Why I do not support Rock n roll bride - the truth behind performative inclusivity
This blog post was written in the spring and summer of 2020. It has not been altered for publication today apart from the 2022 update, at the bottom - and that is why I decided to publish it.
As you may have seen in my Instagram stories, my relationship with Rock’n’Roll Bride has hit rock bottom. Since then, I have been accused of everything from being a bully, supporting mob mentality to airing my dirty laundry in public, so I thought I would come clear with my version of the facts for everything to see and for everyone to be able to make their own judgement about their position.
I don’t mean for people to play my violin, I just want everyone to have all the elements to make their own opinion about the situation.
Background story
In April 2019, a big debate started in the Rock’n’roll bride facebook group regarding a post that was about cultural appropriation. You can read it about this particular episode in Ofe’s highlights here. The debate moved to Instagram as you can read in her highlights, where Kat kept abusing her and started to share screenshots of Ofe’s profile in her stories as well as saying in the comments that she was being bullied and abused by Ofe. My one and only exchange with Kat on her feed regarded my concern for not hiding Ofe’s name, as someone with over 90K followers, I was worried that some of her followers would abuse Ofe - unfortunately my fear was founded as she did get abuse. Ofe is a talented Black calligrapher and stationery, and at the time her instagram counted less than 5,000 followers. Today, I am very aware that I should have stood up more with Ofe and got more involved to protect her and I am sorry I didn’t do more.
Kat instantly messaged me privately and this is our exchange - she blocked me straight after this very short conversation.
I want to be clear that my reason for sharing this private exchange is not to demonise Kat but to own up to the truth and show the facts. Before this episode, my relationship with Kat was of mutual respect. My own wedding was published in the 9th issue of Rock’n’Roll Bride magazine and I met her multiple times at wedding fairs and in Reading where we both live. For a very long time, I thought we shared a vision of what the wedding industry could look like.
Submissions and credits
Episode number 1
One of my couples who got married in May 2019 submitted their wedding to Kat. The wedding was featured in issue, including two pictures of my cake, but no mention of my name or my business. It’s worth mentioning that between the exchange and the submission nothing else happened between Kat and me and I checked with the couple who did make sure that my name was part of the submission.
You can imagine my disappointment and heartbreak after having worked so hard for my business not to be mentioned. As you might know I have always been very vocal with my own struggles over mental health and this was an incredibly hurtful event but of course the priority for me was for my couple to be happy and I didn’t make a big fuss over it.
Episode number 2
This is what lead to the current situation. In November 2019, I took part in a styled shoot with other wedding suppliers. For those who don’t know, styled shoots are a collective effort from the collaboration of a team for free on the basis of getting photos and exposure. Therefore, unlike the first episode, it is absolutely crucial for any business to be recognised when featured. For this specific shoot, I provided one of my biggest cakes to date which of course involved a commitment of several hours, money, and energy, as well as driving to the venue and a full day on site with financial loss for taking the day off billable work.
At the beginning of November, four weeks before the shoot happened, I asked the photographer in a private chat on instagram where she was going to submit it as I would rather not be part of it if it was going to be submitted to RNR because I knew I would not get the credit as it had happened before and it was because of a disagreement with Kat. Because I did not want to tarnish Kat’s reputation, I didn’t get into further details about the specific disagreement. But, once again, I was very clear about the first occurrence. The photographer said she was not sure where she would submit but that she would try international publications first - which RNR isn’t.
In December 2019, I did reiterate my concern in our shared Whatsapp group with all the suppliers involved without anyone acknowledging it.
In January 2020, the photographer came back to the team in a Whatsapp group saying that Kat had accepted the shoot and would feature it. The news was enthusiastically welcomed by the team. I didn’t want to be a party pooper so I only shared my disappointment with some of my closest friends. Since the photographer reassured the group that she would make sure everyone was credited correctly, I was left only with the hope that Kat would be professional about it.
Forward to the 11th of June 2020 which was the date the blog post went live. Everyone was excited. I went on the blog post and saw that my cake and my name had been totally erased from the article. I messaged the Whatsapp group to say I had not been credited and asked the photographer to do something about it. She then messaged me privately saying this: “Was supposed to message you (…). Kat said some stuff had gone on with you two and that she isn’t happy to credit or show the cake shots on the feature. I don’t know what happened but I didn’t know until she told me. Sorry it didn’t work out as we’d hoped (…)”. Disclaimer: we have since talked, she apologised and I accepted her apology wishing for this to be a chance for the both of us to learn.
I have shared my story on instagram which went viral, as a lot of suppliers had received a similar treatment from Kat. Being blocked, I couldn’t reach out to Kat directly, but everyone who did tag her to ask for explanations has been either ignored or blocked.
The cake I had made for the shoot
No mention of my name, business, or the cake.
