So before you part with your hard-earned cash, you have to make the very difficult decision about who to work with. And, more importantly, who NOT to work with. With so much selection out there, it’s very hard to know who’s good and who’s good at talking the talk. So many brides I’ve spoken to have booked at least one “bad” supplier. And it’s taken the joy and excitement out of their planning. So how do you know if the person you’re talking to is the WRONG supplier?

Image source Pickerill Creative Blog (click the picture to visit)

So I’ve put together this handy little guide. Here are a few warning signs that tell you a supplier might not be right for you:

♥ They have their own ideas and keep using the words “should” or “ought to” – and they’re clearly not hearing your ideas and requests. A supplier should be listening to you after all it’s your big day, not theirs. While they do have a reputation to uphold and they might only want to do a certain type of wedding, if that type isn’t what you’re after then it may be best to look elsewhere. Great service is bespoke – but if that’s not what you’re getting it’s probably time to move on.

♥ Their default setting is “no”. “No” is a very serious word in wedding-land and should only be used for the most unfeasible of ideas. If a supplier is telling you something can’t be done when it’s quite a reasonable request then they might not be trying hard enough. (However, if lots of suppliers are rejecting one of your ideas, you might want to re-examine why that is).

♥ They’ve quoted you well over the odds. Make sure you get a few quotes and shop around to see what’s reasonable. I’m not saying great suppliers shouldn’t charge high prices, but if a chair hire company, for instance, is charging you £3 more than a competitor per chair, you know there’s something not quite right.

♥ This one’s mainly for venues and planners, but if they take commission from other suppliers instead of getting you savings when you book through them, they’re really not worth your time. It’s hard to tell if they’re doing that, but ask the question outright (in a polite way) before you sign up to work with them.

♥ They don’t seem that interested in your wedding. Maybe they haven’t answered your emails or phone calls in months, or just get in touch when it suits them. Perhaps they just don’t seem quite “into” planning your day as they should be. Whatever it is, you want enthusiasm from your suppliers otherwise how are you going to have confidence that they’ll do a great job?

♥ You just don’t click. For whatever reason you don’t really get along. It’s nothing personal there’s just no chemistry there. I know it sounds more like dating advice than wedding supplier help, but it seriously helps to get along with your suppliers. It makes a huge difference to how you feel about dealing with them.

♥ They’re an existing friend. You want your friends to enjoy your big day. As much as it might be tempting to take up a friend’s offer of mate’s rates, it’s probably best to get someone a little more removed from you personally to do your wedding. Otherwise wires can get crossed and friendships can get awkward.

What would make you think twice about booking a supplier? I’d love to hear what you think!

All images © Cassandra Lane Photography

Cass is a Birmingham-based photographer, but works all over the country and internationally. She has a BA in Photographic Arts and became a wedding photographer when planning her own big day. Cass feels the experience of getting hitched to her husband Josh and being in front of the camera has really helped her to empathise with couples and get the best out of their wedding photographs. (And also lend a hand with any wardrobe malfunctions that come her way…)

“I would describe my style as creative wedding photography as my work is influenced by my fine art photography background. I try my very best to reflect a couple’s personality with their photos, producing images that are quirky and contemporary. I always go the extra mile when it comes to searching for locations for engagement shoots in order to bring an alternative twist to the final images.”

The Prize

♥ A full day of coverage – bridal preparations, ceremony and reception (until the first dance).

♥ High-resolution photographs provided print-ready on a disk.

♥ An engagement photo shoot in a location of your choice.

♥ Runners up will receive £50 off if they book their wedding photography with Cassandra Lane Photography.

How to enter

To enter simply fill out the entry form below. Cassandra will then be choosing her favourite wedding themes and making a shortlist. We’ll then publish the finalists and put the winning entry to a public vote! So make sure you describe your theme, decorations and ideas in as much detail as possible to maximise your chances of winning!

Competition closes Friday 2nd March at 1pm

[contact-form]

T&Cs

- Open to weddings taking place from now until 30th April 2013.

- Subject to availability on the wedding date.

- Albums are available to order separately and are not part of the package.

- Travel expenses within 2 hours of Birmingham are included. 

- Travel expenses over 2 hours from Birmingham will be priced individually.

- If shortlisted the content of your entry (apart from your contact details) will be published on underthevintageveil.com

- If shortlisted, you will be required to provide a photograph of you as a couple for the resulting blog post

So about a month ago I was having a lovely Twitter chat with Rachel (the editor of Vintage Life – in the words of Bruno “no big deal, vassever”) and she mentioned she needed to talk to me. Now, being one of those obsessive email-refreshing types, the suspense nearly killed me but it was so worth the small wait to talk to her.

