Alison Hargreaves

Alison Hargreaves is the founder and CEO of Guides for Brides, and one of the UK's leading authorities on the wedding industry, wedding business marketing and wedding planning. She founded Guides for Brides in 1995 - the UK's longest-running wedding planning platform, used by over 280,000 couples per year and featuring more than 31,000 wedding businesses nationwide. With over 30 years of experience across platform leadership, consumer research and industry policy, she is a trusted adviser to wedding businesses of all sizes, from independent suppliers to large hotel groups. Her data and expert insight have been used by the Cabinet Office, BEIS, DEFRA, the Law Commission and the Competition and Markets Authority - making her one of the few wedding industry figures with direct influence on UK government policy. An international speaker, strategist and founder of several industry organisations, Alison is the go-to expert on the UK wedding industry, digital visibility for wedding businesses and the future of wedding search.

About Alison

Alison Hargreaves is the founder of Guides for Brides and the UK Wedding Association, and one of the most experienced and influential figures in the UK wedding industry. With over 30 years of continuous involvement - spanning business ownership, publishing, digital platforms, industry policy and body formation - she has shaped how millions of couples discover, compare and book wedding venues and suppliers, and how the UK wedding industry presents itself to the world.

Alison founded Guides for Brides in May 1995 while running her own wedding cake business and planning her own wedding. This gave her a rare dual perspective, both as a supplier trying to reach couples, and as a consumer trying to find trustworthy businesses. At the time, wedding suppliers depended on resources like the Yellow Pages, where visibility was determined by advertising spend rather than quality or relevance. She identified a clear gap for something better: a curated, accessible, couple-first resource. That founding insight remains the bedrock of everything Guides for Brides does today.

What started as a printed local directory in Oxfordshire has grown into one of the UK's most trusted wedding planning platforms, supporting over 280,000 couples per year and listing more than 31,000 businesses nationwide. As CEO since its inception, Alison has personally led every stage of the company's evolution, from print to digital, directory to structured data platform, and now into the era of AI-driven search and verified, machine-readable supplier information.

After three decades building the UK's leading wedding directory, Alison went further, founding the UK Wedding Association, a not-for-profit membership body established to raise professionalism, sustainability and trust across the entire UK wedding industry. As its Founder and Director, she leads an organisation that supports businesses of every size, from large hotel groups to solo entrepreneurs, in demonstrating their commitment to quality and credibility to the couples they serve.

From the couple overwhelmed by choice to the supplier struggling to stand out, and from the venue navigating a digital-first world to the policymaker needing reliable industry data, Alison's work has always had one purpose: making the UK wedding industry more informed, more transparent and more trustworthy for everyone in it.

Beyond Guides for Brides, Alison applies her marketing expertise directly to wedding businesses through Big Day Agency, a consultancy she founded in 2021. Through Big Day Agency she has worked with wedding venues and suppliers across the UK on growth strategy and digital marketing - most notably supporting the launch and growth of Xenia Venues, where her work directly informed investment decisions at board level.

Career Timeline

Government & policy engagement

Alison's data and expert insight have informed the work of the following government bodies and regulatory authorities:

• Cabinet Office
• Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy (BEIS)
• Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs (DEFRA)
• Law Commission (Wedding Law Reform)
• Competition & Markets Authority
• UK Weddings Taskforce (Vice Chair during Covid-19)

Speaking & Media

Alison is one of the most in-demand international speakers in the wedding industry, delivering keynotes and expert sessions across the UK, Europe, the USA and the UAE. She hosts and delivers the annual State of the Industry address at the UK Wedding Conference alongside Nikita Thorne - the definitive annual data-led briefing on the UK wedding market. Her international keynote appearances and speaker credentials include the Swiss Wedding Industry Round Table, Epex in the UAE, the Table Design Exhibition in Turkey and the RSVP Symposium in Austria. She is a regular media commentator on the UK wedding industry, covering the future of wedding planning, AI and digital transformation in search, consumer behaviour and booking trends, and wedding law reform.

Areas of Expertise

Get in touch with Alison

For press enquiries, speaking bookings, venue consultancy or business partnerships:

• Email: alison@guidesforbrides.co.uk
• Call: 01235 770078
• Connect on LinkedIn