Maggie Lord started blogging in 2009; now her company Rustic Wedding Chic, LLC., has three books and four websites.
Maggie Lord walked down the aisle at a church near her family's lake house in Wisconsin. At the reception, tables were adorned with baby's breath, gold acorns and plates decorated with brown bears. Outside, an antique, red Ford pickup truck carried a metal pail full of white flowers while a "Just Married" sign hung off the bumper.
It was Lord's rustic dream wedding — one inspired by the country, rustic accessories and touches of elegance. A wedding that she could not find any inspiration for online when she searched around in 2009. Of the thousands of wedding blogs out there, none focused solely on country-inspired weddings. That gave Lord a hole to fill.
"I just felt like it was important that if I was looking for this style, other people would be, too," Lord said in a phone interview. "There are so many wedding blogs, but we had a specific niche, and it came from an organic place, since I was planning my own rustic wedding."
Today, Lord's company Rustic Wedding Chic, LLC, has four different websites and three books all related to weddings or rustic clothing and accessories. The original blog, Rustic Wedding Chic, features mostly photos of real, rustic weddings and DIY posts. The business now brings in six figures in annual revenue and more than 1.5 million visitors per month — proof that Lord was able to stand out in a very crowded space. And with determination and a specific niche, she turned a simple blog into a profitable brand.
"Little by little, I put the blog together," Lord said. "In the beginning, I didn't see it as a business platform. Six months in, I decided that if I got really serious and came up with a business plan, it could be a business."
