Southern Weddings

Well, butter my butt and call me a biscuit, it has been a FABulous year! Here are a few of my personal favs from 2008 (in no particular order):

1. A New Location

I moved from Los Angeles to Chapel Hill, NC in June.  Laura moved here a week after me, Rachel arrived from San Diego two weeks later and Kirstin (who I have known for a long time now) moved from FL a week after that!  My dream team miraculously came together from all over the US.  How lucky am I!?

2. A New Team

I love these women with all my heart.  We have had so much fun this year and 2009 is already packed with even more adventures!

photos by {East Hill Photo}

3. Our New Blogsite!

We still have a lot to add and change, but so far we love love love it and we hope you do too!

If you followed us on Twitter when we were getting things up and running, you were there when we got booted out of Starbucks (it was really late!) in New York City and launched the new BlogSite from a newspaper stand on the busy Manhattan streets. It was a magical (and typical NY scary) moment.  I wish you could have all been there with us.  Click the thumbnail for the full effect.

New features we added: The Wedding Resources, Real Weddings Gallery, Details Gallery, Link Love Archive, Links We Love, The IT LIST, About Us, Southern Bride Bloggers, etc. and so much more to come in 2009!

4. A New Issue

You read the blog, now own a piece of SW all for yourself.  Our premiere print edition launches in…..

5. New Friends

This is my favorite part of this year.  We have made SO many new, wonderful, giving, supportive, encouraging, talented, and brilliant friends! Through this blog, incredible events like Engage (wedding pros, be sure to come in 2009!), Twitter, Facebook and dozens of AMAZING meetings, lunches, dinners and laughs, we have come to love so many new people.  Thank you for all of the love and for sharing your lives with us.  We can’t wait to spend more time with you, meet you, get to know you, call you, email you, laugh and celebrate with you in the coming year!

6. New Marriages

Brides, you are what makes this little blog tick.  Your creativity, passion, beauty and brilliance inspire us every single day!  Congratulations to all of the newlyweds and to all of our Southern brides-to-be!

7. Details, Details, Details

You know at SW, we are all about inspiring DETAILS!  This year was packed FULL of them…

8. Our Video Blogs Rocked.  OK, just kidding, but we had fun making them : )

We love our Flips (we now are proud owners of TWO of them!).  On the New Year’s resolution list: learn how to get better at making videos : )  Laura is going to LOVE me for reposting this:

Happy Birthday LAURA! from SW + Bliss on Vimeo.

We have some big plans for our Flip’s this year… lots of travel, new friends, and inspiration for you beautiful brides!

9. New Outlooks

We read some powerful books this year and spent a lot of time learning and growing together.  We had the pleasure of meeting Simon T Bailey at Engage and had a (pun intended…) BRILLIANT session with him afterwards.  Also on the reading list: Seth Godin’s Tribes, Good to Great, The Purple Cow, All Marketers Are Liars, The Breakthrough Company, Release Your Brilliance, and for me, a lot of Bible time.  To add to our new outlooks, Laura got a hot new haircut (new pics coming soon), Kirstin bought a house, Rachel moved clear across the country to work with us (that’s a LOT of new), and I … well, I don’t really know… I guess my whole life is new this year.  I never dreamed I would be where I am right now, inspired by so many gorgeous brides and beaus, learning daily from my peers and loving every second of it!

10. Lots of Laughs!

Oh, there have been SO many laughs.  That’s what wedding planning should be full of right?  One of my personal “resolutions” for the year is to keep laughing.  I really don’t need to try hard with all the fun we have at SW!  When we launched the new BlogSite, our friends at A Bryan Photo made a sweet little video for us to show their appreciation.  This pretty much sums up how we feel about our year- pure joy!

The SW IT LIST Scooter Tricks from A Bryan Photo on Vimeo.

Wishing everyone a blessed 2009!

A LOT! The details:  We’ll be updating the Real Weddings and Details galleries, adding to the It List (lots of amazing pros to add!), adding to our Links We Love, getting the Southern Bride Bloggers section up and running, starting our Top Southern Photographers feature, and “Ask The Experts” section where you can get top advice from the pros, adding a slew of new fabulous vendors to our Wedding Resources, adding the “Editor’s Picks” to the Wedding Resources, and SO much more.  We have lots of amazing guest bloggers lined up for 2009 and even bigger and better contests.  We have such an exciting year ahead for you, dear readers!

For wedding pros:  We’ll be changing the site size to fit all monitors (shrinking things a bit, but it will work much better for the ads on both sides!), ads will rotate with every page refresh, we’re adding a forum for Southern wedding pros to get to know each other and share ideas, as well as a long list of fun surprises we will announce over the next weeks.

And we are SOOOOO excited to be adding two new members to our team in next week: Lindsey and Amanda!  Formal intros to follow, but give them both a big warm Southern Weddings welcome!