Good morning 🙂 Don’t worry! You’ve not landed upon the wrong site by accident! It’s the same Love My Dress® – we’ve just had a rather swanky make-over, so things are looking quite different around here.
I’ve been waiting for this day for what feels like so long now. I’m incredibly proud of what Love My Dress has become – a gorgeous little resource in Internet land that inspires, supports and encourages many people, but for a long time now, the blog has struggled to keep up to date with changes in the way information is blogged and shared online. We have a really strong following, our readers are loyal and they love what we do, but the look, feel and user experience of Love My Dress had begun to flag a little, and, dare I say, start to look a little amateur.
Fear of change, of losing work – of having to migrate several years worth of blog content (nearly 3,000 posts!) to a new platform – these and many other things caused a bad case of procrastination and prevented me from taking action earlier than now, but in January this year, I finally bit the bullet and committed to a complete rebrand.
Totally the best thing I ever have done for Love My Dress. Ever.
I can’t tell you how thrilled I am with this re-design. I’m over-the-moon happy with our new look. But what’s important to me is that you love it too.
I know it’s going to take a little getting used to – things aren’t where they used to be and change can cause confusion, but if my instinct is anything to go by, I think that everything is going to be fine.
Here’s a quick round-up of what we’ve focussed on:-
* Much cleaner, less cluttered pages
* Easier to access archived content
* An overall fuss-free, fun user experience
* An elegant, fashion illustration inspired vibe
* Lots of inspiring features to come – thanks to a brand new team of writers and contributors
We’ve still got a bit of work to do – you may notice a few changes rolled out this week – each of them designed to streamline your user experience and add to the pleasure and ease of visiting our blog. We also need to do some work on getting categories and tags right – but we’re working on that intensely and it won’t be long before everything is perfect. There are bound to be a few bugs here and there and I’d really appreciate your support in helping to identify where they are – if you spot something that doesn’t look right, please do email us on [email protected] to report the error.
You will find key categories to the top of the page – a useful ‘show menu/hide menu’ function means you can keep the menu bar out of sight for clutter-free browsing, or bring it up at your command. Useful drop down menus (covering era, colour, season and designer) are located in the right hand column – and other useful information like Recommended Suppliers, our ‘About page’, contact page, details of how to submit work and advertise with Love My Dress can all be found in the footer (go on, scroll to the bottom now and take a look!).
I promise this isn’t a Gwyneth moment but I really must express gratitude to some special people for being simply amazing. First up – superstar coder, designer, developer and the original Geek, is Ian Davenport of Swash and Fold (also of Big Bouquet). I commissioned Ian to produce our new blog and don’t think I’ve ever worked with anyone quite so brilliant, technically capable or knowledgeable about code! This project has been a huge undertaking and Ian has handled it like a Master of his craft – I’ve felt completely reassured every step of the way – what I thought would be a nightmare process has turned out to be a fun, educational and highly rewarding one.
Secondly, Tamryn Lawrence, my trusty colleague and new team member. Tamryn is a ray of sunshine – she sprinkles positivity wherever she goes and I adore working with her. She’s kept me sane throughout this project, but especially so over the past month when the pressure really started to hot-up.
Thanks also to the very talented Helen Simms for creating the beautiful new illustrations – you can expect to see more from Helen on Love My Dress over the coming weeks and months. And finally, thanks to the master scribe, Paul Antonio for creating an elegant new logo that I feel truly represents the essence of Love My Dress.
I’ve been saving all my very favourite submissions of the past few weeks ready for when the new blog was live. Our first real wedding feature will be blogged later this afternoon. You can also expect a months worth of brilliant competitions and giveaways in celebration of our beautiful new re-design.
That just leaves me to say that I hope with all my heart that you fall in love with the new Love My Dress® – that you find new joy in exploring our content and that visiting this blog leaves you feeling happier and more inspired than ever before. I’d very much appreciate your feedback below – please take a moment to leave a comment or ask any questions if you’re not sure about where to find something.
Now, would someone mind passing me a very strong coffee, please?
Love Annabel xx
