TL/DR, I’m starting a stationery blog.
During a recent family dinner, at my favorite Chicago Mexican restaurant, my dad, my husband and I started discussing our favorite subjects in school. After some contemplation, my dad, who is one of my biggest entrepreneurial influences, landed on geometry. It was vaguely interesting to him even though he would have rather knocked off school to go surfing as he was growing up in southern California. Perhaps in a similar vein, my endlessly supportive, but less academically inquisitive, husband Solomon always looked forward to gym class.
I loved school growing up, so when my dinner companions struggled to choose a subject due to interests outside the classroom, I hesitated for a different reason. There were a lot of subjects I enjoyed.
Looking back, I was interested in a wide variety of academic areas, but I always felt at home in English class. Writing came relatively naturally to me. I would delve into subjects that interested me or put off a big paper until the night before a looming deadline when the topic did not. Either way, it seemed like no matter the circumstances, I could always produce something halfway decent.
As we swapped stories about our favorite teachers and memorable lessons, I realized I missed writing. I didn’t give it much thought at the time. Writing as a creative pursuit seemed to be a casualty of aging for me. I’m a “real grown up” now with a full time job, so when I do write, it is forcing myself to compose an Instagram caption or responding to client emails - hardly an exercise of the creative process.
A few weeks later, the topic of creative writing popped up again. In an attempt to take the un-sexy parts of small business ownership a little more seriously, I found myself researching Pinterest as a marketing tool for creative businesses. It’s worth noting that while there are parts of my business that I take extremely seriously (the client experience and creativity parts), there are others that I woefully neglect (the business parts). I only delved into the depths of Pinterest marketing because I was sitting in my hairstylist’s chair, held captive by a headful of foils processing away. At any rate, as I conducted my research I learned that one of the best links for pins are relevant blog posts. This was great intel except for one minor problem - I didn’t have a blog.
That’s when I realized that this was an opportunity to reconnect with my love of writing, while sharing my years of industry experience with couples in their wedding planning season and fellow stationery-lovers. Beyond that, in a world where AI is seeping into creative spaces (perhaps a topic for another blog), setting time for creative writing feels like a micro act of resistance.
As I creep up on 10 years in the wedding industry, I’m excited to have a vehicle to share more about what I’ve learned about celebration and telling my clients’ love stories. Thank you for being here, and I hope you will find value in my future musings on all things paper, weddings and the creative process.
Warmly,
Hailey
