Blog: seasonal wedding flowers
Charlie Charlie

Behind-the-scenes film with The Garden Gate Flower Company for a sea-meets-land wedding of seasonal British blooms

Charlie

The Garden Gate Flower Company

Today I’ve got a pretty special blog post for you and something a little different.  The lovely Becca and Maz from The Garden Gate Flower Company have had a short film made telling the story of one couples wedding flowers, from picking seasonal blooms in their Cornish cutting patch, to setting up the venue and delivering the brides bouquet (such a gorgeous moment!).

This beautiful film provides couples with a special insight into how one homegrown flower business creates stunning seasonal blooms for a wedding.  So take a peep behind the scenes with The Garden Gate Flower Company and don’t miss that magical moment when Becca delivers the bride her bouquet – so sweet.  

Also keep a look out for my other favourite moment of the film – their use of tomato cuttings for the table centrepieces!

http://vimeo.com/76329323

Now over to Maz from The Garden Gate Flower Company to tell you a little bit more about the wedding and the film…

Our friend, Emma Griffin is a super creative photographer, artist and more recently film maker, based in Cornwall.  Together we had the idea to make a short film which told the story of Katie and Damian’s flowers from picking to setting up the venue and delivering Katie her bouquet.

Tomato cutting wedding centrepiece

Read more

Charlie Charlie

A wild and natural bridal bouquet of fragrant blooms and trailing jasmine for a Scottish wedding

Charlie

wild_colourful_seasonal_bouquet

Hi everyone! A quick message here from Charlie – I’m really sorry that it’s been so quiet on the blog lately, but we’ve got loads of great guest posts coming up. There’s some gorgeous floral prettiness on the blog today, and coming up soon a beautiful Bedouin tent real wedding and a competition. Hope all your wedding plans are going well!

In order to find the loveliest inspiration and ideas for my readers I trawl the internet and blogs on the hunt for only the very best.  When it comes to flowers, sometimes I spot a bouquet and am convinced that it must have been created by one of our talented flower farmers or florists – and quite often I’m right.

This is one such bouquet that I spotted on this Fairytale Scottish Castle Wedding and thought it was just the kind of wild and natural style that many of our TNWC recommended florists dream up – indeed, it is from one of our Scottish contingent, the lovely Pyrus.

wild_colourful_seasonal_bouquet3

Read more

Izzy Izzy

Jaime and Dave’s relaxed spring wedding with lawn games, a seasonal bouquet and Scottish kilts

Izzy

this and that photography

Relaxed spring wedding

Today we are sharing Jaime and Dave’s gorgeous spring wedding in Hampshire.  Fans of the outdoors, Jaime and Dave wanted their wedding to reflect the natural beauty of the gardens at Taplins Place in Hartley Wintney where they held their ceremony and reception.

Guests were entertained with giant lawn games, a coconut shy, a ‘hook-a-duck’ stall and homemade ‘Fruits of the Forest’ gin.  With a wedding cake made of cheese and the relaxed ‘fete’ feel to the wedding, Jaime and Dave were able to make their wedding truly about them – nature and garden lovers.

– Izzy x

Now over to Jaime to share their beautiful wedding day with you…

Wedding union jack bunting

this and that photography

Forget-me-not, bluebell and wheat bridal boquet

Jaime and Dave got married in May this year, I love the reason why Jaime and Dave chose May for their wedding and honeymoon, “As we grow our own veg, we knew that we didn’t want to leave too much work to Dave’s Dad and his wife, who were looking after the house, our dogs and our garden.  So I guess you can say that our vegetable dictated when we got married!”

Read more

Charlie Charlie

Behind-the-scenes at our seasonal wedding hair flowers shoot with The Garden Gate Flower Company

Charlie

garden_gate_flower_co_behind_the_scenes

Last week I shared all the gorgeous photos from my seasonal wedding hair flowers mini shoot with The Garden Gate Flower Company – if you haven’t seen them already and are dreaming of wearing flowers in your hair at your wedding, click here right now for a heady dose of floral inspiration.

