Love My Dress

A UK Wedding Blog & Style Diary Offering Daily Bridal Inspiration

LoveMyDress.net

Of the many UK wedding blogs I have visited, Love My Dress is the only one that has a dedicated page, which offers guidelines and instructions to the readers on how to explore and get the best out of this wedding blog.

If you visit similar wedding blogs and wedding websites, their home page could easily leave you bewildered with its length and creative categories. In their defence, such long pages full of high quality photographs are essential to drive home the message. However, if you are a first time visitor trying to explore these wedding websites, chances are that you may need some help in order to understand their sitemap. This is where Love My Dress scores over other UK wedding blogs. It has a separate section dedicated to teach the amateurs on how to explore & get the best out of this wedding blog. You can be rest assured that you won’t get lost exploring Love My Dress.

Annabel is the owner and author of Love My Dress, which she established in November 2009. The inspiration to establish a blog came from her 15-months’ Internet research as part of her wedding planning. Annabel’s penchant for her wedding blog led her to become a full-time wedding blogger in March 2011. According to Annabel, Alex.com stats as on 29 March 2011 show that in just 18 months of its existence, “Love My Dress has become the most visited UK Wedding blog in the UK with c.90,000 unique visitors dropping by on a monthly basis, and leaving over a quarter of a million page impressions behind them.”

Another exciting feature on Love My Dress is the newsletter titled ‘The Exclusive’, which is free to subscribe and contains exclusive reader content, offers and promotions. It is sent to the subscriber’s email as soon as it is published.

Love My Dress also features a diary, which details the schedule of popular wedding and bridal related events and exhibitions happening in and around UK. Annabel makes it a point to attend most of these events and exhibitions personally and present you with the first-hand account of everything (exciting or otherwise!) related to the event.

Annabel also recommends certain brands on her wedding blog that offer wedding related services, like bridal wear designers, photographers, artists, stationers, bridal accessories’ suppliers, florists, wedding and event planners, hair stylists, and many more.

The blog posts on Love My Dress are an inspiration for soon-to-be-brides with articles covering plethora of topics ranging from wedding planning, designer wedding collections, personal engagement, wedding and honeymoon stories of real brides, wedding ideas for DIY weddings, and plenty more. Although Love My Dress covers every kind of weddings and engagements, yet Annabel devotes special attention to Vintage inspired, Chic and Elegant, and Do-It-Yourself weddings.
You may get lost in the huge maze of interesting articles on this UK wedding blog, don’t miss out on the artistic photographs that are carefully selected to
represent the true essence of the accompanying article.

Rock My Wedding is one of those rare UK wedding blogs that gives the soon-to-be-brides gazillions of wedding ideas sitting in the comfort of their own homes. You may visit hundreds of wedding websites and wedding blogs in search of those unique wedding ideas to make your day, but a blog that extensively covers every facet of a wedding is a rarity.

Rock My Wedding was created by newly-wed Charlotte O’Shea in October 2009 with an aim to inspire the soon-to-be-brides with several wedding ideas. The blog posts are updated on a remarkable regularity thanks to the efforts of Rebecca Norris, who regularly contributed to the blog and finally joined it in November 2009, and Adam Crohill, a versatile designer, developed and blogger. Together with Charlotte, Rebecca and Adam have made Rock My Wedding a must-visit wedding blog for any soon-to-be-bride.

So, what makes Rock My Wedding special?

Firstly, the blog is categorised quite intuitively. Who can guess the nature of a website with categories, like ‘Beauty not Beast’, ‘Undress’, ‘Chic & Unique’, ‘Style Savvy’, ‘The Facts of Wife’, and ‘Our Big Day Our Way’? Dig a little and you will be amused to find sub-categories under ‘Beauty not Beast’, like ‘How to’, ‘Need to Know’, ‘Product Love’. Before you double-guess the contents, allow me to break the suspense here!

‘How to’ sub-category will give step-by-step instructions on topics such as how to look ravishing during spring time. The instructions are replete with high quality photographs along with complete information about the kind of make-up you should wear. Similarly, topic like how to DIY bridal hair will give in-depth details about the hair styling processes that can be followed at home without paying a visit to an expensive salon.

