Blog: tnwc real brides
Samantha Samantha

Vicky and Steve’s DIY Village Fete Wedding with garden games, cream tea and a beaded wedding dress

Samantha

Vicky and Steve’s DIY Village Fete Wedding // Lucy Jane Photography // The Natural Wedding Company

Today’s beautiful DIY village fete wedding is that of  a couple you may recognise from these very pages – Vicky and Steve, one of our TNWC Real Bride couples from last year. We followed them through their epic DIY-ing journey and now we get to share in their gorgeous day and enjoy all their efforts.

After being together over six years Steve proposed to Vicky on holiday in the beautiful Skopelos. Since then with friends and family on board, and with Steve’s handy occupation as a builder, they have gone about creating the most wonderful projects to fill their day with personal touches, all of which you can find out about here.

Naked wedding cake with flowers // Lucy Jane Photography // The Natural Wedding Company

Eliza Jane Howell beaded wedding dress for Vicky and Steve’s DIY Village Fete Wedding // Lucy Jane Photography // The Natural Wedding Company

Coconut shy for Vicky and Steve’s DIY Village Fete Wedding // Lucy Jane Photography // The Natural Wedding Company

Rustic wooden direction sign for Vicky and Steve’s DIY Village Fete Wedding // Lucy Jane Photography // The Natural Wedding Company

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Charlie Charlie

TNWC Real Brides: Vicky’s gold glitter and sequin wedding cake and bar signs

Charlie

TNWC Real Brides: Vicky's gold glitter and sequin wedding cake and bar signs // The Natural Wedding Company

If you are reading this on Thursday, I will be playing with spring blossom at a flower crown workshop by Catkin – you can join in by following me on Snapchat (anaturalwedding) where I plan to share some pictures and maybe even a video or two of what I am up to. More pictures will follow on Instagram and Facebook.

But in the meantime, I have some gold glittery love for you all (even us natural brides often can’t say no to a splash of gold glitter can we?) with some handmade picks from TNWC Real Bride Vicky. She got married last summer but we are only just catching up with the final few bits of her homemade wedding.

You can find all her previous posts here, which include some fab DIY projects and ideas. Over to Vicky…

While I loved planning the wedding I have to admit that by being maybe a bit too organised I found the last couple of months leading up to it, dare I say it, dull! I just wanted the day to arrive.

Initially there was lots to plan and make and decide and then I hit this lull. I really wanted to get on and do things but realistically I couldn’t because everything that was left was last minute things.

Everything was piled up waiting in the spare bedroom – or ‘Wedding HQ’ as it became for the year. Even the confetti bags had been made and boxed up. Like most churches we could only use natural confetti which suited us fine so we had bought a lot of natural flower petals and popped them into bags ready for our page boy to hand out.

Flower petal confetti and gold glitter tape // The Natural Wedding Company

It was during this lull that I decided it was best to stay off websites and Pinterest, as the temptation to do and make more and more things was too great.

I did cave in and make a glitter cake sign…

DIY gold glitter wedding cake sign // The Natural Wedding Company

A sequin bar sign…

DIY gold sequin bar sign // The Natural Wedding Company

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Charlie Charlie

TNWC Real Brides: Vicky’s homemade pallet bar and giant polaroid photobooth, and a DIY illuminated letters

Charlie

TNWC Real Brides: Vicky's homemade pallet bar and giant polaroid photobooth, and a DIY illuminated letters

We’re back with TNWC Real Bride Vicky today, catching up with the final details she created for her wedding. Having a super handy Mr, they put their skills to use with wood and metal and paint creating all manner of fab wedding things. And that bar – definitely a keeper for the garden post-wedding I reckon!

Over to Vicky…

The handy thing about having a fiancé who is a builder is that you can talk them into making a lot of the things you’ve seen on websites. They have all the tools, know people who can get them things and various mates who can wire things up. It’s very very handy!

