It’s officially been one year since I’ve started The Bekah Boutique!
Technically, today is not the exact one year anniversary date (August 9, 2021 is when I pushed the site live with a handful of my first posts). But I wanted to make a post commemorating it regardless, even if it’s a little late. 🙂
I’ve always had a special place in my heart for blogging. I would follow along with a bunch of my favorite bloggers throughout high school, and I read their sites religiously every single day. The summer after my freshman year of college, I finally decided to take the plunge and start a website of my own.
It was 2014, and I had absolutely no idea what I was doing despite having read thousands of others’ posts at that point. My blog design was a free template on the free version of WordPress, my sister took my photos on a DSLR (combined we had zero photography skills and zero editing knowledge), and I wrote about whatever clothes I was able to get on sale while I was working at H&M. It was objectively a very terrible, low-quality, low-budget fashion blog.
But I fell head over heels in love with it.
I blogged on that old site until I graduated from college in 2017. Shortly after, I started my first full-time job in the corporate world, and my sister was busy with her own life. We didn’t have much time to take photos, and I was overwhelmed with the transition between college life and adult life. It was much more difficult than I ever anticipated it to be.
2018 and 2019 was a whirlwind of moving out of my childhood home and in with my boyfriend, navigating a corporate career that wasn’t the right fit for me, paying bills, balancing time with friends and family, trying to save money, switching to a completely different career, moving again, and a million other things I’m definitely forgetting. 2020 was, well, 2020. I thought about my blog occasionally and missed it but didn’t have any idea how I could manage to start it up again on top of everything else.
But by 2021, things were changing for the better. My boyfriend and I had been living in our apartment that we love for a few years now. I felt comfortable and settled in my new career. I was gaining more confidence in the adult version of myself and felt more prepared for the things life may throw at me along the way. The general chaos of 2020 was beginning to fade to the background, and I had spent the past year and a half purging and rebuilding my closet as a way to find some joy amidst the pandemic.
Through the process of redefining my personal style – getting rid of everything I had in college that no longer felt like me and also everything I bought while trying to figure out who that actually was – I realized how much I missed getting dressed each day. I worked from home (and still do) doing a data-based job and didn’t go out much, so there really wasn’t a reason to. But I suddenly and desperately wanted that creative outlet back in my life. My old college blog wasn’t anywhere near the best blog in the world, but I loved it and everything that came with it.
So one day in July 2021, I was browsing the internet and saw an ad for Bluehost and a deal for special pricing to celebrate their birthday. I didn’t really even think about it – I paid for the hosting right then and there. The next day, I began to set up my WordPress, purchased my blog theme from Empress Themes, and bought subscriptions and presets for Photoshop and Lightroom. I realized I finally had the means to create the kind of fashion blog I’d always wanted to, even if I didn’t really have a plan for how it was all going to come together.
I was winging it, but it was working out. My iPhone takes better photos than my DSLR ever did, although my wonderful, patient boyfriend probably has more to do with photo quality than the equipment. I learned so much about what to do (and what not to do) from my old blog that The Bekah Boutique instantly felt like everything I’d dreamed of. And I can’t believe it’s already been a year since it started.
Even if no one read my blog, I would still do it because it’s just something I’m truly passionate about. But the fact that there are people out there who take the time to look at what I create means so much to me. It is so special, and it is not something I will ever take for granted. I am so grateful and thankful for every single one of you for allowing me to share my love of fashion and supporting me along the way.
I can’t wait to see where the next year takes me.
