Blog: wedding preparations
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How to do a 10 minute facial using natural products from your kitchen

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How to do a 10 minute facial using natural products from your kitchen // Ellie Gill // The Natural Wedding Company

Our make-up artist friend Ellie Gill has put together a 10 minute facial for us using natural ingredients you’d find in your kitchen – now that’s my kind of beauty treatment. Back in the spring she talked to us about the benefits of a pre wedding massage and mentioned that she encourages her bridal clients to do a 10 minute facial in the lead up to their wedding.

I wanted to hear Ellie’s advice for her 10 minute facial, so she’s put together her tips and suggestions. Over to Ellie…

What’s your natural daily skincare routine?

In today’s busy world it’s so lovely to have a daily skincare routine. I find it so relaxing to just take a few moments to pamper myself and I genuinely believe that natural ingredients are the most beneficial.

I’m sure most of you will have experimented with making face mask as a teen. My friend and I used to coat our faces with lumpy bits of banana and egg when we had sleepovers. I always just thought it was a bit of fun and didn’t pay serious attention to my skin but fifteen years later and I’ve returned to the kitchen for some of my favourite beauty staples.

How to do a 10 minute facial using natural products from your kitchen // Ellie Gill // The Natural Wedding Company

A simple routine using natural ingredients

Through years of experimentation with various skincare products and a multitude of brands I’ve finally learnt that money doesn’t buy value and often the most expensive, cleverly branded creams and serums cause my skin to flare up.

Within my job as a makeup artist I see so many different faces. Time and time again clients with problematic skin seem to use lots of synthetic products with tons of suspicious ingredients. My clients with the best skin tend to have a more simple routine using natural ingredients.

So lets take it back to basics.

Top natural beauty products for a 10 minute facial

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TNWC Real Bride: Vicky shares all the details from the crazy week leading up to their wedding

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real_bride_2015_vicky

This is the final instalment of Vicky’s pre-wedding posts, next up we hope to share you details and photos from her actual wedding – so excited to see how all her plans turned out. Vicky and Steve have definitely been one of our most crafty couples in our TNWC Real Brides series, turning their hand to creating so many items for their wedding. If this sounds like you, then make sure you check out all her posts for some great ideas and how to’s.

But for now, over to Vicky…

The week before the wedding

The week before our wedding was one of the most enjoyable weeks I’ve ever had and definitely the most tiring. I’m sure all the other TNWC Brides would agree the downside of a truly personal wedding is all the work you have to do in that final week. You 100% need a band of willing helpers ready to muck in, as at some point you do have to go off and just be the bride, like finding time to collect your dress – amazingly I nearly forgot that one in all my list making.

Steve had taken the week off work before the wedding to help get things done and my family and aunt were also down in Devon for the week, while the best man stopped work and joined in the chaos on the Thursday.

real_bride_2015_vicky33

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The benefits of a pre wedding massage to relax and clear your mind to focus on the true meaning of marriage

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The benefits of a pre wedding massage to relax and clear your mind to focus on the true meaning of marriage // The Beauty Aisle // The Natural Wedding Company

Today I have a wonderful guest post all around taking care of yourself in the lead-up to your wedding by investing in wedding massage to help your de-stress and relax. I think we can too often focus on ourselves in terms of having a beautiful dress, hair and make-up for our wedding, but not actually in nurturing our inner self. Marriage is listed as one of the top stressful life events, we can end up so focused on putting together a wonderful day for all our family and friends, that we actually forget to give ourselves space to process what our wedding day is really about.

My experience of massage and other alternative therapies is that they are not only deeply relaxing but they also give you an incredible opportunity to clear and quieten your mind of all those racing thoughts and endless to-do lists. As a mother I now value those moments as incredibly precious, but I also recognised the importance of this in the lead-up to my own wedding. There are many ways to take this time for yourself, but massage is one of my favourites, and so I’m delighted that Ellie from The Beauty Aisle is going to share her advice on making the most of this wonderful therapy.

Ellie is one of our recommended make-up artists and offers a 10% discount to all our brides-to-be who book her for their wedding make-up, you can find full details of the offer here.

Over to Ellie…

The benefits of a pre wedding massage to relax and clear your mind to focus on the true meaning of marriage // The Beauty Aisle // The Natural Wedding Company

Why get a massage in the lead up to your wedding day?

So your wedding day is coming up. You’ve thought about the dress, flowers, invitations and venue but what about… yourself?

Planning a wedding is great fun but it can be stressful too. During this busy time it’s important to sit back and take time to relax too otherwise you risk suffering from burn out.

There are tons of ways to help you stay calm and collected in the lead up to the big day but I’m going to talk about massage as I know how it has benefited so many of my clients in the long term.

Massage is absolutely fantastic for reducing stress. Small amounts of stress are useful when we need to get things done but too much stress can be extremely damaging to our health. It can affect us in all sorts of ways from tension headaches and skin problems to interrupted sleeping patterns.

During massage your heart rate is lowered and ‘happy hormones’ are released. Many people think of massage as a real luxury but it should be thought of as part of maintaining a healthy lifestyle. It helps to relaxes muscles, improves circulation and it’s also detoxifying resulting in better immunity.