Homemade rustic wedding signs // The Natural Wedding Company

On my wish list were – a bar, various signs, big letters spelling out ‘wedding’, a photo booth of some sort, a giant frame to hang photos from and an illuminated “S” and “V”. Steve rather sweetly agreed to all of these things.

The best thing he made were definitely the illuminated letters. We scoured the internet for ideas on how to make them and had no luck, meaning that we had to muddle through on our own. After we made them, another brilliant illuminated letter DIY appeared on this blog from another TNWC groom – if only we’d waited! Like Jon, our only worry was where on earth they’ll go after the wedding – they are massive!

DIY giant illuminated wedding letters // The Natural Wedding Company

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Charlie Charlie

TNWC Real Brides: Vicky’s hunt for vintage glass bowls and doilies to add dash of vintage charm to her wedding tea party

Charlie

TNWC Real Brides: Vicky's hunt for vintage glass bowls and doilies to add dash of vintage to her wedding tea party

As I am so often admitting, I have been fairly ‘behind’ (a polite way of putting it!) with keeping up with last years lovely TNWC Real Brides. Recently we featured Fern’s beautiful wedding, and now I am thrilled to be bringing you a couple of catch-up posts from Vicky.

She did an incredible job of collecting a selection of vintage glass bowls, vases and doilies to add a relaxed vintage vibe to her wedding tea party. Her thriftiness paid off with a fantastic sounding haul – can’t wait to see how it looked all put together on her wedding day!

Over to Vicky…

We always wanted our wedding to have quite a relaxed vintage feel to it but didn’t want to spend too much money in achieving this, preferring to be able to invite more people if money allowed. I’ve always loved the mismatched vintage china that lots of people use but the cost of hiring the vintage crockery was too much to comfortably justify and after a quick scout around charity shops I wasn’t confident that we’d ever collect enough or it would work out any cheaper!

Vintage glass bowls // The Natural Wedding Company

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Charlie Charlie

Fern and Dominic’s woodland bird and country flower inspired wedding at their idyllic Somerset village

Charlie

Fern and Dominic's woodland bird and country flower inspired wedding at their idyllic Somerset home village // Photography Belinda McCarthy // The Natural Wedding Company

This beautiful summer woodland bird and country flower inspired wedding is a delight to share, not only because it’s full of lovely details that will undoubtedly inspire many of our brides, but also because it’s the wedding of one last years TNWC Real Brides, Fern (find all her blog posts here).

Fern and Dominic planned a natural down-to-earth wedding in their home village Montacute in Somerset. This idyllic rural village provided a pretty backdrop against which they celebrated their marriage, and wove into their wedding day some of the things they love most – woodland birds and country garden blooms. Over to Fern to share her wedding day…

Fern + Dominic, August 2015

Our wonderful August wedding was everything that we had hoped for. It was really important to us right from the beginning for our day to be really welcoming, intimate occasion to share with our family. We had a very small wedding party with only one bridesmaid, best man and one usher, but this was right for us. Lots of our guests commented on how much they enjoyed the relaxed family atmosphere.

Woodland and country flower wedding table centres // Photography Belinda McCarthy // The Natural Wedding Company

Fern and Dominic's woodland bird and country flower inspired wedding at their idyllic Somerset home village // Photography Belinda McCarthy // The Natural Wedding Company

Gypsophila and pink rose wedding hair flowers // Photography Belinda McCarthy // The Natural Wedding Company

Floral wedding napkins with bird pin wedding favours // Photography Belinda McCarthy // The Natural Wedding Company

Fern and Dominic's woodland bird and country flower inspired wedding at their idyllic Somerset home village // Photography Belinda McCarthy // The Natural Wedding Company

Country garden flowers and herbs // Photography Belinda McCarthy // The Natural Wedding Company

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Charlie Charlie

TNWC Real Brides: Fern shares some of her handmade wedding details from napkins to paper garlands

Charlie

TNWC Real Brides: Fern shares some of her handmade wedding details from napkins to paper garlands

Real handmade wedding details

I am terribly behind for various reasons with my lovely Real Bride posts, so here is a post from Fern that she wrote in the run up to her August wedding sharing some of her handmade details like paper garlands, napkins, and table centre making. The photo of her little boy helping to paint the blackboards is just too sweet!

