Guide to Setting Up a Bridal Accessories Business in the UK
AN APOLOGY…
Last month we held our 3rd annual blog survey. We were super excited to receive your responses in the hopes of making Bespoke Bride an even more useful platform for those planning a wedding and were thrilled by the number of responses. This year was by far our most popular yet. We shared your feedback a few weeks later and discussed the ways in which this would be used to help us improve for the coming year. All in all we were extrememly pleased with how well we had done so far, you guys went out of your way to tell us how much you ‘loved’ our blog and ‘the variety’ of content we shared, some of you likened reading our blog to ‘chatting with your best friend‘ and we even received a marriage proposal!
But there was something troubling us?
At the end of the survey we gave you the chance to to finish this sentence…
“I would like to see more real weddings or styled shoots that ….”
And here are a few of the responses?
- Don’t exclude religion
- Are Multi-cultural
- Incorporate traditional church elements
- Feature same-sex couples
- That include all body types and relationships
- Explores other cultures and how they do DIY?
- Focus on older brides
- Have people that look like me! (multiracial, ethinically diverse)
- Include racially diverse couples
- More average looking people
- People of all shapes and sizes
And then there was this one…
“As a born again Christian there are hardly ever any real weddings or articles on Christian weddings… I feel like in our tolerant, anything goes society, wedding websites should also be supporting people of all faiths – not just Humanist and civil ceremonies as seem to be the norm.”
We have always been so passionate about sharing fun and unique weddings and we thought we were tip top at being diverse but a quick look through our archives shows that out of our last 16 real weddings only two of these were multi cultural (both were Hispanic), there was only one same sex wedding, we featured was just one church wedding, (although we hadn’t published any images of this) and the majority of brides/grooms were of white ethnicity.
And our styled shoots weren’t much better, out of 16 posts there wasn’t a single model larger than a size 10, just three featured a person of colour and only one featured a same-sex couple.
To say we were a little disappointed with ourselves was an understatement. We had been so determined to make Bespoke Bride fun and alternative, we hadn’t realised that there was a large proportion of people that were being excluded without us even realizing it. So, from now on, we will be making a concerted effort to ensure we are inclusive of everyone on Bespoke Bride, no matter your race, religion, culture, sexual orientation, size, even your disability, we want to create a space where diversity is celebrated.
But for this to happen we need your help! We depend on brides & grooms, their photographers and suppliers to submit these types of real weddings and styled shoots to us. If they aren’t being submitted, we can’t feature them! So if you are planning a wedding that you think suits our fun, colourful, DIY niche, please get your photographer to submit. If you are a photographer who knows a quirky couple that would look at home on the pages of Bespoke Bride then reach out. If your a supplier who is looking to create a unique styled shoot then maybe you can find some inspiration from the comments above and share your creation with us once it is complete.
It really is very important to us that everyone feels welcome here, we have never actively sought to exclude anyone and we can only apologize to those that may have felt that way when reading our blog in the past. We would love to hear your views on this and if you have any suggestions on how we can make our blog more diverse in the future, please leave your comments below.
Photographer: MANICPROJECT | Hair/makeup: Cassie Nicholls | Model: Camille Nugent | Dress: BCBG | Location: Salt Lake City, UT |
