Attending wedding fairs and exhibitions is part of parcel of being part of the wedding industry and whilst we've scaled down the number we attend each year, it's still a great opportunity for us to get in front of people and get creative with what we want to show, and how.

This year, we're going particularly big as we'll be exhibiting at The National Wedding Show at Birmingham NEC; our very first national show! Specifically we'll be at stand B37, next to the Champagne Bar.

This is a massive undertaking for us, we've never done a multi-day event before and due to the setup, we've had to do a lot of planning (and a ton of shopping!) to make sure our stand will be in tip-top shape over the three days. We've also got lots of exciting new designs to showcase on the day; and a lot of these designs are currently only on screen and in need of producing!

And whilst we've had a lot of lovely help in the planning, we'll still be running this as just the two of us (no, we're not crazy, we promise). Because of this we need to cover off our availability during October.

Setup at the event is from Thursday 28th, so we will technically be entirely out of action for four days, starting from that Thursday, and re-opening - with a need for caffeinated drinks we're sure - on Monday 1st November.

We've been fortunate enough to have had an extremely busy summer with the welcome relaxation of restrictions for weddings and this hasn't (yet) shown any evidence of slowing down, so we're still working through a very busy order book.

However during October we'll be having to spend some time printing and making designs that we're taking to the event, otherwise we'll have some nice new shelving but no work to sit on it! We're hoping this won't have a massive impact - if any - on the lead times for customer orders but it's only right that we're honest and say that this could happen. As always, we'll be working as quickly as we can to make sure no deadlines slip.

Exhibiting at an event like this is a big step for us and goes hand-in-hand with us expanding the team this winter. We're excited and nervous in equal measure, so wish us luck!

On a personal note, it's also our 10th wedding anniversary on the 10th of October! It's been very much a case of 7-day weeks for us this year, so we're taking off to the Cotswolds for a very little break on the 10th/11th of October to celebrate and treat ourselves.