Through ‘Need to Know’ sub-category, Charlotte tells her own story in order to drive home some essential facts that soon-to-be-brides must know. They may be fretting over their looks, their figure, their ‘imperfection’, etc. before their appointed day. But one reading of this sub-category should relieve them and allay all their fears.

‘Product Love’ sub-category informs about the essential products for the soon-to-be-brides and from where to procure them.

This trend is repeated under all the other categories as well.

The readers are also encouraged to send in their wedding ideas. After rigorous sorting of the entries, the successful ones are posted on Rock My Wedding. This is a limited period contest and no surprises that the number of entries is often huge.

One thing that stands out in Rock My Wedding blog is the quality of photographs, which is simply awesome. No details are missed in the pictures, although at times, they seem too many on a single page. The message is conveyed so subtly and so graphically that the readers are left with no room for imagination regarding the instructions and information contained on the blog.

A little time spent in exploring this rare UK wedding blog is worth the effort. The key in researching this stunning wedding blog is to be patient. You may not get excited by its first look, but the more you get into it, the longer you’ll stay with it.

www.rockmywedding.co.uk

Your Big Day the Rock n Roll Way

Photography credit David Mcneil

This has to be one of the finest UK wedding blogs that I’ve come across on the Internet. Though it’s been referred to as a “Mecca for gorgeous photography and inspiring real weddings”, yet there is something that this blog offers that other wedding websites simply overlook. And that is the creativity with which Kat Williams presents all the information on her blog.

This creativity was given wide media coverage by leading publishing houses like The Guardian newspaper,  Southern Weddings Magazine (US), The Sunday Times Style Magazine (Ireland), Cosmopolitan Bride, The British Journal of Photography, Easy Living, Company, Tattoo Revolution, Perfect Wedding, Wedding Ideas, Wed Magazine, and The Daily Express newspaper. The list of achievements for Rock n’ Roll Bride includes:

• First position in the Best Style Blog category of the 2010 Bridal Blog Awards hosted by The Wedding Channel and The Knot
• Inclusion in BrideTide’s Top 100 blogs to watch for years 2010 and 2011
• Profile in the book, ‘Working 5 – 9’ by Emma Jones, founder of the home business website “Enterprise Nation”
• Cited as one of the top 5 wedding blogs by Elle Magazine (UK)

Apart from her blog, Kat Williams is a decorated writer and public speaker (she also writes monthly articles for Photo Pro Magazine & WEDDING Magazine). Her claims to fame include:

• Photographed for London Tattoos (a book, due to be published in September 2011)
• Invited to speak at the Unveiled Photography Conference in July 2010 hosted by The British Journal of Photography
• Invited to attend the Designer Vintage Bridal Show in February 2011 as a special guest
• Made her catwalk debut at The Luella’s Boudoir Wedding Fair, held at One Marylebone, London in March 2011
• Invited to speak at The Mark Niemierko Academy, a training  course for wedding planners in May 2011
• Invited to speak at and at a photographer’s workshop alongside Feather Love Photography in September 2011.
• Organising Jasmine Star’s first her first ever workshop in the UK for July 2011

Started in 2007 as a website to document her own wedding planning, Rock n’ Roll Bride was rebranded and re-launched in January 2009 as a UK wedding blog with distinct touch of ingenuity infused through Kat’s enthusiasm, passion and persistent efforts.

The idea of inviting submissions relating to the stories of their weddings, anniversaries and honeymoons, along with the choicest photographs of the event, was something that, at that time, was foreign to the UK wedding industry. In fact inadvertently Kat had started a blogging revolution. Rock n Roll Bride was the first UK wedding blog and where she began, many followed in subsequent years. Besides her own contribution to the blog, Kat’s readers have immensely contributed to the success of her wedding blog. Each of the blog post is worth reading and every photograph tells a unique story of the event.

Kat just does not publish all the posts she receives. Only those submissions get the nod that impress Kat the most. In fact, Kat lays special emphasis on the quality of photographs to be published along with the post. The creativity, artistic skills and a sense of capturing the mood must be reflected in the photographs before Kat approves them for submission.

Rock n’ Roll Bride is one of the premier and widely covered UK wedding blogs, which not just promotes your celebratory instincts, but also shares your events with the world.

www.rocknrollbride.com