We are very, very, happy to be fulfilling our pledge from Jan 2020, as per our inclusivity and diversity statement , we wrote with the excellent guidance of @amandino - you can see the full statement on our website and we’ve been working hard on all pledges ever since and today’s news communicates how we’re honouring the following specific pledges:

Ensuring we foster authentic, respectful, receptive joyful and reciprocal relationships with diverse communities and creatives in the wedding industry, being intentional about not only serving to a majority white, cisgender, heterosexual, and normative audience and exhibitor base.
Consulting with diverse communities, groups and individuals to inform our work going forward - We aim to work with a range of diversity consultants from different communities. We will commit to and carry on raising diverse voices as a whole and specifically put together a working group of people from a broad set of intersections/backgrounds to lend their voices and lived experience, as well as professional insight.

It’s taken us a little longer than we would have liked (hi pandemic) (also hi general non-comfort zone fear and growth), to form a working group of diverse and informed people to ensure that intersectionality is a priority in our show and brand, but we’re here! So, it’s time to shake up the ‘mainstream’ wedding story that’s been told over and over again, and do our best to bring everyone in from the margins, and work to build trust and collaboration in order to learn how best to serve them!

So today we can introduce you to the brilliant people we are working with to make sure the 2022 show is as an inclusive and safe space for as many people as possible across as many communities as possible.

The MC Coalition - Coalition being the operative word. We respect that each person has their own individual identities, needs, values, viewpoints and experiences, and coming together, with a common goal of inclusion helps us support each other’s voices and experiences and makes us all stronger! Our working group and ongoing relationships exist to facilitate listening, mutual learning (sorry, I know, so 2020 but for real), plus guidance seeking and accountability on how to implement real tangible change throughout Most Curious as an event and a brand. We all want and need real, not performative, inclusion and equity so we are asking and collaborating on (and paying fairly for!) so we know what that looks like and what we need to do.

FIRST, AN ACKNOWLEDGEMENT AND THANK YOU:

I would also like to credit and thank all the advocates and activists from across all intersections, particularly from the Black and brown communities, who have role modelled the way forward thus far, fighting tirelessly for equity and inclusion. Paving a way, so that those of us with privilege and a safety that we take for granted, can move with ease when it comes to creating the safest and most accessible spaces possible for others. You folks, as always, set the pace and we follow after. We acknowledge that. Most Curious would not be able to be doing what it is doing now without you.

There are a great deal too many to name personally and we know there'll be more to come. In the meantime, a big thank you, acknowledgement and credit to these pioneers:

Nova Reid of NuBride and NuBride The Diversity Wedding Show, the original change maker for a new generation of true inclusion in style-led wedding shows | You can get her incredible book The Good Ally right here!

Ofe of The Noir Wedding Edit and Studio Oudizo

Shakira of Not Just A White Wedding.

And all our wonderful colleagues that make up our Coalition.

With a particular shout out to Ky of LGBTQ Equality Weddings, as they have inspired our model of collaboration with their commitment to speaking only from their lived experience and consistently inviting others with different lived experience to have a seat at the table, and paying them for their labour!

They, together with Ofe, wrote, for the benefit of the whole wedding industry, a literal manual on how to do this in an open letter last year. And reading this was a huge part of guiding Most Curious in what you see here.

The guidance contained in that letter has now been incorporated into a Guide To Inclusivity, which is yours for free. All you have to do is follow and support Ky and drop them an email using the contact button on their Instagram profile. We thoroughly recommend this as a must!

So without further a-do, please meet the Most Curious Coalition Group!

Lexie Lenoir (she/her)

Lexie Lenoir -founder of Queer Weddings UK

Head of Operations at UK Black Pride and one half of @queernomads.

The other half is her fiancé Aisha Shabu of Moonlight Experiences, who is also partnering with the show, on the entertainment side of things!Yes, we have a power couple of our hands! Planning their own 2022 wedding, always intentional of representation and keeping each other and their community at the heart of what they do, we are beyond honoured to have on them board.

Queer Weddings is the UK’s first company that delivers wedding coordination and full planning to LGBTQIA+ couples, and Lexie joins the team with all her expertise and lived experience in both the luxe end of the wedding industry, including planning her own upcoming 2022 wedding and how that intersects with all the parts of her Black, Queer identity.

Ky (they/them)

Ky - @the.career.queer

A professional conduct solicitor by day and an inclusivity consultant via @the.career.queer, founder of the legacy that is LGBTQ Equality Weddings and co-founder of the community group @wearequeerldn

Ky, who is proud to be LGBTQ+ and polyamorous, speaks specifically from a queer and trans non-binary perspective and works in collaboration with suppliers and wedding businesses to create a safer, more inclusive wedding industry for LGBTQ+ couples in love. As well as those who want to access event and ceremony services to celebrate their life events or diverse lovestyles.