We chatted on the phone (oh my goodness she is one very lovely lady) and she started to tell me about a new magazine she’s working on. Unique Bride – it launches in April and it’s going to be a hub of serious wedding amazeballs for brides who are a bit off the grid. Something like me.

In fact, the whole ethos of the magazine was sounding so much like the Under the Vintage Veil philosophy I was properly on board – immediately offering up any help with promotion. But Rachel went one better – and here’s where it gets really good.

It’s pretty much my lifelong dream to become a magazine columnist – I used to write long letters to women’s magazines begging them for work experience when I was younger. I pretty much gave up that dream when I saw how much a magazine journalism masters cost and decided to self publish on my blog instead.

So when Rachel casually offered me a column in this incredible new magazine, I can’t actually describe the level of excitement. John came home to find me in the living room. Doing the Snoopy Dance. As you do.

But being the perfectionist and serial worrier that I am, I wanted to make absolutely sure that a.) they got the right girl (for the first few days I was convinced it was a mix up) and b.) that my column was good enough to be printed. With a publication date secured, I felt now was the right time to tell you all that I’ll be regularly writing for Unique Bride Magazine as a columnist and I couldn’t be more excited about it!

I have every faith that this magazine is about to rock the wedding world – and I’d love you all to join me on the journey as I take on this new phase in the blog’s life!

So I urge you all to go and like the Unique Bride Magazine Facebook page, follow the Twitter account and get ready for the arrival of Unique Bride Magazine in your local WH Smiths on the 26th of April! If you’re not a fan of cookie-cutter weddings, get ready for some serious weddingy awesomeness.

Emmy Scarterfield launched Emmy Shoes in 2004 after working for the likes of Georgio Armani.  After identifying a gap in the market for luxury wedding shoes, Emmy’s intuition paid off, and the business has grown with a boutique in Islington- London, a growing number of stockists that offer the custom made service, an online boutique and collections of hair decorations.

All images © 2012 Emmy Shoes

Catherine

The Love Letters Collection mixes sexy 1970s shapes with super high heels and delicately intricate embellishments, inspired by birds, insects and the sea.

Esta

As with all hand-crafted Emmy Shoes, the highlights are in the fine detailing and finishes. The love letters collection exudes a subtle bohemian sexiness. I have to say the name is spot on – I’m completely in love.

Sorrell

So that’s it – I’m sold. Anyone fancy buying me a pair of these beauties? But seriously, statement shoes don’t come much more beautiful and ornate than this. Emmy Shoes is the epitome of luxury and soft, feminine style. Anyone else have serious shoe lust?

I am a nice guy… girl… most of the time (I mean nice most of the time. I’m a girl all of the time) so I’m going to use a general example rather than pick on someone in our lovely industry (solidarity folks).

Steve Jobs. A man with a vision. A man with no time for imperfection or incompetence. A man who’s standard of competence was so high it was almost impossible to meet. A man who kept his employees working for days on end without breaks. A man who pitted teams of his workers against each other in order to deliberately divide, conquer and come up with great products. A man who will never be forgotten by the world.

And, by all accounts, not a very nice man at all.

In the cut-throat world of business (yes, even the wedding business – it’s not all teacups and bunting) it can be easy to start to get despondent when you see people who don’t come across as necessarily the nicest people succeeding. It can lead you to think that the only way to get ahead is to be aloof, cold, condescending, maybe even rude, maybe even cruel. It can sometimes look like that’s the only way to earn respect – by being too available you might look needy, that success equates to superiority.

But that’s just a load of old hocum (yup – I said hocum). Some of the world’s most successful brands are built on kindness, openness, sensitivity, honesty… look at Tyra Banks, Stephen Fry, Oprah Winfrey… all people who have built their brands on being honest and open – being themselves, or at least enhanced versions of themselves.

The “nice” brand may not get people gushing over you – it may not make people fear you or have a sort of cool, distant respect for you. But it’s also a very meaningful and rewarding way to become successful. It forges genuine heart-to-heart connections with people, it touches people, it helps them in their day-to-day lives and it inspires them.

Gandhi said: “Be the change you want to see in the world” – so why not be brave enough to be nice?

However, if you are naturally quite a nice person, you want to avoid getting walked over, or the other pitfalls that can come with being open and friendly. Here’s a little guide on building your brand on kindness:

♥ The old cliché – be nice to people on your way up. And it’s so true – while you’re on top of the world make sure you don’t forget the people who helped you get there. All that goes up must come down. The good news it can bounce back up again, but rarely without help. So don’t burn any bridges when you feel you’ve “made it”. I have an actual list (yup) of people who’ve helped me in my career. A list. Yup.

