Having grown up as neighbours, Meghan and Kevin became best friends before getting together in high school. They wanted a wedding that was loud, casual and easy to organise so Las Vegas it was! They had their ceremony at the Punk Rock Museum followed by a pizza party at Atomic Liquors. “Getting hitched in Vegas was screaming our name and when we found out the Punk Rock Museum did weddings we knew we found the right venue”.”, they said. “It was the perfect mix of what we love and who we are.”

Inside a room lined with vintage punk posters, both of Meghan’s parents walked her down the aisle. Berlin from Hellbent Hitchings performed a personalised ceremony, while the couple kept their vows private. “We walked down the aisle for the first time as a married couple while Punk Rock Girl by the Dead Milkmen played. We then roamed the museum taking photos with our favourite memorabilia and even got to hold and play some famous guitars from punk rock history!”

For the reception, they went to Atomic Liquors which needed no extra décor and minimal organisation.. “The bar had a vintage, retro theme that was perfect for us”, they continued. “Guests enjoyed a pizza party, speeches, and some dancing. We brought temporary tattoos, the playlist was made by us and we LOVED it! Not only did we save money on the DJ, but every song was personal to us. Our favourite thing about the reception was the casual, cool vibes.”

Instead of signing a guestbook, friends and family left voice messages on a vintage telephone. Meghan and Kevin received the recordings afterwards and have been listening back ever since. Next on their wish list is having everyone’s messages pressed onto vinyl, giving those voices a place in their record collection. Their only regret was not having a better cake due to a last-minute mix-up.

“You might upset some people if you have a non-traditional wedding”, they concluded, “But the day should be all about what YOU want and if that means upsetting some people along the way, that’s okay. Also, the day might not be perfect! Some things could fall through (i.e. our wedding cake) but that’s also OK The day was not ruined by any means. Eat the cake (even if it’s ugly!)”

If your Instagram looks beautiful but your website hasn’t been updated in five years old, or doesn’t exist, then is it any wonder you’re struggling with bookings? Couples may find you on social media, but your website is where they will compare suppliers, look for prices and try to figure out who’s available. Whether you’re creating a website for your business from scratch or updating one that’s been neglected for years, the challenge is how to turn someone admiring your work into someone making an enquiry. For wedding suppliers, that means making it easy for couples to understand what you offer, what it costs and how to book you.

What couples want to see

Whatever sort of supplier you are, couples are always looking for the same four answers:

Do we like their work?
Are they available?
Can we afford them?
How do we enquire?

Make those things easily accessible from the homepage, with pricing and contact details no more than one click away.

Should wedding suppliers publish their prices?

Short answer: Yes. Gen-Z couples to not want to send a million enquiry emails before they even know if they can afford you. So at the very least, include a “starting from” figure.

There’s a supplier for every budget. If a couple are considering two photographers, one says, “Contact us for a bespoke quote” and the other says, “Full-day wedding photography from £1,800″, the second is instantly going to be more appealing because it helps couples assess whether they’re a match. Publishing prices may reduce enquiry volume, but fewer enquiries aren’t necessarily bad if more of them become bookings. The useful measures are enquiry-to-booking conversion, average booking value and time spent responding to unsuitable leads.

Asking a simple question should not require six emails

No-one likes sending and receiving multiple emails just to get a simple answer and couples do not want to have to tell you their entire life story just to find out if you’re available.

Keep enquiry forms short: wedding date, location, service and contact details. For consultations, let couples choose an available appointment directly. One.com’s Aida Booking plan supports online appointments, automatic confirmations and calendar management, with a limit of 25 appointments monthly. Commerce offers unlimited bookings. One.com estimates its booking agent can save up to 20 hours of administration per month. A consultation isn’t a confirmed wedding booking. Contracts and deposits may still be needed. If you want to collect deposits online, check whether your chosen platform supports them within the booking process or requires another service.