We are so happy to have them on board as a real champion for tangible change and better representation in our industry. They advocate and advise in a fair, practical, and compassionate way committed as much to their own learning around how to be intersectional as they are in supporting others. Their approach is about collaborating directly with those you are trying to include - if you want to know how best to serve a particular community; ask that community.

Image credit: Amanda Goodyear

Alice Bye (they/them)

Alice - @disgaybled

Alice is a queer, disabled, gender non-conforming textile artist, who works with and around queer, disabled, gender non-conforming subjects in their art.

They are passionate about representing themselves and lifting up other marginalised bodies in all that they do.

We are totally delighted to have them on board advising us how we can make, the show, the brand and in particular the fashion show a safe and inclusive, celebratory space for disabled people, along with the experience of all their intersections around that.

Our Owambe

Our Owambe - @ourowambe

Our Owambe is the brainchild of two industry powerhouses Assumpta Vitcu of Ave Creations (she/her) and Olivia de Santos of Nuly Weds (she/her).

Our Owambe is a space that celebrates Black love, Black joy and Black creativity in all its modern forms, by way of an international wedding platform showcasing unapologetically, modern, design and fashion led, unique, black weddings and events.

We are honoured to collaborate with Assumpta and Olivia, with their shared sense of style, combined with their lived experience and specialism in what it is to be Black in this industry. They will speak on how best to serve and ensure a safe and celebratory space for them and their audience, in a way which lifts up and is useful to all types of Black and mixed race love stories.

Image credit: Joao Almeida Photography

Sophie Colligan (she/her)

Sophie Colligan - @sophiecolliganceremonies

Humanist celebrant and lived experience of being Neurodivergent.

Sophie Colligan of Sophie Colligan Ceremonies is an all-around mainstream wedding disrupter in her job and life choice as a Humanist Celebrant.

Full of empathy and sassy Northern spirit in equal measure, we are exceptionally chuffed to have her join the team with a particular voice on her lived experience of being neurodivergent, as well as a firm commitment to challenging all types of prejudices in the wedding industry.

Image credit: Marni V Photography

Tash T (she/her)

Tash T - @tasht.uk

Tash is an LGBTQ+ Activist, presenter, speaker and Anti-Racism and Inclusion and Diversity Consultant who will be leading our working group session. She will be keeping us on course and ensuring everyone feels safe and that we come out with actual action points we can put in place! (No pressure Tash!)

Tash recently got married to her wife Marthe (finally after Miss Rona had her way!) and she and Marthe are also two halves of the brilliant Breaking The Distance , a travel blog guide on amazing Gaycation destinations and general adventuring.

Tash brings her intersectional identities with her as well as her very recent experience of navigating the UK wedding industry too.

Nic (they/them)

Nic Chuter - @enjoy_visibility

Enjoy Visibility is a platform where Nic shares their experience of navigating life, including parenthood, as a gender fluid and non-binary, queer person.

Nic joins our group to speak on their lived experience as a gender fluid and non-binary queer, with extra intersectionality as a mixed race East Asian person. They are active within the LGBTQIA+ community and have sat within several support groups with people from across the LGBTQIA+ spectrum. Nic is also involved in interior decorating, prop making and theatre so we are excited to have not only their inclusion consulting on gender identities but their creative input join the coalition! Not to mention the fact it’s lovely to have a fellow half Malaysian Chinese member of the team (Most Curious founder Becky is too!)

Kathryn Palmer-Skillings (she/her)

Kathryn Palmer-Skillings - @kps_celebrant / Celebrant Kathryn

Kathryn is an accredited Humanist celebrant who has infused all that she does in the wedding world with a sense of intentional inclusion, learning and celebration of all that it is that makes us human.

As a proudly Disabled woman, she has always and is always pushing forward on the blindspots the wedding industry has when it comes to ableism. This includes launching a series of IG Lives 'Weddings Access All Areas?' where she explores the lived experience of suppliers and couples navigating accessibility in the wedding industry. Kathryn's angle is always very much about community, authenticity and working with the grassroots people making change. She is skilled at creating accessible events and warm and joyful bespoke wedding ceremonies for all couples. You can see more about this on her website here. We’re excited to work with her with this approach, on making sure Most Curious is accessible as possible, in the most joyful way possible!

Image credit: Autumn Wild

THANK YOU ENDLESSLY TO ALL - SO EXCITED FOR WHAT SPECIAL AND IMPORTANT MAGIC YOU WILL MAKE HAPPEN AT THE 2022 SHOW!!

MOST CURIOUS COALITION : Collaborating with the shining lights in our industry and beyond to ensure Most Curious serves more communities as a safe and joyful space!