Guide to Setting Up a Bridal Accessories Business in the UK
We Were Interviewed By Rock N Roll Bride!
Good morning beauts! I’ve got a little light reading for you on this bank holiday Monday! As I’ve mentioned on here before, attending The Blogcademy was one of the best business decisions we ever made, HANDS DOWN. So when Kat, owner & creator of Rock n Roll Bride got in touch to grill me about my experience of The Blogcademy I was more than happy to blow the beautiful blogging trumpet and share with future students just how fabulous and beneficial it was!
Photo Credit: Matt Somerville Photography
Here’s how the interview went…
We love the changes we’ve seen you making to Bespoke Bride since the workshop in January, especially the amazing rebrand and redesign of the site! What did you learn in class that inspired you to make such big changes?
Thank you! I think one of the most eye opening points that stood out to me from Shauna was that your brand isn’t just about your field of work or genre, it should be about you. You are your own brand. This really resonated with me because looking at Bespoke Bride back then we were just so CLICHÉ! URGH. Honestly, the site design couldn’t have been further away from who me and Emily are but we made the classic mistake of creating the site to look how we thought the audience would want it to instead of how we really wanted to. We also learnt that using a standard WordPress theme is OK for a while but if you really want to up your game then you need to ditch that preset!
There are some super affordable and much more professional looking themes out there that really did change the entire feel of Bespoke Bride. In a world that now seems like everyone has a blog the best thing you can do is stay true to yourself and what you believe because chances are, someone else is already covering what they think the audience wants and in fact, I think that what people are really looking for now is something a little more honest and a little less standard.
Has the overall vision or direction of your blog changed since the class at all? We’ve seen some new regular features cropping up!
Absolutely. We came to realise that there are so many wedding blogs out there that literally just blog real wedding after real wedding after real wedding with nothing else to offer on the site, no business advice, no personal opinions, no wedding advice which is fine for some people but for us, we really wanted to be a wedding blog that stood out as being a little bit different. I learnt at The Blogcademy that people come to your blog for your content but they stay for your personality! (Which our site had NONE of before attending the class). You couldn’t even distinguish if it was me or Emily writing posts which looking back on is absolutely ridiculous because we both have such different opinions! It was time for a major personality upgrade!
Photo Credit: Matt Somerville Photography
We got together to talk about what we really loved and what made us different and so we introduced a few non-wedding related features such as cooking DIYs, home DIYs (since I’m quickly becoming obsessed with interiors) and our Off The Record feature where we talk about what we’ve been getting up to away from the blog that week. We get that some people won’t care about these features but we also get that we’re expanding and appealing to a much larger audience too!
The community and engagement around your blog seems to have come along in leaps and bounds since class. We hear a lot more wedding industry folks mentioning Bespoke Bride in the list of top UK wedding bloggers! What’s your secret and how do you think you’ve been able to get your name out in such an over-saturated market?
Do you?! Oooh that’s exciting! I suppose the key has been personality. I feel like we’re slowly becoming a wedding and lifestyle blog instead of purely weddings, so I suppose that in itself kind of separates us from the wedding market slightly! However, I think one of the most important things we did was to stop comparing ourselves and trying to compete with the massive wedding blogs and instead start creating our own niche. As I said before, I think brides and grooms are looking for more inspiration on showcasing their personalities in their weddings now which is something I’m proud to say we provide. Perhaps more and more people are becoming bored of having the same weddings as everyone else and more and more people are looking for ways to switch it up a bit!
I would also like to add that getting out and meeting people is one of the best ways in getting your name out there and socialising and being genuinely nice to people! Nobody wants to work with or collaborate with someone who’s known for not being very nice! I can honestly say that some of our biggest opportunities have come from meeting people in person and forming relationships with them. The very reason I’m even getting to write this interview is because I got my ass up to London and attended the Blogcademy where I met SO MANY incredibly creative, fantastic and amazing people! Keeping those relationships are also important too.
How would you like to expand or improve your blog in the next 12 months? In your wildest dreams, how would your blog look and feel next year?
We would love for our readership to continue to grow and would love to have more of a presence on social media. It would also be fantastic to have more gorgeous sponsors sitting pretty in our sidebar and be able to be blogging full time so we could focus more on producing new and exciting content and features!
Photo Credit: Matt Somerville Photography
In my wildest dreams I would be blogging from my new holiday home in Mexico overlooking the sea! We would both love the blog to feel like a community and to be in the top 10 wedding blogs in the UK. An award wouldn’t be too bad either! Ha!
But I think most of all we would love to be a well known wedding and lifestyle blog amongst brides and grooms and be known for being one of the most helpful and inspirational wedding blogs out there! The most important thing to us is being helpful to our readers and remaining true to ourselves.
You can read the rest of the interview here over on The Blogcademy Blog!
And if you’re considering attending one of the classes…stop considering and start purchasing that one way ticket to incredible advice and mass amounts of inspiration! Or alternatively get the creative cogs in your mind working on a scholarship application!
Much Bespoke Love
Jess xx
Hello! I discovered your blog through Rock n Roll Bride and just wanted to say your interview was great to read, I loved seeing how you had changed the image of your site (I am desperately in need of a face lift for mine too) and love this new look. I’ll be back again!
xx
Inspiring read girls! Can only hope that my blog becomes as successful as yours. Really enjoyed reading it and you two look like you’re having so much fun too 🙂
Awww thank you so much for saying something so lovely Samantha!! We really are having the time of our lives and we wouldn’t change it for the world! Its lovely comments like yours that make this really worth doing and I am pretty sure with hard work and determination you will be exactly where you want to be with your blog too 🙂 Good luck!
x x x