>> View Fern and Dominic’s woodland bird and country flower inspired wedding here <<

Over to Fern…

It’s all in the details

It’s less than five weeks to go to the wedding and I’ve officially turned into a crazy person. Not in a angry, bite your head off way, (ok only once) but in a running around the garden at 5.00 in the morning looking at pieces of wood and measuring how long my garlands are, and trying to work out which of my plants will be flowering in August kind of way.

I have had my first wedding dress fitting and we have all had our hair trial at the salon. So it’s all getting very real now. We are still working on lots of projects for the wedding so here are some sneak peeks, without giving away too many secrets.

Paper decorations

After making the envelopes for my invitations I was left with lots of strips of paper where I had trimmed the papers down to size. I was determined not to throw them away but find some way to use them to make something for the wedding. Then I found this idea (above) on Pinterest for paper garlands. I borrowed a die cutting machine and got to work changing all my strips of paper into little hearts and I have stitched them together on the sewing machine.

For the larger pieces of paper I have made some paper rosettes which, although beautiful, have required some deep engineering to stay in place.

Handmade paper rosette decorations // The Natural Wedding Company

Handmade napkins

I really don’t want too much of a colour theme at my wedding. There is some pink sneaking in to places where it counts, but I really don’t want it to be too “in your face”. I was really inspired by an idea for patterned napkins on Show Me The Pretty and decided to make my own for my wedding.

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Charlie Charlie

TNWC Real Brides: Vicky tells us about her locally sourced wedding meal and ‘help yourself’ popcorn dessert table

Charlie

TNWC Real Brides: Vicky tells us about her locally sourced wedding meal and 'help yourself' popcorn dessert table

Locally sourced wedding meal details from real bride Vicky

A weddig topic close to my heart – food! In the past I think wedding food has often been an after-thought, but more and more it’s becoming something that couples really put a lot of thought into. Here are Vicky and Steve’s plans for their wedding feast!

>> View Vicky and Steve’s DIY village fete wedding here <<

Over to Vicky…

A hog roast with handmade cutlery packages for guests

The food and drink we’ll be serving at the wedding is at the forefront of my mind at the moment as we firm up numbers and start to make the final purchases.

We decided from the very start that we wanted to keep it quite simple to help save the budget for other areas and keep the day relaxed. In the end we settled on a cream tea reception followed by a hog roast is the evening.

The hog roast was easy to organise as our best man’s father-in-law does these as a sideline to his farming. A quick chat on the beach, followed by an impromptu dance lesson (only in Devon!) and we had booked a hog and ram roast with a few roast potatoes thrown in the bottom for good measure. Excellent!

We’ve put together a little bag for each guest to pick up before they eat which have a napkin, wooden cutlery and a hand wipe in. They have been decorated with a personalised stamp which we found on Etsy.

Paper bag eco-friendly wedding picnic cutlery

A cream tea wedding reception

After that came the trickier task of finding a company to do the cream tea for us. Lots of the caterers we approached seemed keen to sell us their idea of what we wanted rather than what we wanted. A simple cream tea became a full-scale afternoon tea. It all sounded amazing but it wasn’t what we wanted.

Thankfully a friend then recommended the lovely Hannah and Sima from The Kitchen Table in Totnes. They have been brilliant, sticking to what we wanted, answering many questions about scone sizes (seriously, how did I turn into someone who worried about the size of a scone?) and even talking us down on quantities.

Even better they are advocates of using local produce, which fits our day perfectly. They will provide the mini pasty canapés, sit down cream tea and all the salads and rolls for the evening do, plus some vegetarian options. Their food looks beautiful and I can’t wait to try it all.

