In 2011 I went dress shopping and couldn't find my size, so I had to imagine my whole wedding instead of seeing it. Pretty Pear Bride came out of that. Then another publication, and another, until Aisle Society was a network of ten. In 2020 I bought out my co-founders, and I've run it on my own ever since.

For fifteen years I've decided who gets featured. I know what happens when a couple finally sees themselves on a page, and I know what a feature can do for a vendor's inquiries. Most of my working life has gone into handing people the thing they couldn't find.

And most weeknights after seven, I was still at my desk.

Nobody made me. Every offer, every standing call and every yes I'd given months earlier was built for a version of me who wanted one thing, which was proof that the wedding I couldn't find deserved to exist. She got it. I kept running her business.

If you had asked me what I wanted next, I would have answered for everybody else. The couples, the vendors, my family. It would have been a full answer and I wouldn't have been in it.

Visibility was never my problem. I've had press in the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, and a network with real reach. My problem was that I stopped saying what I wanted out loud so long ago that every decision about what I sold, what I charged and what I said yes to got made without it.

So I'm doing it the long way. I'm listing every offer, every platform and every recurring commitment, then marking each one as money, mission or momentum. Anything that's none of the three goes first. Then I'm writing out the week I want a year from now in plain terms: the hours, the income, and who I spend my evenings with. After that I'm naming the one belief that keeps me building the old version.

The order I keep coming back to is want, believe, design, move. Get clear on the want, believe you're allowed to have it, redesign the business around it, and move before you feel ready.

I built a company so no bride would have to imagine her wedding in the dark, and I'm done imagining my evenings. The list is started, and this week I'm cutting the thing on it I dread most.

I'm working through my list in real time, and I write about it every Tuesday. What I cut, what I kept, and what it did to my evenings. If you're rebuilding around what you want too, join me in The Tuesday Letter.

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