Your gallery

A photography website needs beautiful images, but enormous files can make it painfully slow. Start with a carefully selected homepage gallery, perhaps 12 strong photographs, and organise additional work into separate collections. There’s no magic image limit, but file sizes and load speed matter.

Compress photographs, use responsive images and test the gallery on your phone without Wi-Fi. On a photographer’s website, visitors should be able to appreciate the work without waiting for dozens of full-resolution files. And don’t let AI-generated copy erase your personality. Aida can draft website content, but only you can explain how you handle nervous couples, unpredictable weather or a ceremony running late.

What’s the best website builder for a UK small business?

Here’s how some of the most commonly used platforms compare:

In short:

Squarespace is particularly good for a polished, gallery-led design.
Wix offers more hands-on editing freedom.
Shopify is best for product-based businesses.

One.com might be a good choice if you value convenience more than extensive customisation. They offer three plans:

Portfolio: Website creation and one 3GB email account.
Booking: Five 3GB email accounts and up to 25 appointments monthly.
Commerce: 25 email accounts, unlimited bookings and products, and 10+ payment methods

If you’re selling albums, prints or workshops, One.com’s Commerce plan lists 0% platform commission, although payment processing fees are separate. For another perspective, see this guide to website builders for independent venues and event businesses.

Throughout history, many women have become bolder and braver about doing things their way when getting married. For millennia, rebelling against tradition in any way would likely have resulted in some unthinkable patriarchal consequence, so it is no surprise that the idea of an alternative bride is a relatively new one.

I’m not going to trawl through the earliest centuries of “Diplomatic this”, “Political that” and “Here… marry my daughter and give me that country”. There are some women that the history books have remembered as rebel brides but, like so many retellings through history, they generally seem to be inaccurate takes on women just doing what it took to survive. I’m going to skip ahead to the 19th century and begin with the woman I think was the OG rock ‘n’ roll bride as we would see it today. A woman who married the man she loved… who had enough power to be able to do what she wanted without getting punished… and who truly appeared to have her wedding her way.

Queen Victoria

Did you know that, before Queen Victoria, there was no tradition of brides wearing white? Western royal, aristocratic and fashionable brides generally wore colourful court dresses in heavy velvets. Blue was considered a popular symbol of purity and fidelity. Red was worn as a symbol of fertility. Wearing white was a mark of astonishing wealth, not least because it was very difficult to keep clean. So much so, it may even have only been worn once. Obviously, to almost all brides back then, the idea of buying a dress and wearing it once would have been unimaginable. Most women just had a bath and put on their best dress. But for Queen Victoria, I think wearing white was, at least in part, a bit of a flex. Yass, Queen.

Victoria’s wedding outfit was not only iconic due to its colour. She chose a white silk gown with a Honiton lace flounce and veil. The fancier brides of the time were all importing laces from Europe, but after Victoria got hitched in Devon lace, it sparked a revival for the dying British cottage lace industry. Her silk dress was woven in Spitalfields, just a few miles from Buckingham Palace! Queen Victoria was seemingly supporting small businesses and shopping locally!

Interestingly, less than a decade later, an American women’s magazine, Godey’s Lady’s Book, wrote that wearing white as a bride was an ancient symbol of purity. That version of history then took off and the truth about Victoria’s iconic outfit got rewritten. Millions continue to believe that choosing not to wear white as a bride is scandalous, because it suggests something about your pre-marital sex life, when in actuality, brides started wearing white less than 200 years ago because a Queen started a fad.

Bianca Jagger

From the OG rock ‘n’ roll bride to one of the most rockstar brides in history! In the 1970s, Bianca Jagger did the unthinkable. She didn’t wear a dress at all. She wore a beautifully-tailored, white, two-piece trouser suit by Yves Saint Laurent, with a whacking great big hat. The look is so iconic that countless brides have nodded to it since, including Dua Lipa earlier this year, at her Old Marylebone Town Hall ceremony with Callum Turner. Of course, there are brides who wore suits before Bianca Jagger. Marilyn Monroe wore a brown skirt-suit when she married Joe DiMaggio in 1954. But, if Elizabeth Taylor wore dresses to all eight of her weddings, then Bianca Jagger choosing trousers for her one and only wedding is pretty fabulous. Shout out to Elizabeth Taylor here for all of her iconic wedding choices too. My favourite is the pale yellow Valentino gown from 1991.