Salad with edible flowers

Victoria sponge wedding cake

They also put us in touch with Queen Bee Cakes, who make the most amazing wedding cakes and are a supplier on The Natural Wedding Company. Sadly they were already booked for our weekend leaving us with no choice but to try and re-create something similar ourselves.

So my lovely Mum and Aunt have gamely taken on the challenge of making the cake. From reading about other weddings I know this is quite common but my Mum is not the most expert of cooks, once serving up a dessert of sausage pie and custard – don’t ask!

Her cakes, however, are normally really good and with the amount of practice runs she’s been doing I’m sure it’ll be great, even if we won’t fit into our dresses any more! She will be making two sponges, which will sit on top of a fruit cake which my Aunt is busy soaking with brandy.

I’m planning on adding a liberal scattering of flowers and icing sugar to make it look pretty! Hopefully it will eventually turn out something like these cakes.

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Charlie Charlie

TNWC Real Brides: Fern’s plans for an afternoon tea reception with homemade scones and cake

Charlie

TNWC Real Brides: Fern's plans for an afternoon tea reception with homemade scones and cake

Real bride Fern shares her plans for an afternoon tea reception

Fern’s post today is full of lovely recipes (lemon and blueberry drizzle cake anyone?) and some great vintage finds, including an old seed tray her dad has upcycled into a drinks tray for their wedding. Go get inspired!

>> View Fern and Dominic’s woodland bird and country flower inspired wedding here <<

Over to Fern…

Collecting for our afternoon reception

We really wanted to have an afternoon reception rather than an evening one for our guests who will not be attending the whole event to celebrate with everyone straight away. The National Trust have allowed us exclusive use of the Old Stable Courtyard at Montacute House for us to serve refreshments for our guests and park our wedding car, but guest will be free to access the grounds as they wish.

Montacute House

We are planning to serve baked refreshments following our ceremony for our guests while we have photos taken. I have been really inspired by Charlie’s afternoon tea in the garden (and part 2 here) and have spent a lot of time reading and then re-reading the posts about it to absorb every ounce of inspiration. Although Dominic and I are not going for a full English tea party, I really want some colourful vintage china to liven up the rustic picnic and trestle tables we will be using.

Montacute House

I am searching regularly through our local charity shops for vintage china, baskets and cut glass. My ultimate bargain is the green china set which I found for £9 for the lot. I love the beautiful cut glass bird, another charity shop find, who will hopefully find a nice little home for the day.

The other items are a collection of charity and vintage shop finds, were my own already, or I am borrowing from friends and family.

Vintage picnic baskets and crockery

For months, we have also collected jam jars, coffee jars and wine bottles to display our flowers and candles on the day, now filling 2 suitcases. My amazing dad has cleaned up and varnished a seed tray he had for us to hold our glasses for sparkling drinks, I’m blown away with how great it looks, and my parents have also kindly lent us some parasols to keep the sun off on the day.

Upcycled vintage seed tray for wedding drinks tray

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Charlie Charlie

TNWC Real Brides: Em’s sharing details of the floral theme that’s emerging for her summer wedding at Norton Priory

Charlie

TNWC Real Brides: Em's sharing details of the floral theme that's emerging for her summer wedding at Norton Priory

Firstly a huge apologies from me as I am so behind on this year’s Real Brides posts. The lovely Em, Fern and Vicky have been diligently sending me their posts and I haven’t been posting regularly – so apologies both to them and to my readers who have been following along. 

Over to Em…

Floral theme for summer wedding

In terms of planning, on my first blog post I thought time was going quickly; now it is positively racing past. After deciding on a venue which was dear to our hearts at Norton Priory Gardens, and sending out the ‘save the dates’ in midwinter tones, I guess I began to sit back a bit as life carried on around the wedding organisation.

