We had just landed from our Honeymoon in Italy feeling super refreshed and energised for the rest of the Wedding season. On arrival back in the UK we decided to take a leap of faith in ourselves by applying for the South West Wedding Awards. I am the pessimistic person, sure that our company wouldn’t even get noticed amongst all the other highly talented contestants, whilst luckily Sam is the optimistic person who knew we had every chance and wanted to showcase the effort we had put into building Ooh Nice Productions.
We submitted our mission statement, also known as our ‘tag line’ and provided the award judges with our website details, social media links and a blurb about what we do and the work we have done so far. Personally, I thought that would be it. I was expecting a ‘thank you for your application, please try again next year’ kind of response from them. But to my shock (and to Sams expectation) we received an invite to the finals as a contender in the ‘New Business Category’. Amazing!
It was lovely to post about our already unexpected success in making the finals and seeing all the support from friends, family and our past and future couples. It definitely gave us the little boost we needed to know that what was originally a crazy idea back in May 2018 was actually now a joint business that was flourishing and developing faster than we thought possible.Next problem – I needed a dress. Jumping onto the Boohoo website like a crazy lady I payed for an unlimited years worth of free delivery in my little panic moment (in hind-site this was maybe a little silly and unnecessary), I ordered 7 dresses in total and hoped that at least one of them would fit the criteria of a cocktail style dress. Thankfully there was a lovely velvet green dress that suited me to a T, and on purchasing a needle and thread I managed to tweak it enough to make it fit me perfectly with a customised and modified slit that didn’t show the world my pants. Anyone else have this problem with boohoo dresses and there excessive side slits? It’s not the first one I’ve had to sew it back together as if the designer got distracted and forgot to keep sewing the slit down to a wearable length.
On arrival at the Crowne Plaza Hotel in Plymouth we went for a pre-getting ready swim and sauna which was lovely. Once ready we headed down to the bar and it had started to fill up with other vendors and professionals in the wedding industry, all looking like they had got our their glad rags for the night. The event itself was very well organised and ran so smoothly. The venue room was decorated lovely and they even had dinner entertainment in the form of a singer to create a lovely atmosphere.
After eating a 3 course meal, we awaited the moment of doom, for confident people this wouldn’t seem so scary but I whispered into sams ear ‘I hope we don’t win, I’m not keen on having to get up on the stage’. Much to my wishes, the ‘New Business category’ came around and believe it or not they announced our company as being highly commended. This meant going up on stage and collecting our award, thankfully the table wine and multiple gin and tonics I had consumed during the dinner helped the confidence level when arriving on stage to collect the award. We were ecstatic, this was such a public recognition of the effort we have put in so far, and it felt amazing to know people had viewed our work and felt it was worthy of being awarded.You’ll be glad to know this has just boosted us even more to put all our time and effort into this crazy adventure of ours, we have so many exciting bookings in the calendar and we are buzzing to meet all our future couples.
Awards – The South West Wedding Awards
Photos – Chris Bunney
The Finalists
I don’t even know how I ended up here, but I thought this post was great. I don’t know who you are but certainly you are going to a famous blogger if you aren’t already 😉 Cheers!