Conclusions (and why I don’t support RNR anymore)
As you can understand, the previous facts were necessary as a background to paint the bigger picture and why I think wedding suppliers and couples should not support the blog and the magazine anymore. I have attempted to keep this as factual as possible to avoid any gossip, confusion or misunderstanding.
To my knowledge, Kat has displayed the following behaviour several times:
Terrible supplier treatment and crediting
Every wedding supplier will know why using someone’s work and not crediting them properly represents a conscious damage to their business but for couples who might not be aware, mentions in magazines mean potential couples who see us, fall in love with us and book us, higher recognition from couples and the industry, award nominations, PR opportunities. Mentions in blog posts also mean a huge SEO boost - which is basically being easy to find on Google and other search engines.
In a time like now with covid 19 and all wedding suppliers losing two years’ worth of income, knowingly and consciously wanting to hurt a business owned by a woman is not only despicable but also misogynistic. Not only did she hurt my business by erasing me and my work, but she also made a public statement in her facebook group criticising how wedding suppliers were handling their postponements. This caused outrage amongst suppliers who felt thrown under the bus by a leader in the industry when they most needed support. Just to give you some perspective, her facebook group is full of brides to be and engaged couples, therefore criticising suppliers in front of their current and potential customers, directly affecting their business. To learn more about this, you can look at Katie’s highlights which show Kat has had no empathy towards wedding suppliers, who are the backbone of her business. Other bloggers have shown empathy and compassion for both sides and have tried to build a bridge between suppliers and couples, as well as giving practical advice on how to deal with the situation, like Annabel from Love my dress.
When I shared my story on instagram, dozens of suppliers reached out to say that Kat had had a similar behaviour towards them - whether they drove three hour trips to deliver her a cake, for her to use pictures of said cake without ever giving any credit nor pay for it; had their products featured in the magazines without credit and being told there is no space to mention everyone, but they could pay for advertising space if they wanted their name to be in front of the readers’ eyes; from being cut out from credit lists and copy when you are the one who took all the photos for a campaign; the list appears to be never ending.
Bullying and poor handling of disagreements
It’s safe to say that Kat has a long history of handling any disagreement very poorly like some of the examples above show. Everyone who questions her bullying is instantly blocked and accused of negativity and being a hater.
When questioned about the poor handling of the covid situation by a photographer, Kat’s response was to block her and remove all of her previous feature from her blog. It’s important to point out that this is the only weapon that Kat has to directly affect her critics. This is not only terribly disrespectful to the photographer, but also incredibly insensitive towards the couples who had so generously shared their wedding day experience and photos with her and her audience.
Last but not least: racism and cultural appropriation
This issue is bigger than me as it did start off because of racist behaviour, and ended a week after everyone posted black squares on instagram and support to the Black community, Kat included, promising to do better and learn. Kat actually sent an apology in email to Ofe a few days before this happened, but Ofe is still blocked from Kat’s instagram, and as we saw, people who defended her are still blacklisted, showing the apology was only performative.
When the Black Lives Matter movement took new momentum last week, Kat posted on her instagram feed that she was giving away some advertising spaces to Black suppliers, who would have to apply by sending an email and their portfolio to her. Instead of herself doing the work and finding them (does she not know any Black supplier?), she made it a public gesture (performance) and set them up against each other (divide to conquer) to grab spaces in her magazine, all within a few days (everyone had to stop what they were doing to have the privilege to apply). Black suppliers told her why this was hugely problematic - and she replied that she was doing her best, justifying why it had been this way, apologising and keeping it the same. If you make a mistake and you are sorry - you rectify. If you keep doing what you were doing - your apology means shit.
Previously, she tokenised a black couple on her feed to say “FUCK” to the haters, as well as used a Black woman’s work on her blog to pretend she was being diverse and inclusive. I want to give her the benefit of the doubt that she is going to learn from her mistakes and white fragility, which is why I will not share further proofs of previous racist behaviour and acceptance of cultural appropriation.
All above considered, my question for you is, wedding suppliers and engaged or married couples, why should our standards be so low in the wedding industry and why should we support someone that doesn’t appear to support us especially in difficult circumstances like covid, doesn’t appear to have any respect for our work and our couples, and who clearly puts personal feelings over professional and political matters?
2022 UPDATE -
Kat reached out to one of my couples to feature their wedding in the magazine. After I told them the whole story, they reached out to Kat to make sure the cake would be part of the feature. I also emailed her twice, and never got an answer. Gareth, her husband, told my couple that the cake would not be featured as they are restricted from publishing in any capacity something of me (individually). It is apparently out of their control (lol) + they are prohibited from discussing the reasons of this. In whose control it is, I wonder.
My wonderful couple decided to remove their feature as they wanted their wedding to be shown as a whole and I cannot thank them enough for their integrity.
Another couple had a feature in the magazine this month, and the cake was not featured, nor my name mentioned.