The best wedding dress book of its kind: Relovable
Bunting and pompoms made from old wedding dress fabric
Can you recommend a good wedding dress book?
Being a wedding dress expert, you would have thought I could but no, I couldn’t either.
There are a few pretty ones, some advertorials, some gimmicky ones and some rare beauties. But nothing that really tells it like it is, under the surface, behind closed doors. The stuff you really want to know if you’re a bride to be. The kind you’d like to flick through if you were sitting in a bridal boutique watching your sister try on wedding dresses.
So a year ago, I wrote one myself and it’s almost SOLD OUT. The only wedding dress book of its kind, Relovable is celebrating its first birthday today, and what a year it has been!!
It is packed with insider information about wedding dress shopping, bridal fabrics, how wedding dresses are made, how the bridal industry works and heaps of ideas about what to do with your old wedding dress after the wedding. Together with the contributions and support of some brilliant creatives and boutique owners, we shone a light on sustainability in our industry and showcased the brilliant work of fashion students from the London College of Fashion and Farnborough College of Technology.
I launched Relovable at British Bridal Week in Harrogate this time last year at the invitation of Bridal Buyer Magazine and began a book tour that would take me around the UK from the Good Clothes Show at the NEC to Somerset House in London. I spoke at events, colleges and conferences, met some of my sustainability heroes (that’s you, Patrick Grant and Clare Press!) and threw probably the sparkliest book launch party my local village had ever seen.
This wedding dress book was featured across the media –national, fashion, bridal and lifestyle, and it sat in pride of place in my own online creative bookshop, amongst some gorgeous other books on circular fashion and creativity. Sadly I had to close the shop after a few months when I realised the only book that was selling was my own and I was never going to be able to compete with Amazon and the other bookseller giants. It broke my heart to admit defeat, but I learnt a lot in the process, it’s still available to buy from a dedicated page on my website and writing the book itself has been life-changing.
Relovable has almost sold out, so if you’d like to snap up one of the last copies available, for a wedding gift, anniversary present or just for someone in your life who loves wedding dresses, then find out more HERE. My book was sustainably produced by Hobbs printers in Southampton, a charity fundraiser for the amazing Fashion and Textiles Childrens Trust, and copies have been bought across the world from Australia to Texas, Italy to London. I’m most proud though to see it on the shelf of my local library and on the coffee table of the amazing bridal boutiques that have championed it from the very start.
You’ve probably heard the saying “You've gotta dance like there's nobody watching, love like you'll never be hurt, and sing like there's nobody listening”. Well, if you’ve ever dreamt of writing a book (and I think you should), then the best advice I can give you is to write like no-one will read it.
Write what you love and don’t hold back. Just start. One word at a time. You won’t regret it xx
