Laura took tips from The Natural Wedding Book for the civilised start to proceedings with a jewellery-making class followed by afternoon tea (am still regretting not trying the eclairs but the sandwiches, strawberry tart and jam scone with clotted cream did for me).

The cheesy club (Richmond’s only club I should add) was probably not straight out of the pages of TNWB but the less said about that the better.

Cheesy club aside, this leads me neatly to the lovely Laura’s review of the aforementioned Natural Wedding Book:

I loved this book!

The best thing about it for us was that it inspired us to make as many things as we could for our wedding.

We really wanted to make our own invitations and orders of service and we found lots of ideas – we created a design using our own photos, printed on some lovely grass paper from ElliePoo. We weren’t quite brave enough to try the paper making recipe!

My fiancé’s mum is kindly making our cake and there are lots of lovely suggestions on how to decorate her delicious fruitcake.

Next weekend I’m off to a flower wholesalers armed with my instructions on how to make my bouquet, posies for my flowergirls and buttonholes for my fiancé and his best man. The pointers on which flowers will be in season are very helpful, and there are loads of ideas on how to create flower displays.

Ethically sourced rings and gifts are also really important to us and this book is full of suggestions on both.

We found out about FairGift who do a fair trade wedding list service from the directory which has contact details for lots of things any wedding planning couple will need.

It’s even got recipes for edible face masks… look out hens, I might just go and get a kilo of avocados for the hen weekend!*

Get your copy of The Natural Wedding Book

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Katie

*She didn’t – thankfully!

We had a very civilised tea party in the afternoon at my bridesmaid Jacqui’s house and then a naughty drag queen cabaret followed by Chinese food in Soho.

What was even more lovely is how supportive my friends are of my diet and lifestyle choices. Not many people understand about being a raw vegan, but my friends are used to it now, and everyone chipped in to make it a gorgeous and healthy tea party.

We had a raw chocolate mousse cake specially made by Charlie’s Raw Treats, as well as her brownies, figgy bites, lemon pockets and almond cookies.

My friend Blanka who writes Gracefully Raw made raw flax and vegetable crackers and the most amazing lemon coconut macaroons!

My writer friend John Tyson, even made a raw vegan chocolate mud cake (he’s not even raw – he googled it – how sweet!).

My favourite raw food mentor Karen Knowler once told me that champagne is raw too and so I had a LOT of that!

Of course there were lots of other non-raw goodies and I ate them all – gorgeous muffins, meringue (my favourite!), cute little sandwiches, gorgeous potato salad! Washed down with lots of Pimms of course!

Denise Duffield-Thomas  is the creator of Raw Brides – a website for savvy brides-to-be who want to look amazing for their big day and beyond. You can find out more at www.rawbrides.com and download a free ebook!

The greenest way to have a hen party would be, well… not to have one at all.

But I really love to go out with my girlfriends and I really want to have one! So I have decided to do it, but with as little negative impact on the environment as possible.

With a bit of creative thinking, maybe my free-range hens and I can even have some sort of positive impact…

My hen party is not a whole weekend. It involves no aeroplanes, long-distance car journeys, over-packaged food or fairy outfits and toys that we will chuck away straight afterwards. No pubs with patio heaters. It’s a good cheap knees-up with a special creative twist, and I’ve found the perfect ethical place to hold it.

At www.risc.org.uk you will see my hen party venue. It has big rooms for hire, a cave-like café-bar and a BAFTS accredited Fairtrade shop. Lots of local charities hold their meetings here, as well as local yoga groups, salsa clubs and other organisations. The local food co-operative www.truefood.coop Enduring Love download holds their markets there too.

It’s very local to me and to most of my friends, and is also close to both bus stops and a train station. So hopefully there won’t be too many fuel-heavy journeys.

I have booked a room for a jewellery-making workshop from my friends Lucie and Jo. These two trained jewellery makers will be showing the other hens and I how to make floating bead jewellery, charm bracelets and funky earrings. We will all have a chance to try out some beading techniques, and come away with something we’ve made that we can keep and wear.

I think it will be fun to have something creative to do, and with a bit of music and a few drinks the workshop could be a really good party to celebrate all things girly.

Then when we’ve made some nice sparkly things, we can go downstairs to the centre’s Global café for drinks and dinner. As we are a big party, we have been offered Global’s Ethiopian buffet for our dinner. This gives us a selection of casserole type dishes, some meaty and some vegetarian, with rice and Injera, an Ethiopian flat bread. Those that are not keen to try Ethiopian food can order from the normal menu which is stuff like baguettes, baked potatoes, falafels, soup, and other café staples. There are wines and beers from around the world and lots of organic ciders!

