When Polka Dot Bride was born, almost 14 years ago, I named it after, well me. It was in an era when blogs like were named after their owners, Lady Melbourne, Fat Mum Slim, Gin Queen, The Pioneer Woman. This was my voice (and at the time, I was adamant it wouldn’t be any others), and it seemed like the right fit at the time.
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After a while, through watching, observing, through attending wedding fairs, through chatting with vendors, through conversations with people I love, I kind of thought, that the wedding world wasn’t really inclusive enough of the groom, that when everything was about the “bride” there needed to be a space for the overlooked wedding party member. I began to notice that when we talked about weddings, people tended to outright ignore the groom, and look at the bride. I was even witnessing to many conversations, where grooms were outright ignored (or worse, patronised and teased) about their role in the big day.  So in 2008, I kicked off Polka Dot Groom to fill this hole. We covered fashion, we hired grooms with experience to share their knowledge, and we took great care to create a space we felt was missing.
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But then as the world shifted, so did my perspective. I realised, that the name Polka Dot Bride, despite it being “mine” and  “my voice”, was not really reflective of my dream to provide a space where you all felt you were welcomed, no matter your role in the wedding. That words years ago that were not even thought about, have become something we must consider carefully. That representation is so important, and so is the language we use. We made the comment about changing our name in passing, many times, but I think because when everything, for over a decade, is in one name, it’s a lot to change, and quite frankly, I found the overwhelming ‘to-do’ list that would come with it too much for my brain.

Throughout 2020, we’ve learned that being inclusive requires extra time and effort with everything you do. But to us, it’s also kind of the point. Making spaces inclusive does require extra brain space, and it is the reason it is so often overlooked and forgotten – seeking out inclusive content, choosing and researching better words, adding image and video captions. All of these things take time, and we’re committed to it, without excuse.
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So this year, when everything else is and changing (hello theme of 2020) and when we’ve become even more committed to creating that space, where every single person is welcome, we’ve decided to go all-in and change our name to Polka Dot Wedding.⁠ 
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Polka Dot Bride was never about me, it was always about you, after all.

It admittedly was a decision we wanted to reveal a little further down the line, and in that, I say there is SO MUCH more coming, that we’re not quite ready to reveal. But when you have a website that is fourteen years old, you gotta do some weird things to make sense to the tech lords. So here we are.
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Bear with us while we sort out the mess, you might need to hard refresh your browser, and forgive some things looking a little out of place while the digi world gets used to our update.⁠
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Here’s to new beginnings.⁠
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