Vero: My First Impressions

Over the past couple of days, as I've been browsing through Instagram Stories, one app has been mentioned again and again: Vero.
What is it and where has it come from? Do we really need another social media platform to keep up with?
Here's my first impressions after researching, downloading the app, setting up an account and attempting to 'socialise'.

What Is Vero?

Although it suddenly seems to be popping up everywhere, Vero has actually been around for quite a while. It was created a couple of years ago, with a view to being a more transparent and honest (Vero means 'truth') social media platform.

Included in the manifesto on their website is the statement:

"In real life, people are never presented with a one size fits all audience. We share different things with different people. 

Most social networks reduce everyone to a friend or a follower. This encourages us to only share the parts of our lives we think are the most interesting.

When you can control who sees what, you can behave in a way that is more natural, which we believe ends up being better for you."

Vero aims to provide a natural and authentic way of connecting with others online.

So, Why Is It Different?

As the manifesto above states, a lot of Vero's focus is to be a better way for us to facilitate our varying social networks online, rather than having a one size fits all approach.

When you come across someone's Vero profile you have the option to either follow them (meant for people you just know online) or connect with them (if you know them in RL). If you select 'Connect' you're then given the options to categorise them as 'Close Friends', 'Friends' or 'Acquaintances'. This means that when you post something, you can select which category of people is able to see it.

One way that I can imagine this working for me, is that I'm always careful to never give away precisely where I live (e.g. photos of the outside of my house) when I post on Instagram, for obvious security reasons. But with this option on Vero, I could post a photo of my door number if I wanted to, but then only make it available for my close friends, who already know where I live, to see.

The bonus of this feature, is that no one can see where you've categorised them; so you don't need to worry about offending anyone.

As I mentioned above, one of the great things about Vero is that it won't fill our feeds with adverts, however, as it isn't making money through advertising, Vero has said that it will start charging people a small fee to use it, after the first million people have signed up.
The first million will be able to use it for free for life; so I would advise signing up asap, even if you're not sure whether or not you'll keep up using it long term.

Vero also enables you to not just share your photos, but to share links (great for bloggers) and recommendations for things like movies and books.

My First Impressions

Well, after 30 minutes of the server failing and retrying, my first photo has finally uploaded!
So far, I've found the app to be pretty slow and have been greeted with messages like 'Server side service timeout' whenever I've attempted to upload a photo or search for a hashtag.
Apparently, due to the sudden surge of people joining, the server is struggling, but we've been assured that this will soon sort itself out.

I actually hardly ever use Facebook or Twitter anymore, and Instagram is so saturated with users and content (although I do love it a lot), so its been fun to start connecting with the relatively small number of people on Vero, and to do things like start hashtags!

Overall, I'd say I'm enjoying discovering something new. I love their manifesto and their lack of using our data to advertise to us, or giving us infuriating algorithms like Instagram does.
I think time will tell as to whether or not Vero joins the big 3 social media platforms; but for the moment it's so fun to be part of something that's still in its relative infancy.

What do you think? Will you be giving it a go? Or if you've already started using it, what are your first impressions?

Lisa xx

Wedding Bells: Ideas & Pinspiration

What did people do before the wonder that is Pinterest? It’s such a great space for collecting ideas and thinking through the look of a wedding day.

Here’s a few thoughts and tips for the exciting ideas and Pinteresting stage of planning a wedding.

Dreaming Dreams

The great thing about using Pinterest or flicking through wedding magazines, is the wide variety of themes and ideas that you’re given. My advice would be to make the most of this time and explore a few different avenues, maybe creating a board for each. Have some fun dreaming dreams!

I went through several different versions of the general theme for our wedding day. (At least 1 of these was before we’d actually got engaged... Secret boards are everything! I ambiguously named mine ‘Special Day’, just in case Tim ever caught sight of it.)

I started off loving the idea of incorporating wild flowers throughout our day, and going for a fairly relaxed, boho feel. When I floated this idea past my husband-to-be however, he wasn’t the biggest fan and thought it didn’t quite fit with us.

In the end, we chose to have a fairly relaxed feel, but with a bit more classic romance mixed in, e.g. roses were our main flowers, with gypsophila to compliment.

Don’t Be A Lone Wolf

Getting married is the process of two people becoming united together; so resist the temptation to plan it all yourself.

One of my absolute pet peeves when it comes to wedding planning, is this attitude of the women planning everything and the men being disinterested and just rocking up on the day. Not only is this massively sexist, but it completely goes against the point of the day!

This is a time for working together, preparing to build a marriage and a life as one unit. Every aspect of the day should reflect both of you. Learn to compromise and work together, even if this is something that you find a challenge – if you can’t do it when planning a one-day event, you’ll be scuppered when it comes to much bigger and more important decisions and challenges later in life.

