From the Bottom Up
The Brides of Oklahoma is a print and online magazine that works to connect future brides to the most talented local wedding vendors in the state. Published twice a year in January and July, the magazine is a unique planning tool featuring work from the best of the best in the Oklahoma wedding business. From carefully-crafted editorials and photo shoots to individual wedding announcements, this publication is the be all and end all of wedding inspiration and planning. Brides of Oklahoma is also published on the web, including a daily blog highlighting the latest and greatest work of local vendors. With over ten years in business, Brides of Oklahoma would not be the wildly successful publication that it is without the fearlessly ambitious women who founded it.
Kami Huddleston and Ashley Bowen Murphy started Brides of Oklahoma because of a need after planning their own weddings. Before social media had reached the state of popularity that it’s at currently, advertisement for local wedding vendors was hard to come by. To search for local vendors at the time, you would have to Google everything, and even then the results were not the best. The pair knew they needed to find a good way to show brides who the quality vendors were and where to find them in their local area. The concept started off as merely a fun project, but eventually resulted in an investment of $4,000 a piece, the building of a website and purchasing of business cards. The co-founders initially met with B.C. Clark jewelers to share their idea of a magazine dedicated entirely to advertising local wedding vendors. After nervously explaining their concept, B.C. Clark agreed to a more formal meeting with their agency.
Huddleston and Murphy prepared intensely for the meeting. After it was all said and done, the duo left with a good feeling that they may have just won over the support of the one-hundred-year old jeweler. B.C. Clark eventually became the first substantial investor in Brides of Oklahoma. This was a pivotal point in the life of the magazine.
A domino effect quickly ensued as more and more connections were made with big-name vendors such as wedding planner Judy Lehmbeck and Jane Kelly of J.J. Kelly Bridal Salon. Huddleston and Murphy landed a meeting with Lehmbeck through a connection. Lehmbeck treated the pair to a cocktail at the prestigious Oklahoma City Golf and Country Club and before they knew it, they had secured her support as well. Their leap of faith landed them in the arms of those who believed in their dreams and had the power to make them a reality. Huddleston and Murphy’s confidence and determination is admirable and goes to show just how effective unapologetically following a vision can be as well as speaking that vision to others. You never know who might be listening.
After graduating from Oklahoma City University, Huddleston worked for their athletic department creating design work and some sponsorship sales, later moving over to their marketing department essentially doing the same thing on a larger scale for the university as a whole. Working in the magazine industry never even crossed her mind until years later when she befriended Murphy through their now husbands and they realized a need and void in the wedding business after planning their own, only two weeks apart. Without any publishing experience whatsoever, they pulled the trigger and followed their intuition, a risky move that Huddleston admits to being the secret to their success. “We weren’t doing it by the book. There are no books for this! We just did it the way we thought it should be done, in the way that would best serve brides,” explains Huddleston. Taking initiative in the way that Huddleston and Murphy did in starting Brides of Oklahoma as well as with their three other markets shows an undeniable confidence that’s necessary to some degree to be successful in both personal and professional endeavors. If you don’t trust your own gut, who will? These women believed in themselves and their idea. They found a niche and filled it in a unique way.
Needless to say, starting a company from the ground up is no small task. Huddleston and Murphy each began their journey with Brides of Oklahoma nearly a decade ago in their first year of marriage, working all hours of the night alongside their day jobs. Balancing their time posed a challenge, especially considering both women started families in the first few years of their business as well. Hiring employees as Brides of Oklahoma began to grow was what Huddleston describes as “a whole new world”. Considering the type of personalities and skill sets they wanted behind their publication was crucial to producing their specific vision. Suddenly, the stakes rose to new heights as employees began to rely on them and their decisions. “Every challenge we face seemed scary, and we were fearful. Then we would face it again, and it was easier. Things got easier and easier, the challenges we faced got bigger and bigger and more expensive and more expensive, but that’s how successful businesses grow,” explained Huddleston regarding overcoming obstacles.