♥ Don’t be bitter. Bitter isn’t a “nice” trait. Yes, it can be difficult to see people succeed when you don’t necessarily feel they deserve it. I’ve been guilty of it. But quite honestly I’ve come to realise lately that I’m not the authority on who deserves success and who doesn’t. I’m also wasting valuable time and energy worrying about what makes other people successful. Being myself is what’s got me this far – so why not take it all the way and just wish everyone else the best? If I “deserve” success, I’ll make it happen for myself.

♥ Don’t let people walk all over you. There’s a difference between being firm and being nasty. Saying “no” to things you don’t want to do, discounts you don’t want to give etc. doesn’t make you a bad person – it means you’re being true to yourself and valuing what you do. Find a nice but firm way to say no. The best advice I’ve been given is by another industry bod who’s done very very well from being nice (I’ll keep her anonymous as it was a private conversation). She reminded me that I’m running a business and not a charity. I do get a lot (I mean a LOT) of emails every day asking for help. If I think I can help and if it’s good for my brand, I’ll do it, but I’m starting to cut back on the amount of favours I’m doing, the amount of small discounts I give etc. and it really makes a difference to the time I have every day to get things done. That doesn’t mean that I’ll never help anyone out, it just means I’ve realised I can’t be a crutch to the whole world.

♥ Having said that, do be accessible. Don’t ignore people who’ve said nice things to you on Twitter etc. Give people the time of day, especially when they’ve helped you out. Take a second to thank them. It’s OK to talk back to people – it doesn’t look needy – it’s an egalitarian principle. I’m constantly hearing about how much people like certain magazine editors etc. because they’re NICE and they don’t ignore your messages. I’ve never seen anyone lose respect as a result of treating people like their equals.

♥ Be genuinely nice. As in don’t just be nice for the sake of branding – if you don’t click with someone, don’t gush over them. Be polite, be kind, but also try to be real.

♥ Sharing your feelings is OK! Just accept responsibility for them and talk about them in a constructive way. For example, it’s fine to voice jealousy, as long as you own it, it’s not fine to trash someone out of a place of jealousy.

♥ Keep disputes private – even if you’ve been wronged, it’s never OK to tweet publically about it or blog about it. I did it once and it looked so pathetically unprofessional I immediately felt awful and deleted it. And again, the same industry bod who helped me out before gave me some more words of wisdom – to keep negativity away from my business. And yet again she was right. People shouldn’t see what’s going on behind the scenes. Being open is one thing, but branding and professionalism is still important.

♥ Finally, enjoy what you do. If you love what you’re doing, people will feel the love. If you’re buoyed on and positive, people will respond in kind – and positivity attracts positivity (no matter what science says) so keep smiling, even if you don’t always feel like it and put a positive message out there. It may not attract the “cool kids” but it’s the nice kids that will connect with you long term.

What do you think, businessy types? Does being nice get you nowhere? Or do you choose who you work with or follow based on their persona? Brides, do you read blogs based on the blogger’s personality? Leave me some comments!

“The wedding was between Louise Boulter & Sam Wilkins on Saturday 24th September 2011. They met at the Wimbledon School of Art where they were both doing fine art degrees. They chose Westbury-on-Trym Village hall as it could accomadate their 130 guests, was close to their family homes & was affordable”

“Run by volunteers, a lot of the decoration and styling has to be done by the couples themselves which can be too much to do or cope with when you want to relax the night before & enjoy the build up to the big day!”

“I enjoyed every minute of styling this wedding with bunting, vintage china that had been collected by the families & flowers from the local flower market. Cupcakes were made by the brides friends & doubled up as a favour & place name!! It really was a relaxed & beautiful wedding reception to style & thank you to Dawn Wilkins of for the photographs.”

But right now I really want, no, need to talk about how I’m feeling about my weight.

I’ve always been quite chilled out about my weight. I’ve never been one to put it on fast, I’ve always been naturally quite slim. And it’s very easy for me to tell my friends who have been unhappy with their weight that they look great and not to worry – because they really do. I have so many curvier friends who look wonderful and who don’t need to lose a single pound in order to be more attractive or to feel better about themselves.

I’m really pro-diversity and whatever feels good when it comes to people’s weight. If someone’s skinny then they’re skinny. If they’re larger, they’re larger. It’s never been an issue for me – I’ve never thought anyone more or less of a woman because of their weight or size, or more or less attractive.

That’s why the feelings I’ve been having about my body for the last few weeks have confused me so much – in fact completely knocked me over.

The reason being: I feel fat. Yes, I hate that word. It’s a terrible word and I’d never use it to describe anyone else. I don’t feel it about anyone else. I don’t judge about anyone else. But when I look in the mirror, lately, all I see is fat. The worst kind of fat. The “fat” that’s used in the most derogatory way, the “fat” that’s all my fault and the “fat” that will be the thing that stands out on my wedding day, in my wedding pictures, forever.