Princess Diana

Another pivotal moment for alternative brides occurred during Charles and Diana’s Royal Wedding in 1981. With the world watching, during their ceremony, Diana purposefully omitted one heretofore imperative word. Diana vowed to “love and honour” Charles, NOT to “love, honour and obey” him. I know in our modern wedding world that probably doesn’t feel like a biggie. I mean, who even says that anymore? But imagine being on the world stage and breaking tradition that way, with billions of people watching. By leaving out one crucial word, Diana took a huge stand for gender equality within marriage, opening the door for countless women after her to do the same thing.

In More Recent Years

In more recent years, there are so many brides who show the world who they are in different ways. In 1997, to avoid the massive public scrutiny that was sure to surround their big day, Sarah Jessica Parker and Matthew Broderick had a surprise wedding. She wore a black, off-the-rack Morgane le Fay dress and they invited 100 guests to a “party” in New York City… and then they got married! Maybe they were letting the wider world know that their marriage was going to be about them and no one else! Seems to have worked nearly 30 years later.

In 2013, Keira Knightley did something radical by wearing a dress she’d been seen in before, at the BAFTAs in 2008. She wanted to wear something she loved and knew she’d have a good time in, and she sent out a gorgeous message about sustainability in the process. Remember those brides who all used to wear their best dress? Go, Keira!

In 2013, having worn white at her first wedding, Avril Lavigne created what has to be one of the first truly gothic punk wedding looks, when she married Chad Kroeger. She wore a dramatic black gown with a long train, carried an all-black bouquet, had her tattoos on show, and wore heavy black eyeliner and a floor length black veil. Exactly what we’d expect from her… but again, so bold to be one of the first to do it that way for the world to see! Avril walked so that Selling Sunset’s Christine could STRUT.

If you’re looking for inspo from recent celeb weddings, the aesthetics from Kourtney Kardashian and Travis Barker’s wedding ceremony are phenom. Same goes for Kat Von D’s Heaven and Hell at the Beverly Hills Hotel wedding. Bianca Jagger wore trousers so that KVD could wear ANTLERS, okay?! But it’s not just about the looks. Beanie Feldstein and Bonnie-Chance had a Summer Camp-themed wedding at Cedar Lakes, which is owned and run by two sisters. They hired vendors who were exclusively women. They wanted to collaborate with other creative and talented women. Such a cool approach.

There are so many ways to claim your wedding as your own. Some are fun and come from a place of “Let’s do it! Why not?” But equally, some of the alternative parts of your day may be the result of some of the harder parts of your life. For any number of reasons, you may be walking down the aisle alone. For any number of reasons, family members who traditionally would be invited to a wedding may not be present. For any number of reasons, you might have decided to do something differently.

Life is tricky and messy and weddings are never perfect. But let’s face it, if the world can believe that wearing white is some ancient religious custom, less than ten years after one Queen set a trend, then, YASS QUEEN, just remember that none of these traditions really mean anything anyway! You can choose what each part of your day means. You choose what it all symbolises or doesn’t. If you can take a leaf from the alternative brides who came before you and be brave enough to have your day your way, it’s going to be iconic.

When Bri, a florist, married Nate, a race car engineer, they wanted to bring both of their passions into the day. The wedding was held at the bride’s childhood home, a farm which she now runs with her mother. Bri grew and arranged all the wedding flowers herself. “Our wedding inspiration was ‘garden party’ but more so it was about sharing our passions with our family and friends”, she said. “We wanted to combine both of our true loves. Which is each other, flowers and engineering.”

