Published by Leonardo Calcagno
Who are you and what is your background?
Sisters in Law is a Swedish wedding blog that launched in 2015. Today, Sisters in Law is Sweden’s largest wedding blog and is also available in English.
Zanna Metzer is one of the founders and editor in chief, both for the blog and the physical magazine. My background is within digital media production, and I used to work at a television company, where I coordinated the creative department who made trailers for the network.
In what city?
Sisters in Law is based in Umeå, in the north of Sweden.
Can you tell about us, about your magazine
When posting blog posts with amazing photography from all around the world, I suddenly felt like it was going too fast. An amazing wedding got published and 7 days later, it was ”gone” in the feed. I wanted to do something more and treat all these beautiful photographs with the respect they deserved. And that’s why we chose to make a physical wedding magazine. To preserve the images and memories in a nice way. The magazine is released 4 times a year and is about 140 pages long.
Editorial …
Our mission is to show a broader view of weddings, where we can show creative ways of arranging a wedding as well as showing relaxed elopements. We look for everything that breaks the traditional way of how a wedding is supposed to look like, as well as high-quality wedding photography.
Print: Why choose print? What kind of paper you use and why? Typography?
Print is awesome. When getting married, it’s nice to have something physical to flip through, and not just get overwhelmed with blogs or social media.
The paper is uncoated. (Maxioffset 250g (cover). Maxioffset 140g (inlay).
How’s the public response?
We’ve gotten a great response! All brides and grooms to be that have read our magazines love them because they show something else than the classic bridal magazines do.
And the photographers and other creators who get published adore how we work with the layout and that fact that we give them multiple pages for their extraordinary work.
Can you give us a tour of your local media scene?
In Sweden, other big wedding media still mostly follow the classic l way of how a wedding looks. It’s understandable since many couples also want it this way. But we want to give something to the others, the couples who don’t like following traditions or ”rules”.
Business: Good print mags get a lot of love, but is not always translated to sales or advertising. How’re the sales? Advertising-wise, is it a normal approach of selling an ad page or more a brand ad approach?
Good question. Our main approach with this magazine is to strengthen Sisters in Law as a brand. We’re an independent magazine and don’t want too much advertising in it. But of course, we need to make money from it, but it’s now the most important thing.
What is your online strategy?
Just to share the best of the best when it comes to weddings and stay true to our readers. Out of every submission we get to us, we only published around 40% of it at the moment, because we want quality and creativity in both photography and style.
About design, what does your brand represent/reflect?
Sisters in Law stands for high quality and creativity. We love design and art and want to show this in the magazine as well as on the blog. The layout is important to us, it should be minimalistic so that the focus will be on the photographs.
What inspires you and motivates you to go to work every day?
Our readers do. It’s such a joy getting an email from brides to be, who are thanking us for showing them table settings or bridal wear that they never thought about before.
What were your biggest challenges as an entrepreneur?
Time. As an entrepreneur, I want to do everything at once and I also get a ton of ideas every week which can be hard to sort away. I want Sisters in Law to be the best wedding blog and magazine, where both couples and creators in the business can come to get inspired.
What advice would you give someone who wants to start a magazine?
– Don’t overthink it, but be smart. Read a lot of other magazines and find your own voice.
– Visit independent magazine stores and ask them what’s missing out there or how you could do something better.
– Also, team up with someone you trust. I came up with the idea of a wedding magazine in December 2017 and asked my friend Stina Sjöberg, who’s an art director, if she wanted to do this magazine with me. She said yes and in February 2018, the first issue was released. Wouldn’t have done this without her.
Upcoming projects
We have only started our journey on sharing wedding inspiration and looking forward to expanding in multiple directions. We recently launched our own bridal wear collection, after getting many questions about nonwhite bridal skirts from Scandinavia. We thought: ”So why not launch our own collection?”. We call it Ellen Marie Bridal by Sisters in Law. (www.ellenmariebridal.com).
We have other ideas as well on how to expand but are focusing on the bridal wear, the blog, and the magazine at the moment.
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