Posts in Charity
The Wedding Wishing Well Foundation • The Founder Naomi

For a while now I have been dedicating every Wednesday on this blog to a charity, The Wedding Wishing Well Foundation, who I feel compelled to help. You can see the first post here.

I have felt completely inspired by their work, helping fund and organise weddings for terminally ill people.  

Then a couple of weeks ago I had an email conversation with their founder Naomi. You can read about Naomi here, but I wanted to meet her in person, to really understand her story and motivation for setting up the charity and we started discussing a potential series of posts going behind the scenes! 

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Last Friday I scooted down the motorway to their office in Taunton, a girly paradise in a warehouse type building. Naomi and her right hand woman Keri (with the help of their husbands) have created a peaceful and calm oasis on a little industrial estate, 5 minutes off the motorway.  

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Beautiful duck egg print wallpaper, wooden LOVE letters along a faux fireplace, twinkling jewellery under crystal chandeliers and dresses, lots and lots of dresses. It feels like you have stepped into a bridal boutique, until you see the certificates, awards and thank you cards pinned to the walls by their desks. 

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Sometimes you meet someone and you just click. Within a few minutes I knew Naomi and I are out of the same mould. 

Naomi talks about her cancer, yes she has battled cancer and yes it came back. She openly speaks about her movie script last few years from movie type love with her husband and the story of their engagement which made my heart fill with love, to awful experiences in hospital with broken backs, treatment and the days she was told each piece of horrible news, which made me feel how life can be so unfair. 

I actually said it's like she has lived many lives in one. That she has been given so much to deal with but at that moment looks, to the outsider like a healthy happy mother of one.

She describes their son Devon as a miracle, a baby conceived during radiotherapy who came into the world as a perfectly healthy baby boy. 

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Naomi has stage 5 cancer, the worst stage to have, the stage that means it cannot be cured. There were a few moments where I could have burst into tears but that seemed like a selfish thing to do. So I listened. When I said goodbye I actually had a strange sense of determination come over me, rather than feeling sad. Of course I felt desperately sorry for Naomi and her family but I feel even more inspired than before.

Fired up to help. 

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Naomi is one of those people who is extremely effective. Quite frankly she has to be, because her time is very precious.  

I loved that about her, that in a day she can make a tremendous difference to someone. She is creating an incredible legacy, and one that I want everyone to support. 

£5 makes a huge difference. It could mean covering the petrol cost for a cake maker to deliver a £300 wedding cake they have donated for free.  

Naomi is bursting with ideas for fundraising events and initiatives. She has a contact list any wedding professional would be envious of but as one person (2 with her wonder woman Keri) it takes time to get through to everyone, takes time to send each email, return each phone call. Naomi speaks at lots of events, helps raise awareness of breast cancer in schools and so every penny that is donated is greatly appreciated.

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I will go out on a limb and say that everyone who reads this post today can afford to donate £1. Less than the cost of a 99 ice cream that I am sure everyone will enjoy at least one of this summer.  

It only takes a minute to donate your £1 so CLICK HERE

Over the next few months I am going to be incredibly lucky and cover what the foundation really does. Weddings. They have started planning for a couple who will get married in Bristol and I am going to take you on the journey too. So you can really see where your £1 goes.

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Last month Naomi renewed her vows. To the man who is standing by her through everything. They had the wedding of her dreams (it helps Naomi was a wedding planner in her career) and that is where the idea for The Wedding Wishing Foundation was born.

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I hope you will follow this journey with a special couple and feel as inspired as I do to help. 

Wonderful Wedding Wednesday • Daisy Lane Floral Designs

I absolutely adore posting about beautiful weddings and it's led to me falling in love with the wedding industry in general! 

If you are new to my blog, every Wednesday I post a wedding related feature to support the work of The Wedding Wishing Well Foundation charity. I have posted the photographs from some of my friends and a blogger's wedding, to inspire you to donate £1 to help other couples have a wonderful day. Other couples where one of them is either terminally ill or has a life limiting disease. The charity desperately need your donations as they are receiving unprecedented numbers of applications.

This week I spent a day with Kirsten aka The Little Wedding Helper and Emilie the talented florist Daisy Lane Floral Designs. We were actually working together on a Christmas Photo Shoot at a beautiful hotel, Berwick Lodge in Bristol, rather than a wedding, but it was such a pleasure to talk weddings and styling whilst we listened to festive music! 

Emilie and I are fast becoming good friends (sometimes you meet someone and can almost hear that 'click' out loud) after I whizzed up to her studio at The Clevedon Craft Centre a couple of weeks ago. 

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I thought it would be interesting to read about a wedding florist as part of my Wonderful Wedding Wednesday series, to give you a glimpse into a day in the life of a florist.

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Emilie's signature style is romantic, pretty and effortless. She makes a formal arrangement look natural and there was so many varieties of blooms in her bouquets I needed an hour to take it all in!

Inspired by the countryside, she can create something stunning from a box of blooms (I saw her in action at the photo shoot and couldn't believe what she could present under pressure). Her attention to detail is what impressed me the most. The way the button holes were put together, the little touches that had personal meaning to her bride that day.

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Fortunately for me, her wedding was in a beautiful marquee, bursting with birdcages full of flowers, flower pots for the table plan and peonies wrapped around a wooden gazebo, in Weston super Mare, about 5 minutes from my home so I scooted down and took some photographs to share with you.

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I even got to play wedding florist and assist in arranging the miniature bottles and placing the 3 sprigs of lavender on the place settings! It was so much fun! There were 9 per table and 10 tables - I can tell you when they were all in one area, ready to be placed on the tables, that was a lot of bottles! I loved being behind the scenes, watching all the last minute preparations come together.

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I you have ever fancied trying your hand at wedding floristry then Emilie is your girl. She offers workshops and classes at her picturesque studio, complete with cake and tea in vintage china! 

To keep up with Emilie you can follow her on Twitter and Facebook.  

I have been thinking for a while that it would be great to share a little more about the charity itself and see for yourselves the work they do and one of their weddings. 

Watch this space. There is going to be an exciting new element to Wonderful Wedding Wednesday.  

Now do your good deed of the day and donate £1!  

Wonderful Wedding Wednesday • Nicky and Toby

If you have been following these Wonderful Wedding Wednesday posts for a little while - I wanted to say thank you and bring you something totally different this week. If you are brand new you have been missing out.

Just pictures. By the talented Sean Gannon

 

A Collection of wedding images taken at Greyfrairs in Surrey by Sean Gannon www.energyphotographic.co.uk Based in Central London, I photograph weddings across the UK and occasionally abroad. I photograph every wedding like I am a guest with a camera and I do not take over your day.

Please take a minute to donate £1 to The Wedding Wishing Well Foundation. Then take another minute and read about what they do.  

You can catch up on Wonderful Wedding Wednesday here, here, here and here.  If you want to nose at beautiful weddings and do a good deed, then these are the posts for you.

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