BESPOKE BRIDES BEST OF 2018!

Welcome to the final post of 2018! I adore writing these posts, we are so often caught up in the moment that we forget to look back and be thankful for how far we’ve come in such a short time. For both myself and Jess personally, it’s been a year of change (for the better!) and although this hasn’t affected Bespoke Bride directly, I think it will be the start of us looking at making some changes in our business lives too, as we move forward into 2019. The new year ahead is going to be full of exciting things including a HUGE new business opportunity and it’s also the year I’ll become a wife! Eeeeek!! So as you can imagine we are eagerly awaiting what adventures are yet to come. But for now, grab a cuppa and some choccie biccies as we enjoy our best of 2018.

Another exhilarant year for travel, I kicked off 2018 with incredible memories of our trip to Sri Lanka. I wrote two travel guides, that mapped our way around the south side of the island travelling from Colombo to Sigiriya, where we climbed what felt like mountains, then on to Kandy & Ella. The next leg of out tour saw us going on safari in Udawalawe, whale watching from Unawatuna and finally allowing ourselves to relax in Bentota before we headed back to Colombo, for our flight home. It was the perfect way to start the new year!

We couldn’t believe it when just a few months later we were contacted by Crirut US, who invited us along to be guest speakers at Cricut Mountain Make-A-Thon, a three-day event in Salt Lake City. You might remember we were invited last year as influencers, but never in our wildest dreams did we think we’d be welcomed back, this time as speakers! We were super thankful to Cricut for the opportunity to share all we’ve learnt with the attendees and were so sad when it was all over. In those few days it was like we’d made a whole new wonderful crafty family and we look forward to hopefully returning again.

It was thanks to one of our new found crafty friends that we discovered The Hall of Breakfast (thank you Crafty Gentleman). We had such a small window of time that we could make it to the exhibit and when we found out it was bookings only, our hearts sank but we headed over there the next day hoping for the best. When we arrived, we explained we were heading back to the UK, but we couldn’t go without seeing the museum and thankfully the guys there were super understanding and let us go in. It was beyond anything our colorful dreams could have imagined, I think both me and Jess could have lived in there quite happily for the rest of our lives!

Once we got back it wasn’t long before Jess was hoping on a plane to Mexico to meet her sister who she hadn’t seen for nearly 4 months. The two spent the next three weeks exploring Mexico and Jess wrote this colorful guide to San Cristobal, Chiapas.

Within a few weeks of Jess being back, we were both boarding a plane again for a quick trip to Nuremburg. Of course this was for business and we will be able to share more about that meeting with you next year but for now we have to stay schtum. All you need to know is that it’s going to be very very exciting!!!

On that note, this year has also had its fair share of exciting projects, as we launched 8 NEW sticker collections in the shop including a custom option, quotes from famous TV shows, Stranger Things and Friends – which have proved to be very popular, as well as quotes from Pitch Perfect, Legally Blonde and if your a fan of chick flicks then we have a compilation set just for you. For Halloween we also launched quotes from our favourite Halloween film Hocus Pocus and just in time for Christmas we launched our sticker set featuring quotes from The Grinch.

But we didn’t stop there! We designed two new fashion ranges in collaboration with Rock On Ruby, which included fun t-shirts and PJ’s for you and your girl squad…

… AND a new range of greetings cards, for when a boring old ‘congratulations’ just won’t do!

Image by XO and Fetti

On the blog we continued to share inspiring real weddings. We couldn’t be more thankful for the couples that choose to share their stories with us, they really are THE BEST!! My favourite wedding of the year was truly awesome by name and awesome by nature. Instead of taking her husbands surname, Michael Ann and now-husband Tom legally changed their last name to…… wait for it… AWESOME! I promise it’s like no other wedding you’ve seen before and I doubt you’ll ever see a wedding like it again, because let’s face it, there can only be one Mr and Mrs Awesome.

Image by Jonny Barratt Photography

Whilst your favourite was this Colourful DIY wedding in London. Not wanting to get sucked into the ‘wedding day insanity’ as the bride put it, the couple hired an at gallery and filled it with hundreds of handmade paper flowers, among lots of other DIY decor. This wedding really is the epitome of Bespoke Bride.

Image by Philip Andrukhovich Photographer

We also couldn’t forget this beautiful tropical destination wedding in Croatia, I mean how dreamy!!

Image by Cinder & Vinegar Photography

And this dog-lovers wedding was just to cute to handle!

Image by Olivia Taylor Photography

This year was also another epic year for styled shoots! Honestly, there are some seriously creative wedding suppliers out there. We are so lucky to be able to share their visions come to life with you. This fun fresh bridal shower was the perfect way to welcome Spring.

Image by Kiex Fotography

Have you thought about having your wedding at an amusement park? No we hadn’t either but these creatives certainly knew how to make the dream come alive.

Image by Whit Photography

You guys know how much we love color around here so you know that we couldn’t talk about inspiration and leave this shoot out of our roundup. From the neon signs, to the geometric welcome board and everything in between, these bright and colorful wedding ideas were easily one of our favorites of 2018.

In the meantime we did what we like to think we do best and got stuck into creating lots of helpful planning tools and advice. One of our most downloaded printables was this Last Minute Checklist, which I have a feeling I’m going to need to use myself next year.

Speaking of which, we also gave away these free downloadable wall papers for your tech, have you got yours yet? I’ve just updated mine to ‘9 months to go’ and already I’m itching to change it to the next one, eeek!!

Jess has created some incredible DIY’s this year, honestly her creativity always blows me away! This hula hoop photo display was easily one of my faves!

And this pressed flower seating chart was a very close second!

And as if all that wasn’t enough we also we also launched our very first project for Cricut Design Space this year. This had been a dream of ours for several years and 2018 was the finally the year we saw it happen. The range includes these abstract glasses, a mobile phone case and a cushion cover. Expect to see many more projects in the New Year!

Phew! Well that’s it for 2018, I can’t wait to see what the new year has in store. As always thank you for you’re ongoing support, if it wasn’t for our readers and customers we wouldn’t be able to keep doing what we love. Sending you all lots of positive vibes for a very wonderful 2019!!!