What a Bride Wants
Sitting down to plan this issue five months ago, I thought long and hard about what we had to include. What exactly do brides want to see or read about in a bridal magazine? I met with other editors and our design team and we brainstormed ideas and hashed out photo shoots and created what I think is an issue every bride — especially every Charlotte bride — will want to keep in her arsenal of go-to wedding guides until the day she says, “I do.”
Here’s what we decided:
Brides want to see wedding gowns — lots of them. So we focused our coverage to include some of the top styles for this season. Check out the coverage of fall runway looks straight from the bridal market this spring on page 14 as well as our gorgeous bridal fashion feature on page 48. (Don’t worry — we have the groom covered, too, with men’s fashion on page 20 and even more in the fashion feature.)
Brides want to be inspired. Whether it’s showing them how to pull together an entire wedding based on a color theme—which wedding planner Ivy Robinson did on page 60 — or how their stationery suite can reflect their personality and style (see page 82), we wanted to inspire brides to create the wedding of their dreams.
Brides want it local. Not everyone has a budget to fly to Manhattan and scour the bridal salons of designers like Vera Wang or J. Crew. So we made it simple: almost everything you see featured in this issue can be found here in Charlotte, including bridesmaid gowns, guest sign-in books, caterers, stationers, photographers, wedding planners, and much more. To up the ante on the local element, you’ll also find eight Charlotte weddings (starting on page 24 and also on page 68) featuring vendors from, in, and around Charlotte.
Brides want to know where they can have their wedding. Our exclusive reception chart on page 111 featuring the area’s top venues offers brides quick information on all of the details of a reception spot, including fees, occupancy, and much more.
We hope that you find this issue as helpful to a bride as we do.
Blake Miller, editor
blake.miller@charlottemagazine.com
