered some of the paper from The Green Stationery Company with matching envelopes.

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