Every rational bone in my body is telling me it’s just a bit of extra weight, it’s normal, my back’s been out, I’ve been working from home, exercise has pretty much gone out of the window, of course I’ve put on a few pounds. It’s not a big deal. My BMI is smack bang in the middle of the “healthy” range, plus I’m still squeezing into size 10 jeans…

Except none of that matters. It doesn’t matter that I don’t think a bit of extra weight looks bad on other people. It doesn’t matter that I know I’m perfectly healthy. It doesn’t matter that I know I can probably lose a few pounds if I put my mind to it. The anxiety that’s come with it has started to spiral out of control. I’ve started to avoid looking in the mirror, to delete photos of me the minute I see them. I can’t even look down when I wash without feeling tearful.

So what’s brought on this sudden body-shape anxiety? Well, for a start, I have put on weight. Not a lot, but enough for me to not feel like myself any more. I’ve always been smaller and the shock of zips getting stuck, of jeans feeling tighter and tighter, of them not fitting at all has hit me hard. It’s not that there’s anything wrong with putting on weight, I just wasn’t expecting it. It creeped up on me and now, I think the biggest issue is I don’t know how to identify myself any more. Am I now officially in the larger category? Is my body how I imagine it or has it changed beyond my recognition? Can I lose this weight or is this who I am now? While most people’s weight fluctuates, mine never has. This is new territory. And why do I feel the need to categorise myself by my weight at all?

The second thing is the wedding. The obsessive need to look like “me” (whoever that is) in my wedding photos – the pressure to fit into a dress that the shop ordered a size smaller than I would have liked on the somewhat bizarre assumption that I’d definitely lose weight before the big day. The first dress fitting is in a month and I feel like I’ve lost all my confidence in my own body.

I’ve talked about weddings and body confidence before and how there’s a degree of pressure to look perfect for your big day. I just never realised how susceptible I was to it until now.

So yes, while I might preach about how feeling good is more important than looking good, I’m afraid I’ve fallen victim to the idea that I need to look like a perfect version of me. Despite my logical, educated self telling me not to worry, a dress is just a dress, a body can change, it probably doesn’t even need to that much, I have to say I’ve not been feeling great about myself.

I’m afraid I can’t offer a solution in a neat, bullet-pointed structure. This is a journey I need to go on before I can dare to tell anyone else how to handle it. But all I can say is, I hope that whatever my body shape, I can start to see myself as beautiful, like I see all my friends and people who are pretty much the same size as me as gorgeous. I hope I can apply the standard I apply to the rest of the world to my own body – and I hope I can get through this without it taking over the joy of getting married in just six months now.

But on to cheerier things. Yesterday I managed to ward off the back problems long enough to exhibit at the amazing Miss Vintage Wedding Affair.

Before I even start on the incredible line up of exhibitors, I just want to acknowledge someone who did a particularly spectacular job yesterday. The organiser, Amelia of Vintage Floral Teas was just out-of-this-world fantastic. The minute I spoke to her about the fair I knew it was going to be something special, her calm organisation was second to none. Not only this but this was a truly vintage-inspired day, worthy of any vintage wedding fanatic. It was, as a result, so busy, that we completely ran out of all marketing materials! Unprecedented. It went off without a hitch and Amelia should be very proud of herself.

So there were some really top, top exhibitors there yesterday. I’ve compiled a few amateur snaps of my faves from yesterday (please forgive me – I’m not a photographer or an editor). I really hope you enjoy them and next time (because there has to be a next time) you’ll all see why it’s imperative that you come to this frickin’ awesome wedding fair.

All images © 2012 Under the Vintage Veil

You may have caught this fabulous pair at the Designer Wedding Show, but in case you missed them, they’re giving one lucky Under the Vintage Veil reader their very own Flower Ann headpiece, worth £160, showcased below with the wonderful photography of Modern Vintage Weddings.

Image © Modern Vintage Weddings

Image © Donna Crain

How to win

All you have to do to win this incredible prize is pop over to the Under the Vintage Veil Facebook page, hit “like” (unless you’re an existing liker) and leave a comment on the Facebook wall letting us know why the Flower Ann would be perfect for your wedding outfit!

The competition closes on Wednesday, 22nd February 2012 at 1pm.

The best bit is, brides get in free, and their friends can accompany them for just £1. A serious bargain given the chance to chat to and experience some seriously amazing vintage-inspired products and services in person.

So here are all the important details:

And in case you’re wondering what to expect from my stand, here’s a round up of my last wedding fair with pictures of the Under the Vintage Veil stand.

Looking forward to meeting you all there!