It’s been a little quiet on the blog the past couple of weeks as I’ve been away on holiday with my little family to France.

We’re getting stuck back in with a lovely bee related blog post from TNWC Real Bride Miriam – it’s so great to hear how Miriam and John are incorporating meaningful elements into their that have such importance to the both of them.

Over to Miriam to tell you more…

Bee Happy – Love is Sweet

The natural world is very important to both John and I, and we hope to capture the magic of the great outdoors for our wedding guests. This concept fits in perfectly with our wish for an eco wedding and a 1920s style, when overflowing bouquets of locally grown flowers were abundant, as discussed in my last blog post.

We have tried our best to sneak beautiful British nature into every aspect of our Big Day, with heady scents and dazzling colour enveloping our guests and transporting them to our own idea of paradise.

Our first exciting wedding job was to create our “Save the date” cards, inspired by Charlie’s now infamous design that inspired the tie-the-knot version. In the place of brown card we used beautiful seeded paper by Wildflower Favours. This not only looks and feels beautiful with a gorgeous weighty quality, but planted in some damp soil allows our guests to grow some of their very own beautiful wild flowers.

Our seeded paper save the date

We are using a firm bee and butterfly favourite, lavender, to decorate our wedding tables. The fragrance is so evocative, sweet and relaxing – perfect for a wedding party. To make the smell intoxicatingly strong we have been busy tying stems of dried lavender from North Kent farm The Hop Shop around jam jars containing tea-lights from our favourite local candle makers, St Eval Candle Company. The heat, light, smell and colour are an exquisite combination!

Bunches of lavender from The Hop Shop

We continued our locally sourced, bee-friendly mission with our wedding favours sourced from the Porteath Bee Centre located very close to our home in beautiful Cornwall. Nothing could be sweeter than sharing the taste of British flora and fauna straight from the heart of our home. Delicious!

We are especially aware of the decline of important British wildlife, and bees are a notable case with the number of different UK species halved since the 1950s. Many don’t realise that without bees a third of our diet would disappear too – potentially causing a catastrophic food crisis. The least we can do is encourage growth of bee-friendly plants and support our local bee keepers on our special day.

The piece de resistance of our quest for locally sourced floral delights is finding the wonderful Pyrus via The Natural Wedding Company directory. Pyrus are the very epitome of “bee friendly”, with the most beautiful gardens supporting a thriving eco-system, as well as beautiful fodder for their inspirational floral artwork.

The ladies have even recently taken an apiary course, and may house their very own buzzing friends one day! Meeting with Pyrus filled us with confidence and excitement; their instant acute assessment of what we were looking for and their wonderful flexible attitude of using whatever flowers are at their best on the day of the wedding is beyond our wildest dreams of what wedding florists can be.

We can’t wait to see what they come up with for our Big Day!

Images: (1) Photos by Zoe; (2) Nic Rue for Pyrus; (3 + 4) Brides own pictures; (5 – 7) Nic Rue for Pyrus