As someone who organises events as part of my job, it took discipline not to rush on ahead and do it all myself! For every aspect of the day I would think of some ideas, but then take them to Tim to hear his ideas too, before excitedly making decorations or meeting with a vendor together.

Decisions, Decisions...

 
All idea stages must come to an end at some point.

Have a look through all of the different ideas you’ve collected and begin to filter them down. Which are your favourites and why? Are they practical? Can you afford them with your budget? Do you both like them? What will your friends and family think? Do they reflect you both as a couple? Will you still like it in 40 years’ time when you look back at your wedding day?

If you’ve been using Pinterest, make a main board that all of your filtered ideas can be moved onto. Then take a step back, make a cup of tea, (you might even want to come back to it the following day) and see how the ideas work together. Are they cohesive? Will they fit within the shape of the day? Do you both like all of the ideas, and if not, are there any areas that you need to find a compromise on?

If you need to, start to filter some things out until you’re left with a core of exciting, practical ideas that you both love (or can at least put up with if you’ve had to compromise in one area to have your choice in another!).


Now it’s time to start making those dreams a reality. In my next set of posts we’ll be chatting through the practicalities and logistics of making bookings and organising each area of the day; starting with drawing up a timeline.

Are you a serial Pinterester or have you come to this with a really clear picture of the day in your mind?

Lisa xx

Beauty Bar: Lip Balm Gold

Introducing Nivea's Hydro Care lip balm - unless you've used it before, it's not actually new or anything...
This is my absolute favourite lip product. Ever. Of all time.
I've repurchased it at least 3/4 times (which for me constitutes a life-long fave) and am coming to the end of my current one so will be buying another very soon!
I am always absolutely plagued by dry lips in Winter, which is a bit of a nightmare when you love lipsticks as much as I do, so finding a good, reliable lip balm has been key for me.

Reasons why I'm the number one fan of this lip balm:

1. It's a twist-up stick, which means that I don't have to worry about cleanliness when I apply it, and it doesn't gunk up my hand either. Super practical.

2. It is actually moisturising. This might sound obvious but I have used some pretty drying lip balms in my time; the worst culprits of all being lip butters from The Body Shop.
There was such a craze for those lip butters when I was in high school and I remember excitedly buying the coconut one because it smelt SO good and because I really like their body butters.
I wanted to like the lip butter so much that I just kept using it and pretending it was good, even when it was actually just worsening and worsening the dry lip situation... Never. Again.

3. It has SPF 15! As you'll know if you've read my blog about the importance of SPF and UVA ratings in skincare and beauty products; I am a massive fan of anything with this sort of skin protection. I mean, if you can put it into a product, why wouldn't you?

Do you have a beauty/skincare staple that you repurchase again and again?

Lisa xx

Wedding Bells: Bridesmaids & Groomsmen

Deciding on who to ask to be a bridesmaid or a groomsman can be one of the trickiest wedding planning decisions to make.
There may well be some people, e.g. siblings or life-long friends, who are an easy choice, but outside of this it can all become a lot more ambiguous.
Your wedding day will be one of the most special days of your life; make sure the people you ask are those who will support you through this major life event, but who you also want to still know in 10, 25, 50 years!
Below I've put some questions that may well come up as you make these decisions.

- "How many bridesmaids/groomsmen should I have?"
There really is no perfect number. I know people who have had 1, often a sibling, and others who have had 6+. Lauren Conrad had 10! And if LC says it's ok, you know it's ok.
Basically, ask as many people as you feel is right for you, but do remember to take things like your budget into account, which I'll talk more about in the next question.

- "Do I have to pay for their entire outfit/hair/make up, etc?"
This is really up to you and your partner. Take an honest look at your budget (as covered in my last blog post), and see what you might be able to afford.
If you're working with a generous budget, then this is a great opportunity to treat and pamper some of your favourite people.
If you're working with a more modest budget, then do be honest with your bridesmaids/groomsmen. Explain that your budget isn't massive, and then say what you'd like to buy for them, and what you'd like them to cover themselves. Make sure to enable honesty both ways here, so that your bridesmaids/groomsmen can tell you if they aren't able to afford that £500 dress you've picked out for them to pay for!
Being involved in someone's wedding party is such an honour, but it can be really expensive too, so do make sure that your special day (or even the hen party/stag do!) won't be clearing out their bank accounts or putting them under financial strain.

