Guide to Setting Up a Bridal Accessories Business in the UK
BESPOKE BRIDES BEST (AND WORST) BITS FROM 2016!!
Photo by Through The Woods We Ran
With Christmas over it’s time to start looking forward to what the new year will bring, with the months ahead full of possibilities, it’s an exciting time and we can’t wait to see what it has in store for us.
As many of you will know 2016 hasn’t been the easiest of years, in fact, I would go as far as to say its been the toughest, both in a personal and business sense of the word. As I am sure many other business owners can relate, as the year draws to an end, the struggle to continue to stay motivated is real. It can sometimes feel like your in a uphill struggle with no end in sight, so I think it’s especially important, at times like these to reflect on everything we have achieved in the past year. By reminding ourselves of all the goals we have accomplished we can truly appreciate how far we have come.
So let’s start by taking a look at the posts you found most helpful this year!
2016 was the definitely the year of the printable! You guys went crazy for our ‘How Well Do You Know The Bride’ and Porn or Polish? quizzes. In fact they are now one of our most popular posts of all time and our most pinned posts on Pinterest. We are so glad that you guys love them as much as we enjoy creating them and we can’t wait to dream up even more unique free printables for you guys in 2017!
One of our main goals for 2016 was to take our DIY’s to a whole new level and I like to think we knocked that one out of the park. Our Beyonce Lyric Glasses were so popular that within minutes of the post going live we started receiving ‘orders’ from people all over the world which could hint at a new direction for Bespoke Bride in 2017.
Photo by Sarah Eubanks Photography
Real weddings continued to be one of our most read posts which is great news as we love sharing stories from real brides. This Blooming Beautiful Geometric Wedding was our most popular weddings yet and its not hard to see why when you get an eyeful of all the gorgeous decor, much of which was handmade by the bride herself.
Photo by Pictures by Katie
John and Melissa’s Fairy Tale Beach Wedding was quite the subject of conversation on our social media and you only need to take one look at that amazing pink Vera Wang gown to understand why? I have a feeling we will remember this dress as one of our favorites for many years to come.
Photo by Matt and Jess
And the best love story had to go to Sarah and Alasdair. Their Rustic Wedding in a Birmingham Art Gallery was one of the most beautiful ceremonies we have ever laid eyes on and the story of how they met was like something straight off the pages of a romance novel.
Photo via Sugar & Cloth
Another of our goals for 2016 was to create informative and useful content for brides and grooms to be. Being a bride to be myself I understand how important it is to have information, that is both easy and quick to read, whilst also being pretty to look at and easy to save or share. So we started creating more list posts and the one you found most helpful was our list of 25 Yummy Batch Cocktails.
2016 has seen our Instagram account gain over 10k followers, making it our second most popular social media. We have noticed a huge increase in the number of brides that now use Instagram to help plan their wedding so it wasn’t surprising that our 40 Instagram Accounts to Follow for Beautiful Wedding Inspo was another extremely popular post this year.
Photo by Priceless Memories Photography
In other news we were invited to a wedding event by Notonthehighstreet.com, Jess was whisked away to Cinque Terre & Florence for her birthday, we released our brand new media pack, added even more videos to our YouTube channel, held a bridal brunch for Shutterfly, won ‘Best DIY Wedding Blog’ at the Wedding Blog Awards for a third year running and top it all off, I turned 30 in Cape Verde and was thrown the best Surprise 30th Birthday Tea Party a girl could ask for!
On the face of it 2016 might have seemed to have been a fairly easy going one for Bespoke Bride, the blog has gone from strength to strength, we have had the opportunity to work with some fantastic brands and have loved every second of what we do, but there has also been alot going on behind the scenes to make major strides into turning Bespoke Bride into more than just a blog.
2016 didn’t start so great for us as we were forced to pull our crowdfunding campaign due to a lack of interest. This meant all plans for the marketplace went on hold and as the site needed some serious updates, we decided to stop promoting it all together and spend our time looking for more investment so that we could make the much needed site improvements. Anyone that knows anything about investment will know that searching for investors becomes a full time job in itself, making contacts, emailing, pitching, attending social gatherings – it can really start to take it’s toll.
But in March, things started to look up when we were contacted by a potential investor who had seen us at previous pitch event and was interested in making an investment. We held a meeting and was ecstatic when we learned they would like to go ahead with their investment. This has meant building a whole new site which will merge both the blog and the marketplace and will fix some of the issues being experience by both our suppliers and customers. Work began in the summer and now the site is nearing complete, we are working hard behind the scenes to sign up new suppliers so that when the new site launches next year, it will be with a bang.
So as you can see, 2016 although tough has been a pretty huge building block in making Bespoke Bride bigger and better. 2017 will see the launch of a whole new site as well as an exciting new project and honestly can’t wait to hear what you guys think of it.
As always we wanted to end by saying a huge thank you to all our suppliers, brands, readers and team members for your support and making this an amazing place to be. We couldn’t do this without you and we look forward to having you join us for another year.
Here’s to 2017!!!
xxx
