The End of Style Me Pretty

Change is in the air…

Yesterday, like most in our small industry, I was shocked to learn about the closing of Style Me Pretty.

The news came as a surprise to us all, including the founders Abby and Tate Larson, and Style Me Pretty’s current employees who only learned about the closing 24 hours prior. Included in the news, were the details that the site will officially close on April 30th, 2018, taking it’s decade’s worth of content with it.

As a wedding photographer who got her start 11 years ago, Style Me Pretty feels like a part of my business. It helped me grow my brand, build my client base and share my work with a broader audience. When Style Me Pretty was founded, wedding blogs and social media weren’t the way our industry worked, or any industry for that matter. There was no Instagram, no Pinterest, and the opportunity to share our work online was a very new idea. They single handedly revolutionized how weddings were perceived, how photographers shared their work, and how trends began and transformed.

In those days, getting published on Style Me Pretty meant a full day on the front page (there was only one back then), and a lot of traffic. As the wedding blog sphere grew, other competitors rose but most of us still agreed that Style Me Pretty had the most exposure and was the mainstream leader. Their statistics certainly back this up with 1 million Instagram followers, 5.7 million Pinterest followers, 3.5 million Facebook likes, roughly 32 million monthly page views and 3.6 million monthly unique visitors. Let’s just say they were pretty established and that’s largely why we’re all left scratching our heads in bewilderment. What does this all mean??

I am very sad to see this channel and outlet for our work disappear from the market space. For any photographer just beginning their career and for those of us who have long utilized it’s resources, Style Me Pretty was a game-changer. What the game is changing to now, well, I don’t have the answer for that today. My main hope is that this incites some conversation on where our industry is headed and what the future looks like for weddings as we enter this fast-paced, tech and media ruled era. I believe it’s imperative that we all think with the next 5, 10 and 15 years in mind when it comes to our visions, growth and plans. We should not allow the industry to dictate how we share our work and market, but instead think about what is best for our own businesses and brands. I myself am guilty of neglecting my own blog, not sharing my voice and delegating this exclusively to other outlets like blogs and publications. My hope is we all re-assess our positions and get more proactive and creative within our own companies.

I always say that moving parts are messy, but it’s the moving parts that bring the biggest change. Today, I send my gratitude to Style Me Pretty and every person that poured their hearts into it. It certainly helped me launch my career, grow my brand, and inspire me over the last 10 years—thank you. I feel very lucky to have been along for the ride.

Style Me Pretty will be sorely missed and I hope that in it’s absence new opportunities and adventures will bloom.

xx,

KT

Images from a feature in the early days of Style Me Pretty, circa 2012.
You can view it in it’s entirety in our portfolio here.