As some of you may have noticed it has been a bit quiet around here for the last 12 Months. I wanted to put together a post that explains a little of my journey over the past year. I hope you’ve got a brew and a biscuit because this is going to be a bit of a long one…

I started Girl In The Pretty Dress approximately 5 years ago after I was introduced to Laura’s blog.

At the time there wasn’t much of a blogging scene for tall girls in the UK. Even so, I knew I wanted to be involved with this growing community of tall, confident, supportive women…but I wasn’t sure about putting myself out there.

So I started small. I made myself a little Tumblr page and started sharing photos of outfits I’d put together, alongside a collection of other pretty things that caught my eye. I didn’t tell anyone I knew that I was doing it. When no immediate backlash occurred, I got a bit braver and sent a photo or two (below) into AllTheTallThings.com for the ‘Tried It On’ series. That was a really positive experience for me and my confidence started to grow.

Fast forward to the next Summer.

I was in the middle of two big things at this point: a new job and a house renovation. As things with my house progressed I found Pinterest a huge source of interiors inspiration – and eventually it led me to lots of blogs that weren’t just about fashion. I hadn’t been brave enough to start a fashion blog, but I found the idea of lifestyle blogging much less daunting.

At this point the idea behind starting ‘Girl in the Pretty Dress’ was evolving for me. It became less about the Pretty Dress and more about the Girl who was wearing it.

I took the plunge and with absolutely-not-a-clue what I was doing I used Blogger to start a ‘proper’ blog.

During that first summer I found I could post once a month with almost no effort, and that trend continued for a while. At some point over the next couple of years my blogging goals changed and I decided to increase this to twice month and from there I decided it wasn’t too much of a leap to post once a week.

(Let me tell you though, when you work full time and don’t have a photographer/willing partner around this can be a bit of a stretch!) 

I found though, that in setting such defined goals, I started to experience ‘blogger’s guilt’ if I wasn’t posting so often… and occasionally the quality of the posts suffered as a result. I always want my content to be visually great and to inspire/interest people. Over time I have come to think that’s a much more important goal than the frequency of the posts. 

So at the end of 2015 I made the decision not to practise quality over quantity and to only post if I was enthusiastic about sharing the content. A much more realistic goal and vision, right?

Almost.

Over the past year I’ve had lots of great content ideas that have sadly never made it onto the pages of this blog. In fact I had a lot of ideas about how things might pan out in the past year, which were turned completely upside down almost as soon as the year began.

The reason? I fell in love.

Those who have followed this blog for a while know that I was previously single for a long, long time. So as you can imagine, this change in my personal life took a little bit of getting used to…

Not only did I have to get used to being part of a couple, I also had to adjust to a long-distance relationship. If you have ever been in a relationship like that, you know the struggle. If you haven’t, then just know that it takes a lot of time, effort and expense (but for the right one, it is completely worth it).

My other half is a fairly private person and very camera-shy, so for that reason I don’t imagine he will ever feature on the pages of this blog (or be involved behind the scenes). That being said I felt the time was right to share a little about our journey because ‘Girl in the Pretty Dress’ is about to take on another meaning…

We’re engaged.