12 TIMES 2015 TOTALLY ROCKED!

I have to admit I am a little sad to be waving goodbye to 2015. It has been a tremendous year for us, full of exciting new projects and milestones and one or two challenges along the way. We started the year with big ideas, we wanted to continue to grow our brand and came up with a list of things we would like to achieve by the end of the year. It was June before we realised we hadn’t really even come close to achieving any of our goals and it was time to make a few changes. Fast forward 6 months and we have all but achieved one of our goals but that is a story for another time.

2015 has been the biggest year for Bespoke Bride yet and with the launch of BB boutique, 2016 promises to be even bigger. I honestly cannot wait to get started and continue growing this amazing community of ours. For now here is a look at some of the things we are most proud of…

1.We fell in love with Instagram all over again! Instagram has long been our favourite social media platform but up until this year, we never really felt like we were using it to its full advantage. As our Instagram is an attachment of our blog, we thought it only made sense to share wedding related content however, we never really felt like it was a true reflection of our brand and we were falling in love with Instagram accounts that were wonderfully curated and colourful. We longed to make ours a creative outlet and it has since been the best thing we have done. Not only has it become a place to share our own creativity but we have been introduced to the most amazing community of Instagrammers, many of which we have since welcomed to our blog.

You can see some of their DIY’s here: Cute Edible Donut Necklaces by Aww Sam, Christmas Light Cookies by Obsessive Cookie Designer, Autumn Leaf Pinatas by Sugar & Bash, Bird Cage Veil by Wear the Canvas, Celebrate Tassel Cake Topper by Bright Bold Design, Pastel Pumpkin Cookies by Obsessive Cookie Designer, Free Printable Fruity Cards for Well Wishes by The Lovely Drawer, Floral Envelope Table Plan by The Lovely Drawer.

2. Meanwhile we taught you how to create a watercolour headscarf and the Mollie Makes team liked it so much they featured it on their blog too!

3. We had a ball collaborating with Free People to create this festival styled wedding shoot and got to work with so many fabulous wedding industry peeps.

4. Of all the projects we took on this year, styling the last ever Blogcademy was the most fun! We are used to styling small areas for our own DIY’s and photoshoots but never have we had to style an event. It was a challenge to say the least, but we had so much fun doing it and it has inspired us to do a little a more styling in the future. You can see more from the event here.

5. I never imagined we would be sharing news of an engagement with you this year and I never in a million years thought it would my own, but I am over the moon that it is and I cannot wait to start sharing our wedding planning journey with you! You can read our proposal story here.

6. A particular highlight was launching our new subscription service, BB Crafty Club. This was one of those projects that we had been sitting on for a while and we were so excited to get it off the ground. Unfortunately after 4 months we have now decided to cancel the service as being completely honest the numbers just weren’t adding up, but the support for the boxes has been so fantastic. So we will be using this feedback to rethink the boxes and how we can improve them and they will be back with a bang in 2016!

7. Jess travelled to the Dominican Republic! Actually Jess travelled quite a bit this year. Here is her Dominican Travel Guide & check out her Travel Diary to!

She also went to Santorini, which looked like the most beautiful vacation! Check out her Santorini Travel Guide & Video Diary here.

We also got to spend a very festive two days in Copenhagen, which we will be sharing with you in the New Year.

8. Our Ombre Tulle Skirts featured in Issue 4 of Rock N Roll Bride Magazine and we couldn’t have been anymore excited. There is just something about seeing your work in print! If you missed the magazine you can see the tutorial here. 9. We won ‘Best DIY’ wedding blog at the Wedding Blog Awards for a second year in a row! 10. And we were awarded ‘Highly Commended’ in the Best for Bridal category at the Cosmopolitan Blog Awards! 11. The highlight but also the most terrifying moment of the year had to be the launch of our big 2 year project – BB boutique. Within just just an of launching we had hundreds of visits and the response was truly phenomenal. We realised fairly quickly that if we were ever going to keep up and more importantly grow, our team of two needed to grow quite urgently which led us to the next biggest and as equally terrifying project… 12. We launched our first Crowdfunding Campaign with Seedrs! We remained in soft launch over the Christmas period, which meant only people that we invited could see the preview but we are excited to announce that the campaign to raise £80,000, already has over 40 investors and is 13% funded. We will be going public with the campaign the first week of January, which is going to be intense but we had some amazingly supportive people behind us and we are truly looking forward to what 2016 will bring.