Together with their families, they built the celebration from the ground up. Nate’s dad made stump benches for the guests, and the couple created a stage among the wildflowers using oak stumps from Bri’s family land. Their immediate families helped set up the ceremony space and lay the aisle.

The bride walked barefoot down a flagstone aisle to Chasing Cars by Snow Patrol while Nate waited beneath a metal tree he had welded for their ceremony. Nate had made his entrance to the Formula 1 theme.

Bri’s dad officiated. Guests were asked to place a hand over their heart and make a wish for the couple, and he also arranged a musical moment inspired by one of their favourite films, Love Actually, complete with trumpets, clarinet and trombones. After exchanging personal vows, Bri and Nate headed back down the aisle to Teenage Dirtbag by Wheatus.

During cocktail hour guests were invited to cut flowers from the garden and make their own arrangements in bud vases, which later became part of the reception table décor.

“The reception space was created by both us and our guests” Bri continued. “The centrepieces, sweetheart table and floral stained glass chandler were created by us and the seating assignments were F1 race track themed and the guests had to find their 3d printed race track at their table (we created all of these from scratch, Nate has a 3d printer he loves to use). We also had a F1 themed scavenger hut which asked the guests to complete tasks that would promote guest interactions.”

Bri and Nate entered the reception to I Will Follow You into the Dark by Death Cab for Cutie and ended up dancing to it on the spot. It hadn’t been the plan for their first dance, but it was a song they always danced to in their kitchen at home.

Four years of planning gave Bri and Nate time to make the many details themselves, and Bri enjoyed every late-night conversation about them. Her advice to other couples taking on a DIY wedding? “Make the wedding day about you as a couple. The more personal it is, the more your guests will feel part of the experience.”

Planning a spooky autumn wedding could be as simple as buying an unreasonable number of pumpkins. Instead, I’ve found myself spiralling over signage, décor, AI artwork and whether everything needed to match.

It’s so easy to fall into the ‘perfectionist’ trap of having every element of your wedding be completely cohesive. From the place cards to the table plan to the welcome sign and beyond – the amount of signage and decor feels endless! I would be lying if I said I didn’t initially fall into that very trap.

I also felt I had an ethical dilemma in this process. AI generated artwork is everywhere these days and is easier to access than it ever has been before. As a creative myself, AI has threatened my job in more ways than one, and the wedding industry most certainly isn’t safe from a similar fate. It would be easy to AI generate all my signage in a matter of minutes, but I would be going against everything I believe in. So, how do I get everything I want, while supporting real artists, without breaking the bank?

Even though we had a solid idea of the vibe of our wedding, it became apparent that most of the items we were envisioning either didn’t exist, existed with a very intimidating price-tag or were AI generated. So, it got me thinking about how to utilise what I do have – my own hands. (And my bridal party because they don’t have a choice).

I’ve committed to making almost everything myself (except the flowers. I am leaving them to professionals because everyone has their limits!) My starting point was materials, I knew I wanted the place cards and table names to be made from wood cut circles and, in an attempt, to save money, ordered these online. This was my first mistake. What turned up were the roughest cuts of wood I’d ever seen. They looked like they had been supplied by local beavers, not a craft shop.

Cue my bridesman to the rescue! Oli graciously took the beaver abominations to work with him and used the industrial sander to smooth everything out. Which gave Katie, one of my bridesmaids, and I, the perfect surface to start writing out all the names by hand. This was just the beginning of a very long list of items we would need to make over the coming months. Some might say this plan was ambitious, and they would be correct.

DIY décor certainly has its challenges but for me the pros certainly outweigh the cons. Yes, it’s a lot to have on your plate while also trying to organise all the other elements of your wedding, but it also creates a real sense of camaraderie between me and my bridal party. Maybe some of our signs won’t be perfectly straight and maybe the lettering won’t all match but nobody is going to remember that. They’ll remember sitting around tables decorated by the things we made together, laughing about the wood slices that looked like they’d been chewed by wildlife. That’s a much better story than ordering everything on Temu.