For many brides, a wedding is a culmination of a year or more of planning. You have spent countless hours scrutinizing every detail of your big day to ensure perfection. Whether you had an unlimited budget or chose to go the DIY route, your nuptials can help inspire other brides in search of their own beautiful wedding day.
If you are looking to have your wedding featured in a wedding blog, it can be overwhelming to know where to start. The wedding experts at McElroy Films compiled a list of tips to help brides increase their chances of success:
1) Submit Inspiring Photos and Video
Pick and choose the images to submit carefully. Most wedding websites and blogs are looking for magazine style photos. Photographs should highlight the most memorable parts of the day and show off all of the details that brides take time to create for their wedding day. You can look at past features to see the style of photos that the publication features to get an idea of the types of photos to submit. You can also submit your wedding video to increase your chances of being included.
2) Share a Great Love Story
When looking for real weddings to feature, many editors are also looking for an inspiring love story. Rather than writing, “the bride and groom met in college and got married a few years later”, brides should share details of their love story. For example, “Sarah and Nathan met in a history class in college and Sarah instantly thought he was charming and would be perfect fit for her best friend. So she set them up on a blind date. When her friend came down with the flu and couldn’t make it, Sarah and Nathan ended up hanging out instead. She had no idea that would be the beginning of epic love story.”
3) Follow the Guidelines
Whether a bride is looking to submit her weddings to a magazine like The Knot or a wedding website like Style Me Pretty, there are guidelines for submission. Some require images to be a certain size, others ask for specific credits for vendors. For the best chance of being included, brides should follow directions for submissions carefully. Even if an editor loves the wedding images, if they have to track down information, they may move to the next submission.
4) Offer Exclusivity
Nearly all wedding magazines and websites are looking to feature real weddings that are exclusive to their publication. Brides should do research to see what publication will be the best fit, and start there. If their wedding is not chosen, then they can submit it for other publications.
5) Be Kind.
Editors for leading wedding publications get hundreds of submissions each month. They carefully go through them to find the ones that fit their publication and current needs. Unfortunately, they can’t include every submission, so it is important that brides are gracious when dealing with rejections. Sometimes weddings aren’t a good fit at the time because of the season or current trends, but editors may be able to use it in the future and would be more likely to want to work with a kind bride.
Here’s a few blogs if you’re ready to try:
Green Wedding Shoes (http://greenweddingshoes.com)
StyleMePretty (http://www.stylemepretty.com)
Ruffled (http://ruffledblog.com)
Brides (http://www.brides.com)
100 Layer Cake (http://www.100layercake.com/blog/)
Wedding Chicks (http://www.weddingchicks.com)