Real Simple Green Wedding: Janina & Lean

It's easy to get caught up in the razzamatz of a wedding, and obsess about every single wedding detail, cluttering your big day with too much fuss. At its worst, this can leave no space for the natural love and magic of a wedding day. Janina and Lean chose a simple green garden theme for their wedding, and let the natural beauty of the venue do the talking. The Babylonstoren is one of the oldest Cape Dutch farms in South Africa, with a beautiful kitchen garden. Janina and Lean drew on the garden's ingredients for wedding inspiration, and you're going to fall for every detail. Huge thanks to We Love Pictures for their beautiful images - I've had to split this wedding into three, there was just too much for one post! More coming soon, later this afternoon!

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Dreamy Rustic Green Tomatoes & Lace Wedding Shoot

When I stumbled across this stunning wedding shoot on photographer Stephanie Williams' site, This Modern Romance, I begged her to let me feature it on my wedding blog. Luckily she acquiesed, meaning you too can enjoy the combination of two of my favourite wedding vendors in the world; Temperley London and MaeMae Paperie. Throw in the fabulous US stylists Jen Campbell and Carissa Jones plus hair pieces from Lo Boheme and you've got some seriously dreamy wedding inspiration. My favourite stealworthy wedding ideas include the ribbon alter (seriously easy to DIY), the combination of white linen and rustic wood, the cotton balls in the table arrangements and the cool grey striped straws. Plenty more inspiration from Stephanie Williams here.

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Real Sunshine Summer Wedding: Erin & Steve

Plenty of gorgeous wedding details for brides to snaffle from this stunning summer wedding. Erin and Steve picked yellow for their theme colour for their garden wedding, and the weather obliged, as the sun shone all day long. I'm super-excited to see freesias in Erin's bouquet - with their sweet scent and many-hued blooms, I'm guessing they're going to be the go-to flower for 2013. Other wedding ideas to copy are the handmade cider glasses, replicated in graphic form for their order of service. Also loving Erin's use of rafia as a recurring design detail - simple, cheap and totally brilliant for a garden wedding. Huge thanks to the team at Our Labour of Love for these gorgeous pictures!

More posts like this one: 
✽ Rustic Raw Cotton Wedding Inspiration
✽ Real Rustic Cherry-Inspired Wedding

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Rustic Post-Wedding Shoot: Camille & Chris

Having swooned over all of Camille and Chris' wedding details, I've now fallen for their simple but sweet post-wedding shoot. I reckon it's the best idea EVER to organise some time with your wedding photographer the day AFTER your wedding. It gives you the opportunity to reflect on your big day, and collect a lovely album of pictures of the two of you relaxing together. Wedding days are always busy, so it's often hard to give enough time to your wedding photographer for portrait shots. The after-wedding shoot solves that problem. I love these beautiful pictures taken by M&J Photography. Try it yourself - all you need is a couple of simple props, a stunning natural backdrop, and two talented photographers! If you missed Camille and Chris' wedding, click here and here.

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Real Rustic Vintage Wedding: Camille & Chris - Part 2

It's time for the wedding reception pictures from this amazing detail-filled rustic, country wedding! With elegant parasols, handmade wedding favours, pretty doily decorations, and vintage fabulousness, you're going to want to copy every wedding detail for your own big day. Camille and Chris celebrated their destination wedding in Quebec in Canada, so all their DIY details were planned at a distance - no small feat! I love how they used luggage tags and a French Bistro style mirror as their table plan, and the pretty lace curtain makes the perfect backdrop for a photo booth. Other pretty reception decorations include the vintage lace table runners, the matching doily table numbers and the simple baby's breath and hydrangea wedding flowers. Love! Take a look at Camille's answers to the Before the Big Day's Bride's Questionnaire, for all her DIY projects and advice. Don't miss Part 1 of this gorgeous wedding here....coming soon Part 3, going live later today. Beautiful pictures published with thanks to the hugely talented Jonny and Morgane from M&J Photography.

We got married on July 7, 2012 in Mille-Isles in the province of Quebec, Canada, at the Fiddler Lake Resort. We visited several venues looking for a country-ish place where we would be celebrating our wedding outdoors, with the sun and mild temperatures of summer. 

We opted for the Fiddler Lake Resort because all our guests would be able to enjoy great authentic country cottages for a weekend {and week for those coming from overseas}. Also the Resort gave us 'carte blanche' for our wedding preparation, including no time limit for the party!

All of our decor was pretty much a DIY décor. We had a lot of fun looking for vintage, simple yet chic details and giving a second life to some furniture and pieces we found. Our theme was vintage-country and we asked our guests feel free to dress comfortably and to add a touch of vintage in their look! 

Our wedding color scheme built over time, as we were finding decor pieces bit by bit. Overall, we wanted to have white or cream flowers, beige table clothes and touches of cream lace here and there, as well a natural wood.



For our wedding favours, we made little candy bags out of brown paper bags, decorated with white doilies, and placed at each seat. We had the candies brought from France, the kind we know kids and adults are addicted to!

 We also had a lot of DIY projects but the funniest was making our lips and moustache favours for our guests! My handy husband mastered his scissors like no one, so we were done quickly! 

Our stationery kind of inspired our wedding décor. We chose them early in our planning, and bought them online at Minted. The process was so easy, I'd recommend it to any couple! We loved the lips and moustache vintage design, customized the text, and got our cards in no time.



We had tonnes of DIY projects, and worked as a team for months. I would buy used pieces in flea markets and Chris would help me give them a second life. We looked both for ideas online and shopped together - we loved it planning our wedding, and we'd do it again! Inspecting venues, talking budget, looking for suppliers, finding unique pieces everywhere and anywhere, making it our own, negotiating rates, thinking the entire day through and wanting the best to enjoy our time with friends and family - it was a fantastic experience!

We picked flowers at the last minute from a local florist. We ordered them by phone a week before the wedding! Arranging the flowers was another one of our DIY projects: we ordered a bunch of white hydrangeas in bulk, and placed in mason jars, along with some gypsophile or baby's breath.

We chose M&J Photography for our wedding photographers. We flew them all the way from France because they capture moments in a way that is so natural, without posing too much and from two different angles. Each one of them also accompanied my husband and me while we were getting ready, to be pictured separately. 

Jonny and Morgane are so easy to work with, and use everything they can to make the shots interesting and reminding us of the venue we chose. They just blended in with our guests so naturally that we did not feel that we had "paparazzi" at our wedding, something that often annoying for guests who want to approach the bride and groom!



My advice? Find compromises with your future husband by listening to each other's wish list and making priorities out of it. We both ended up getting the most important things we wanted! Don't take any suppliers for granted: our DJ abandoned the ship a week before the wedding and even the most professional suppliers need some directions and a good brief on how you want things to run before the event. If it is a destination wedding, guests should take care of their own accommodations and travel details, as the couple can quickly become travel agency and tourist bureau! 

♥ Want to see DIY wedding ideas? ♥ Or how about rustic weddings? ♥

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