- "If someone asked me to be a bridesmaid/groomsmen at their wedding, do I now need to ask them to be one at mine?"
In short, no.
I'm not going to lie, this could create some awkwardness, and maybe even some hurt, but most people will understand that there are lots of factors that go into choosing your wedding party. One factor could be your budget, as discussed above, or another could be that you want to have the same number of bridesmaids as groomsmen, or that you've fallen out of touch with someone since you were involved in their wedding.
It is true that some people will be upset by not being asked if they're expecting to be, but most people, particularly if they've been through the process of planning their own wedding, will understand.
If you do feel like there could be awkwardness, then you could always involve the person in another aspect of the wedding (e.g. doing a reading during the ceremony), or just bite the bullet and talk to them about it, explaining where you've come from in your decision not to ask them.

As you might be working out if you've read my other posts in this series, there's quite a lot of biting the bullet involved in planning a wedding!

Do you have any other questions on this subject that I haven't covered here? If so, please ask in the comments below and I'll let you know my thoughts.
Equally, if you have any wisdom to share on this then please do write it below for us all to see!

Lisa xx

Lifestyle: The Art of Unbusy

In our culture it seems like being constantly busy is a badge of honour. Particularly if it makes you ill or loses you sleep - as long as you soldier on anyway!
For some people, let's say the extroverts of this world, that sort of lifestyle can actually be energising.
For me (an introvert with a dash of extroversion), that is not living, it’s just surviving. It's a way of life that involves collecting lots of experiences but not really being present for any of them.

A few years ago, I remember regularly looking at my diary and seeing that for the following 2 weeks, every single second of my time was accounted for.

I’d just be running from one thing to the next. It made me feel like I was on fast forward, that my life was just speeding past in a blur. Sure I was doing a lot, but I wasn’t really enjoying any of it. I was just checking things off a mental to do list; then always looking ahead to the next thing, and the thing after that, wishing some free time would appear somewhere.

In the end, it was getting ill that finally made me slow down and take another look at how I was choosing to organise my life.
All of a sudden, I didn't have the same capacity for busyness that I'd had before, and I didn't want it either.

Then came the slightly uncomfortable working out of a new way to plan my time. Not just saying yes to things, but taking a moment to think through each week and the allotted amount of energy that I would have. This meant working out who and what were my priorities. Once I'd done this, I could give more time to those people and things, and then fit everything else in as and when.

If I look at my diary and see that I'm busy for more than 3 nights a week, I get this anxious feeling in the pit of my stomach. To be honest, my preference would definitely be less than 3! 

As an introvert, evenings are my time to recharge, so that I can then go into the next working day as the best version of myself. Because I know this about myself, I know that I don't need to feel bad about it. There are times when I start to make comparisons with people who have a bigger capacity for busyness than I do, but I try to just shrug it off and not let it make me feel bad.

We're all different and that's ok.
The sooner we take an honest look at ourselves, the sooner we can learn to love and accept ourselves as we are. No apologies needed.

And sure, busier weeks will come along. But I'm careful to plan in some downtime too; to manage the balance as best as I can.

I think unbusyness is an art. To keep the balance between self-care but also looking outwards to the people and world around us. To think about how best to love and bless others, out of a healthy and well-rested place.

How do you find this? Are you someone who gets joy out of busyness? Or someone who, like me, needs the regular recharging time too?

Capsule Wardrobe: January's Verdict

Yesterday we (finally) reached the end of Jan 2018! A whole month of this capsule wardrobe experiment is complete. I have to say, overall I've been unexpectedly loving it!

I've enjoyed this experiment so much that I've decided to keep going in February, but am adding in 3 more items of clothing, to bring the count up to 20 (a much nicer number than 17!).

I went digging through the bags under my bed yesterday for my lovely pink velvet jumper and an extra t shirt. Both of these will work with any of the other clothes that I already have in my capsule wardrobe - which is key.

The other thing that I wanted to add was a dungaree dress (or pinafore dress). I wanted one in black denim, and you wouldn't believe how hard the search has been to find something!
ASOS had a couple of options, but their dresses all had distressed edges along the bottom, and that is not my style at all - I just can't get on board with paying £40 for something that's already worn out!
I also tried on a dungaree dress in Topshop but wasn't convinced of the fit, and it came up a bit short when I sat down. (I work for a church so if I can't wear something to a prayer meeting, there is literally no point in me owning it!)

In the end, the dress I've gone for is from Zara Kids! It's a relaxed fit, with pretty embroidered flowers and I love it.

If there's one thing that having a capsule wardrobe has taught me, it's to only buy something if I absolutely love it and if it will work with the rest of my wardrobe. I have to be so smitten that I'm happy to wear it ALL the time.

I'm interested to see how things progress month-by-month. I don't want to put too much pressure on this by committing to a year or anything like that; I'm going to see how things go, and then adjust my wardrobe as the seasons and temperatures change.

What type of shopper are you? Fast fashion or carefully planned purchases?

Lisa x