As much as I love sharing all the pretty pictures to inspire you for your weddings, I also like to show the real ‘behind-the-scenes’ stuff that goes into a wedding shoot and the small businesses that put in all the hard work.  Today I’ve got all the behind-the-scenes photos from my day at The Garden Gate Flower Company, beautifully captured on film by Taylor & Porter Photographs.

garden_gate_flower_co_behind_the_scenes4

garden_gate_flower_co_behind_the_scenes18

garden_gate_flower_co_behind_the_scenes6

I’m going to hand you over to Maz from The Garden Gate Flower Company who will tell you their experience of the day…

“A misty, typically Cornish day back in June was positively brightened by Charlie from The Natural Wedding Company who stopped off on her TNWC South West Roadtrip.  We had a little workshop of our own and focused on hair.  Charlie has totally sparked a new interest in native grasses (or … errm, weeds to us gardeners: until now? I am totally embracing the ‘can’t beat them join them’ aspect of this idea!).”

Read more

Charlie Charlie

Delicate and romantic seasonal wedding hair flowers – beautiful alternatives to the flower crown

Charlie

Seasonal wedding hair flowers

A couple of weeks ago I was travelling around Devon and Cornwall visiting TNWC businesses, and as part of that roadtrip I got to spend a whole day with the lovely ladies at The Garden Gate Flower Company (you can read more about it here).  We had made plans to do a little shoot of seasonal wedding hair flowers, and despite the fact that it was a wet and windy day on the farm, we were undeterred.

Flower crowns have been a popular wedding trend for over a year now, and don’t seem to be going away any time soon.  Whilst I absolutely love them, I noticed they were getting bigger and bolder, and felt that I would never have felt confident or comfortable to pull off a flower crown like that for my wedding.  It got me wanting to share some inspiration for more subtle and understated hair flowers, yet still incredibly beautiful.

Field inspired wedding hair flowers

Becca and Maz at The Garden Gate Flower Company equally loved the idea, especially as they’ve had more and more brides this year asking for more demure hair flowers, so it was a great opportunity to try out their ideas.  We were joined on this wild June day by Louise and Teo from Taylor & Porter Photographs who have captured Becca and Maz’s designs exquisitely.

English country garden wedding hair flowers

Louise and Teo have recently relocated to Cornwall and their photography business Taylor & Porter Photographs is quite special – why?  Because they only shoot on vintage cameras using film.  With at least six of us huddled in the polytunnel at The Garden Gate Flower Company for the shoot, it was pretty magical listing to the whizz and click of Louise and Teo’s vintage cameras.

Pastel blue wedding hair flowers in a braid

Somehow I ended up ‘modelling’ a number of the hair flowers, which wasn’t my intention, but my long hair wound me up in the styling seat when Becca and Maz’s friend who was going to model for us had to leave early.  I am not one for having my photo taken, especially when I’m not prepared with a bit of make-up and less windswept hair – I’m hoping the hair flowers are so stunning you don’t even notice me!

Enough talking, over to the flowers…

Read more

Charlie Charlie

Chloe and Nick’s relaxed seaside Devon wedding with natural seasonal ‘just picked’ flowers and a jasmine flower crown

Charlie

Chloe and Nick relaxed seaside wedding

Relaxed seaside Devon wedding

I am really delighted to be bringing you another exclusive real wedding to the blog today.  This wedding was shared with me via the lovely Chloe from BareBlooms, a TNWC flower farmer, as it was not only a wedding she did the flowers for, but she was also a guest as the bride (also called Chloe) and groom are friends of hers.

Bride and groom Chloe and Nick were really relaxed about their wedding day and wanted a simple celebration with just a few lovely details – it’s quite refreshing when it’s so easy to get bombarded by detail heavy weddings seen on so many wedding blogs.

Over to bride Chloe to share their pretty wedding day with you…

Natural and wild bouquet and flower crown from BareBlooms

Chloe and Nick got married last June in Devon, which they chose because it was the place where they met: “Nick was at Dartington College of Arts and I was working in Exeter, my mum, stepdad and gran live in Exeter and all our friends are mostly based in the south of England, so we felt that Devon was a natural choice.”