The benefits of a pre wedding massage to relax and clear your mind to focus on the true meaning of marriage // The Beauty Aisle // The Natural Wedding Company

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Our rustic country wedding – a church full of cow parsley

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As voted for by you, I am moving onto the flowers in the church before continuing with our wedding ceremony.  I’m excited to share this, because I just loved how the church looked, it was more than I could have dreamed of and we did it ourselves.

If this is your first visit to the blog you can catch up on all the details so far from our wedding here.


Mark Tattersall Photography

I’ve decided to show you photos of how the church looked and then go back to how we did after.  That way I get to show off all the pretty pictures first.  At the entrance to the church we filled two old metal milk churns with cow parsley and grasses – quite a wind picked up and I love how it looked blowing in the breeze.


Mark Tattersall Photography

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Our rustic country wedding – setting up the garden on morning of the wedding

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It has been so lovely to have our wedding featured on Love My Dress, but I know that some of my readers would like to see more detail, and there’s so many lovely photos it seems a shame not to share more of them.

Our wedding ceremony was due to start at 4.30pm, but we’d invited our guests to have afternoon tea in the garden from 3pm.  This meant we had all morning to get ready, which for a wedding at home was all about everyone pitching in to help set up.  So with less than an hour before people were due to start arriving this is what we were doing…

The tents were already up, but we had to get all the tables laid up. This is our lovely friend Kate, who along with her husband Tim set out all the crockery and place settings (among a long list of other things!)…

We hung lots of the jam jar lanterns we’d made from the tents, tying them on with twine…

Here’s Tim setting out more lanterns around the garden and hanging them from trees…

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Your help needed – where do I start with blogging about our wedding?

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1. Crafty DIY paper items
2. Collecting cow parsley
3. Sign painting
4. Jam jar lantern making

So I’m completely overwhelmed by the magnitude of trying to share photos and details of our wedding.  I just don’t know where to start and decided the best option would be to ask where you think I should start.

Today we have finally seen the ‘official’ photographs taken by Mark Tattersall, which will obviously follow shortly (and are incredible!), but there were so many DIY projects, handmade elements, collecting of gorgeous treasures in the lead up to our wedding that I want to share those too.

I’ve included a selection of images here as examples (saving all my favourite bits for later).


5. Building an ice cream cone holder
6. Collecting old bits and pieces
7. Tiny flag making
8. Freshly washed vintage crockery

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With two days to go…I haven’t got time to blog!

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It’s 10.30pm and we’ve just got back from a full day at my parents.  Most exciting news of the day is that my uncle made a surprise appearance…from Australia!!!  Can’t believe it, thought he wasn’t coming, and there he is at my house with my granny to help us get ready.  Lovely.

Today:

  • My granny and mom have cleaned, sewed, and washed up many, many pieces of crockery.
  • My dad and uncle moved furniture, moved rubble, and painted.
  • My little sister has been helping amidst revising for a maths exam (tomorrow) and English exam (on Monday) – she helped me put up bunting, make mini flags, and put a lot of tealights into a lot of lanterns.
  • Mr Rigg has been the packhorse today, moving lots of tables, chairs, glassware and crockery.
  • And me…I have done stuff I just can’t remember what (and this is what leaves me to feel like I’ve not done enough about this time of night).

Loveliest part of the day (apart from my uncle’s surprise visit) was picking cowparsley with my mom as dusk fell, we even saw a deer.

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With three days to go…we are busy busy busy!

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A totally nondescript blog subject line, but a bit pooped this evening.  All of us have been mega busy today:

  • Mr Rigg was up early to collect cider, then got to work ironing bunting, shifting gravel, painting guttering, to name but a few jobs.
  • My little sister came over to the cottage to help me print menus, decorate the flowergirl baskets, and a number of other making things.
  • My dad has been painting the living room and finishing off the downstairs bathroom.

The tents went up today (very exciting but can’t share photos yet!) and we ran through the plan for Saturday with my mom’s lovely friends who are going to be helping out.

And yes, with just three days to go until our wedding jobs like this are still going on…!

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With four days to go…we had a day out in the Cotswolds to remember why we’re getting married

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Today was all about having a day together to remind ourselve why it is we’re getting married.  It seems so easy amidst the wedding chaos to forget that we’re just two people who fell in love and decided to committ to spend our lives together.

So today after we picked up my wedding dress (so, so exciting!) and cheese, we spent the day together pootling about the Cotswolds.  We popped into Daylesford Organic and had a nice browse of their lovely products…

We went to The Kingham Plough for lunch and ate lovely seasonal, English dishes…

Then we had a wander around Lower Slaughter before picking up some freshly made mozzarella from Simon Weaver

Somehow tonight we must find the energy to keep going with our long list of tasks to complete before Saturday.

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With five days to go…we are running errands and printing our order of service

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Today we woke up in our sweet little cottage that we are staying in this week and had a nice brunch…

We spent the morning (and will continue this evening) printing our order of service booklets (apologies for the blurring, but got to keep it a secret until after the day!)…

And we’ve been beetling about in town picking up odds and ends (stamps, fabric, paper), and also picking up some old skool crockery…

Oh and a bottle of pink fizz to keep us going!

I promise that I’ll share all details of suppliers, where we stayed, honeymooned, and how I made and created everything after the wedding.

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