Today, Huddleston and Murphy have reached hundreds of thousands of brides spanning not only the Oklahoma market, but also the North Texas area, Austin and their newest addition Houston. After three years of producing Brides of Oklahoma, the company repeatedly received emails from brides in Stillwater, Norman and around the state that were originally from Texas asking for a similar magazine covering Texas-based vendors. With sorority women being their target audience, Huddleston and Murphy allowed them to guide their future markets. After receiving feedback, they felt like Austin was the next logical step in their pursuits as it is home to the University of Texas.
A “typical” day for Huddleston doesn’t quite exist. She receives between fifty to two hundred emails per day that must be sorted through and prioritized. Aside from handling all of the website design elements and putting together the magazines, the co-founders have also recently launched a new branch called BrandLink Media that handles outside design and social media services for wedding companies. Huddleston explains that if it’s a deadline week for any of those companies that it’s “crunch time”. For example, recently she had three of those due in one week. In addition, in regards to productivity, she adds the idea that if it takes her longer to write down than it would to actually do something on her list, it doesn’t become a priority.
“Never give in, never give in, never, never, never – in nothing, great or small, large or petty – never give in except to convictions of honor and good sense,” said the legendary Winston Churchill. The Institute for the Study of Human Flourishing at the University of Oklahoma defines perseverance as the ability to stay the course when the path to one’s goals is covered with obstacles and/or barriers. Perseverance falls under the category of what is called an executive virtue. These virtues are important for individual achievement of any kind, including the development of other virtues. Huddleston concedes that perseverance has been the most challenging virtue to deal with throughout her time with Brides of Oklahoma. Owning your own business is a constant roller coaster of uncertainty. Some days are great and some days can be really hard. “You have to look forward to the high days to keep you going,” says Huddleston. Although this piece of advice may seem simple, the results can be massively impactful to future success. How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time. Consistency is what makes success. It’s little things adding up over the course of time in a lot of cases. Celebrating every tiny victory even if other people don’t is key to continuously making progress because if you do it long enough, you’ll find the praise you so coveted previously. You remember where all of those tiny victories lead you and carry that hope as a catalyst for the future.
As far as advice for those seeking a career in the media industry, Huddleston’s response is plain and simple: “Work harder than you’ve ever worked for anything in your life. Go into everything with the belief that nothing is below you. No task is too small. Everything you do every day should be a learning experience and a step toward your ultimate goal.” Having an end goal in the first place was one of Huddleston’s main pieces of advice as well. An end goal, even in the smallest form, drives us to achieve and be the best version of ourselves. It gives us a “big picture” perspective when we are preforming those small, unenticing tasks previously mentioned that eventually lead us to success. She also encourages those seeking a future in media to be proactive when writing articles and submit them. Don’t wait for others to ask you to do so.
Love of learning includes both the desire to acquire knowledge and delight in achieving it. It includes curiosity about the world and a proper regard for the difficulty of careful inquiry, according to the Institute for the Study of Human Flourishing. A love of learning is necessary for personal growth and certainly that of a business, in the case of Brides of Oklahoma. As previously stated, Huddleston and Murphy had absolutely no publishing experience. Murphy even graduated with a law degree! Despite the fact that they both may have appeared unqualified to start their own magazine, the duo threw caution to the wind and decided to learn how. Huddleston and Murphy make an inspiring case for the idea that it’s never too late to learn a new skill or follow a new-found passion. It’s not every day that you run across someone so passionate about their work. Huddleston explains that the driving force behind her daily motivation is the fact that she’s working for and toward something that she herself built.
“Employers are looking for those self-starters that need only a little guidance and can grasp a concept quickly,” says Huddleston of what she looks for in interviews. Self-discipline and ambition are qualities that have the ability to make one stand out from the crowd, but Huddleston explains the importance of having others to rely on as well. Her biggest supporter and influence throughout her time with Brides of Oklahoma is that of her husband. “Number one is my husband for all the wedding talk he’s put up with, the advice he gives, the times he knows not to give advice and just the support he’s given me all these years. I would not be where I am without him!” says Huddleston.
