Thank you…

Last Friday afternoon, around 3pm New York time, 8pm London time, I found myself sat in a room on the 20th floor of The London Hotel – a glamorous hotel located in the heart of Manhattan.  The room was being used by Emmy Shoes to showcase Emmy’s new collection to buyers who were in town for New York Bridal Market (a huge trade event that happens twice a year, where designers from all over the world exhibit to sellers/stockists from all over the world).

I had been following my twitter feed closely all afternoon, checking my trusty iPad every other 30 seconds, knowing that this years Wedding blog awards, hosted by top-selling Wedding Magazine, were taking place at the rather swanky Savoy Hotel in London.  We’d been shortlisted for 3 awards and I had suddenly started to feel a mild wave of anxiety about the whole thing. Turning to my husband, I whispered, ‘you know what, maybe we won’t win anything but that’s totally cool’.  He gave me that knowing look and told me his intuition was saying otherwise.

As I sat supping on sparkling water and cooing over pretty kitten heels whilst trying to avoid all the flirtatious advances of jetlag, this news came in:-

Just as I learned that Love My Dress® had won the ‘Best Bridal Style’ award, I also discovered we had won the ‘Best Real Life Weddings’ award too!  If I’d have had the luxury of choice of which award to win, these would be the two. Amazing!

I feel I can barely find the words to tell you what this means to me personally.  Recognition for any hard work you undertake is always a reassuring and comforting thing, but to receive two awards in one night, knowing that those awards were legitimately voted for by our readers and those people who love and appreciate love My Dress, makes it feel like my heart wants to burst with pride.

As I’m in New York, I was obviously unable to attend the awards event, but my wonderfully supportive colleague and friend Tamryn Lawrence attended on behalf of our team, along with the delightful Caoimhe, one of our talented writing interns.  Here is Tamryn looking beautiful with both the awards we scooped that night…

There are  a few things I want to say as an outcome of winning this award, though I promise I’ll keep it short.  Firstly, I need to clarify that in accepting this award, I do so on behalf of my whole team – not just me.

The best thing I ever did as an entrepreneur and business owner was learn to delegate and focus on expanding my team, to enable me to move forward, grow bigger, be better.   Ever heard the saying ‘surround yourself with people who will build you up and believe in you’?  This year, I did exactly that and it has been the best business decision I ever made.

In February/March time, I took on a designer/developer, the ridiculously talented Ian Davenport of Swash & Fold.  Ian’s commitment to redesigning and rebranding Love My Dress – as well as migrating 5 years worth of blog content from Typepad over to WordPress (NO easy feat, believe me) has been a constant source of reassurance and inspiration to me.  About the same time, I also took on a new copywriter, the wonderful Tamryn Lawrence. Tamryn is a gifted and passionate writer and friend whose personal guidance and professional contribution to this blog has helped shape the positive direction I’ve taken with Love My Dress® in the past 12 months.  This year, I also gave in to my fear of letting other people write for the blog by taking on five writing interns, the wonderfully supportive Susie, Katie, Kate, Caoimhe and Rebecca.  On top of this, I have regular contributions made to the blog by the likes of Tiffany Grant Riley, Erin Hung, the Pocketful of Dreams girls and our fashion insider, Sarah-Leigh Bunting.  The last two names I need to mention are Naomi Kenton – a truly gifted photographer and dear friend, whose photographic contribution more than enhances the content of Love My Dress.  Finally, my trusty side-kick Lyndsey. We call her my administrator but she’s way more than that. The work this lady has done to transform my headache inducing inbox and organise super-efficient work-flows is beyond impressive.

When Tamryn got on stage last Friday evening to accept these two awards, she did so on behalf of all these people named above.  It might not be important to you that I name these people today, when all you want to be doing is looking at pretty wedding photographs, but it’s really, really important to me.

So often, I’m asked, ‘don’t you ever get bored of weddings?’.  My hand on heart honest response is no.  Never.  I adore being a part of this world, of this brilliantly creative and talented industry.  I feel so lucky that through marrying the love of my life, I was also given an opportunity to change my career and life.  I am living my dream and it is wonderful, and though I work really very hard (with very little sleep at lot of the time!), there isn’t a day that goes by that I’m not consciously, incredibly thankful for the people who visit and read these pages, who recommend Love My Dress® to their friends, who take time to vote for us to win an award.  Our sponsors, brides to be, industry designers, family, friends – everyone who expressed their congratulations on social media – thank you from the bottom of my heart for enabling us to receive recognition this week for what we do. We are thrilled 🙂

And a very big well done and HIGH FIVE to everyone else who picked up an award on the evening too! Team Love My Dress congratulates you!

To end, I’d like to thank Wedding Magazine for hosting these awards – your support to the blogging community is so very much appreciated.  A special ‘bravo!‘ too for supporting the wonderful Nu Bride blog in her quest to diversify the wedding media.  I am so incredibly happy that you awarded the beautiful Nova with recognition for her hard work and determination in supporting brides of colour.

Here’s hoping you have a great start to the week ahead – with reasons of your own to celebrate – even if it’s over the little tiny things that help make your Monday a lovely one.

Love Annabel xxx