Relaxed beach wedding

Blue and green wild bouquet from BareBlooms

Read more

Charlie Charlie

TNWC South West Roadtrip Day 8: final visits to Greens of Devon, Organic Blooms and Church Farm

Charlie

Church Farm wedding meadow venue

I have finally come to the end of my TNWC South West Roadtrip.  I have travelled hundreds of miles, stayed in numerous homes, B&Bs and hotels, and met over 15 businesses who are all listed on the directory.  It has been exhausting but amazing.  If you would like to catch up on my travels, just click on TNWC Roadtrip for all the posts.

So yesterday I set of from the north coast of Devon, travelled into the county to Greens of Devon, then up the motorway to Organic Blooms, and across into Wiltshire to Church Farm for my final visit of the trip.  I hope you’ve liked following along, and enjoy this, my final post on the (first) TNWC Roadtrip.

Greens of Devon

My first stop of the day was to Greens of Devon and are one of my lovely edible flower businesses. With the resurgence in British, locally grown, seasonal flowers, their edible brothers and sisters are following suit.  I’ve personally been interested in edible flowers for a few years now, so it’s really nice to see more couples incorporating them into their weddings.

Greens of Devon edible flowers

Greens of Devon edible flowers

Greens of Devon edible flowers

Greens of Devon edible flowers

Read more

Charlie Charlie

TNWC South West Roadtrip Day 5: Lancaster & Cornish, Sarah Wants and The Blue Carrot

Charlie

Pretty flowers at The Blue Carrot in Cornwall

After the dire weather yesterday, today the south coast of Cornwall has been blessed with blue skies and patches of sun and an almighty wind.  I spent the morning in Lostwithiel and then travelled further down the coast to Portscatho and have finally seen the sea.

I’ve met another group of wonderful businesses, all of whom you can find on The Natural Wedding Company directory, and it has been a pleasure to get to know them and hear more about what they do.  It’s been a real honour to get an inside look into these small businesses, especially to very private places such as offices, studios, workrooms and cutting gardens.

Garden grown rose from The Blue Carrot

The Blue Carrot's cutting garden

The Blue Carrot's cutting garden

So this is what I got up to yesterday on the TNWC Roadtrip

Lancaster & Cornish

A recent addition to the directory and a last minute add on to my visits today, was a trip to the studio office of Lancaster & Cornish.  I met the lovely Sian, who runs Lancaster & Cornish, last night at dinner with the ladies from The Garden Gate Flower Company, and was really excited at the prospect of looking at pretty fabrics and lace.

Organic lace from Lancaster & Cornish

Read more

Charlie Charlie

TNWC South West Roadtrip Day 4: The Garden Gate Flower Company with Taylor & Porter Photographs

Charlie

Seasonal wedding hair flowers shoot at The Garden Gate Flower Company

What a lovely day I had yesterday, despite the most miserable drizzly weather in Cornwall.  I spent the whole day at The Garden Gate Flower Company (who are based just outside Fowey) with Becca and Maz, generally having a lot of fun with their beautiful flowers.

Our plan was to spend the day creating beautiful wedding hair flowers with the aim to inspire brides-to-be who want to wear flowers in their hair, but don’t feel the big, bold, statement flower crowns are ‘them’.

Seasonal blue wedding hair flowers with scabious and nigella

In the afternoon we were joined by Louise and Teo from Taylor & Porter Photographs, the loveliest couple who’ve recently relocated to Cornwall, and take all their pictures on vintage film cameras – you should definitely check out their work if you want something a bit different for your wedding photography.

Today you get my photos, but soon I’ll be featuring all Louise and Teo’s photos.  Can’t wait!

Seasonal yellow and white wedding hair flowers with rosies and fennel flowers

Natural seasonal wedding hair flowers from The Garden Gate Flower Company

Natural wedding hair flowers with grasses and honeysuckle

Read more

Izzy Izzy

Holly and Laurie’s English picnic wedding in Shropshire with country garden flowers and handmade details

Izzy

Holly and Laurie's English picnic wedding

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…

Seasonal September country wedding flowers

Rustic place names

Picnic wedding wrapped with greaseproof paper and twine

“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.”

Photo frame table plan

Country garden flowers

Blackboards

Wedding picnic and menu

Read more