The food at Global is tasty and also ethical. Wherever they can they use organic, GM-free and local food, and for things that come from tropical countries they usually manage to find a Fairtrade version. They play all sorts of music from around the world and light all the tables with funky candles. It’s a lovely place, and it’s nice to know we’ll be putting our hen party cash into a business with really ethical aims. This will hopefully also appeal to everyone.

It can be difficult to create a hen party that is right for all your different hens. But this does not take a whole weekend out of anyone’s calendar or too much cash from our wallets. The jewellery and the dinner will probably come to about £15 for each of us, so even the penniless students in my hen coop should be able to afford it. Also jewellery is something that we can all do no matter how old or young we are!

My first job is to source the beads, wire and tools for the jewellery. I have posted a ‘wanted’ notice on Freecycle, but if I can’t find anybody willing to lend them or throwing them out, I will buy the bits online. If there is any material left afterwards I will give it to Lucie and Jo, or offer it on Freecycle… or maybe even take up bead jewellery myself! Who knows…?

Thunderball rip Ten of us shared three cars, and went camping for a weekend at Bore Place in Kent, where the Commonwork Trust www.commonwork.org run weekend courses in ecology, willow weaving, hedge laying, brick making and all sorts of other things, along with an organic farm, extensive gardens and nature reserves.

Joseph: King of Dreams psp

We took a two day course in green woodwork and willow weaving, where we learned to make all kinds of useful items from waste wood and willow. I made a mallet and a salad server using axes, shaving horses and a whittling knife. Jane, the bride leading the party, made a rounders bat and a planting dibber using a pole lathe.

And the next day all of us made beautiful obelisks from willow canes – mine is now on my allotment where I intend to use it as a bean frame.In the evenings, we sat outside our tents watching the sun go down on Bore Place’s beautiful gardens.

One wet evening we borrowed wellies from the farm, and followed a footpath around the edge of the estate to walk into the nearby village, where we enjoyed a lovely pub dinner. We walked back (in a somewhat wiggly line) by torchlight and fell into bed very tired, but having thoroughly enjoyed our woodland walk in the darkness.

Coming home from a long weekend with new skills, useful wooden tools I had made myself and lots of new friends, I felt that this was one hen party that had been really worthwhile. Jane, whose wedding is now fast approaching, really enjoyed a weekend away from the planning. And all the girls learned something new as well as getting to meet each other before the big day.

The whole thing, including a share of the petrol, our campsite, our food, our materials and our tuition by Underwoodsman John Waller came to a grand total of £130. Not bad for a weekend away with two days of expert tuition in woodwork thrown in!

• Billy Jack movies

I’ve seen some hen parties that really clock up the carbon and waste – whole crowds of women flying off to Prague for the weekend brandishing plastic wands, or staying in Britain but consuming vast quantities of imported alcohol in heated beer gardens, before binning their fairy wings and L plates and crawling into taxis for a long car ride home.

• Dance of the Vampires

Hen parties do often seem to be wasteful rather than creative. They are all about excess, and I do know many hens who have found the expense, and the drinking, to be too much.

I suppose the easiest way to be green about hen parties is not to have one. But of course, they are a great excuse for a good party with your girl friends, and I love opportunities for a get-together! So, I’ve been trying to work out how I can still have a hen party but without it being too damaging (to the planet or to our livers).

I would like my hen party to be cheap – within the budget of all my friends and family. I’d like it near home, so that we do not all travel a long way to reach it, and I hope it will give us all something interesting to do together, rather than just drinking.

Lucie, one of my best girlfriends, is a silversmith. Yesterday evening she and I put our heads together to come up with a creative hen party plan. We will gather all the girls together for a jewellery workshop, where Lucie will show us all how to make silver wire jewellery, twisting wire and decorative beads together to make our own earrings or bracelets. Then we will all have dinner together somewhere and probably a few drinks to toast our fabulous feminine creative efforts!

Lucie tells me that we will need a workspace where we can all sit round a table for the jewellery making. And as we will need to share the wire cutters and other equipment, I expect I will need to keep the group fairly small – but in a way I think that is a good thing. Having only a small group means we will be able to have a closer gathering. And jewellery making is something that will interest everyone – my youngest bridesmaid, my smartest colleague, my Mum, and all the rest – without breaking the bank.

If I can arrange for us to hold it somewhere we can all have dinner in the same building, then the carbon cost of the party will also be low.

I also like the idea of making our own jewellery because it is learning something creative. It may even mean that some of the girls wear jewellery to the wedding that they have made themselves, instead of jewellery from a shop that may have come from an unethical source.

Right – I’m off to find somewhere with a large table suitable for a jewellery party!