The twist in our tale has been that within months of sending out the ‘save the dates’ to close friends and family, I have landed a new job and we have sold our house – effectively meaning that we are literally upping sticks to make a new life together this year. Within a couple of months, we are hoping to move, get married and start new roles; so 2015 is becoming a big year for us all!

With that in mind, I am so glad that we made key decisions early on about a relaxed quite bohemian vintage feel to the wedding and had arranged the venue and location for the ceremony early on, as this has made it much easier to style what we wanted without becoming distracted by magazines, bridal fairs and the plethora of wedding related paraphernalia!

Norton Priory Gardens

Walled garden wedding venue

As we are based at Norton Priory in the walled gardens, we were both keen to have a floral theme to the wedding that brought ‘the outside in’, and this has precluded having any real colour scheme running throughout the whole day.

There will be a palette which nods to the wedding vibe, and deciding this linked to a vintage fun look has enabled us to tone everything else around key features for our day. While we made the ‘save the dates’ ourselves, with big – and fun! – life changes afoot, we had to think practically about our choices while retaining some creative control and quirkiness.

I didn’t want to sacrifice the individuality which was important to us, and we have trawled through lots of examples of designs to find images and styles which we feel suit our personalities.

I have to say books have been invaluable – I particularly like these three which I bought second hand and therefore saved a packet, plus it’s nice to think someone is passing them on after their own wedding/crafty projects! All of these books have given me ideas about print and colour which have informed my choices for the wedding.

Book inspiration for wedding

Books – Cath Kidston’s ‘in print’, Emma Arendoski’s ‘The Handcrafted Wedding’ and Lucy Morris’ ‘The Complete Vintage Wedding Guide’ all sourced from Amazon second hand.

Bright butterfly and floral wedding invitations

The invites we are particularly happy with, and these have been sourced from Not On the High Street, from a seller called Skinny Malink in Edinburgh who has a range of beautiful designs. The colours on the day invite really ‘pop’ and reminded me of Andy Warhol designs, which seemed perfect for the beginning of summer when the gardens will be a riot of colour.

Butterfly and flower wedding invitations

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Charlie Charlie

TNWC Real Brides: Vicky’s been creating her vintage railway poster inspired invitations for her Devon wedding

Charlie

real_bride_2015_vicky

Vicky’s back today to tell us all about the fab vintage railway poster inspired wedding stationery she’s had designed – I love this idea!

>> View Vicky and Steve’s DIY village fete wedding here <<

Over to Vicky…

Vintage railway post inspired invitations

It is now starting to dawn on me that our wedding is a lot closer than I want it to be and there seems to be an awful lot to do!

Much to Steve’s never ending dismay I am the sort of person who buys Christmas presents in October and arrives at the airport at least 6 hours before I should, just to be safe!  Organising a wedding where lots of it can’t be done until much closer to the time is killing me!  And driving him mad – so much so he’s gone off to Scotland on a motorbike holiday for 2 weeks!

However there was one major thing I was able to tick off of my ever-increasing list last month – getting the invitations sent out.

real_bride_2015_vicky10

Who to invite to our wedding

The actual process of deciding whom to invite has probably been the hardest part of the planning process for us so far. It seems that trying not to upset anyone while keeping the numbers manageable is a tricky balance.

One of the major issues was whether we should invite children or not. If we invited everyone’s children our numbers rose by about 20 meaning we had less space to invite other close friends. In the end we decided that we couldn’t invite children and luckily all of our friends seem quite relieved by this. They all say they are looking forward to being able to relax and enjoy themselves without worrying if their children are getting bored or restless. One of my bridesmaids is so excited at the prospect of being childfree that she’s booked the grandparents for babysitting duties from the Thursday until the Sunday!

A friend to design our invitations

When we announced our engagement one of my old friends, James, immediately offered to design the invitations for us. As he’s an amazing artist there was no way we were going to say no. I’ve always loved his work and have had a particular hankering for his vintage railway style posters for a long time. This seemed like the perfect opportunity to get him to do one for us.

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