Another important aspect of success that Huddleston points out is that of timing. “I think timing is everything. I think we got in at a good time before social media was a big player in the promotion of vendors. I think we got our foot in the door with a great product. I feel like if we were to start the magazine now, it would be very different,” says Huddleston.
Change is an intimidating beast to most people. We get comfortable in our daily routines and fear the thought of those routines and commonalities ever becoming different or even ceasing to exist. Huddleston counters this widely held view, saying, “Continually evolving is so important. We see our competitors stay stagnant and not change. With the way the world is moving, those who don’t change fall behind and ultimately fail, so we are constantly looking at ways to involve our business and offer more services to our readers and users and be more efficient as a company.”
Throughout my interview with Mrs. Huddleston, I was inspired by her continuous determination and trust in the future, even when things weren’t all that easy. The virtues of open-mindedness, perseverance and love of learning stood out to me especially. My interview pointed out open-mindedness in the idea that we should all have goals, but be flexible in the methods with which we attain them. Huddleston knew she wanted to produce a magazine that would inspire future brides while simultaneously promoting local creatives in the process. She had a specific vision for the magazine and all that it would accomplish, but, initially, she had no knowledge of how it would materialize. Nonetheless, she trusted her gut and the potential of her business and went with it. She spread the word of her dream and made connections in the process that eventually jump-started Brides of Oklahoma.
I think trusting in the potential of my ideas and following through with them is something I can work on in my professional future. Many people, myself included, want to please those around them as opposed to pleasing themselves which can be valuable in a lot of cases. However, when it comes to a professional career, Huddleston explained that you can’t just wait around for success to fall into your lap. You’ll be waiting a lifetime. You must actively and passionately go after your dreams in order to give them the chance to become a reality. This goes hand-in-hand with the virtue of love of learning. A key to success that I drew from Huddleston is being passionate about what you’re doing career-wise. Like Huddleston mentioned, it’s rare to find people who truly love what they’re doing. A good majority of the people go to work at their nine to five Monday through Friday and do their best to simply make it through their week. I don’t want to be one of those people and this interview proved to me exactly why. Each and every day, Huddleston comes into her office that she built ready to work with a team of women she hired on herself to produce a magazine that she handcrafted from scratch. Her passion drives her motivation every day and I know that is something I want in my life. Working in the media industry, specifically with magazines, requires the ability and willingness to take risks. Media is constantly changing and in turn, so must those pursuing a career surrounding it. I have been able to draw from Huddleston that staying inside your comfortable box is not going to get you very far. You have to be willing to learn something new and be bad at it at first. You have to let your ego slide just a bit to open yourself up to possibility.
I would finally say that both Huddleston and Murphy’s perseverance was the most impactful and resonating aspect of my interview. Huddleston described the difficulties of starting her business and balancing a brand new family and another job. As hectic as that period of her life was, she persisted. She was consistent in the pursuit of her dream by accomplishing tiny victories that eventually lead her to where she is today. My main takeaway that I am now constantly reminding myself of is to stay the course, no matter how tough it may get with an end goal in mind. I’m now working to solidify a vision for my future and focus solely on that while making my way slowly but surely toward it. I know that success takes time. Brides of Oklahoma took years to finally take off, but now, Huddleston and Murphy are able to produce thousands of magazines spanning four enormous markets covering a topic that they are passionate about every single day.
I know after my interview that I want passion. I want to exercise my creativity regularly in as many ways as possible. I want to try and fail and then try again. I want to learn the true definition of perseverance first-hand through my experiences. I want to someday obtain the fervor and initiative that both Kami Huddleston and Ashley Bowen Murphy have and continue to display through the success of Brides of Oklahoma.
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