New wedding magazine for LGBTQI community launches

A new wedding magazine which seeks to serve the LGBTQI community has officially launched.
The biannual publication, known as Equally Wed, is run by an online wedding directory with the same name, founded by Nivelo Miller.
More than 3,000 copies have been spread across 920 newsagents in Australia for its launch. A digital edition is expected to roll out from issue two.
Miller told Mumbrella the idea came from a visit to a news agency. She noticed while there were almost 30 wedding magazines, none were serving the LGBTQI community.
“Once I get an idea I have to get it done and I could just see the market needed it so I just went for it,” she said.
“It really came down to walking into a newsagents one day and there wasn’t a single magazine on the shelf for LBTQI couples.
“We’d thought about expanding to print media and it just so happens that a few months later the same sex marriage legislation passed that we went to print.”
Miller believes a print magazine is necessary for certain topics, in particular weddings.
“There’s a real need and want out there to have and to hold the hard copy of a wedding magazine. It is a guide. We have over 20 pages dedicated to planning and they use this as a tool to start the initial stages of their wedding planning,” she said.
Her new magazine will tackle issues beyond wedding planning, such as legal rights and the health and psychology issues surrounding the event.
“In terms of the health and psychology, there’s a lot of stress when you are preparing for your wedding day but if you can imagine being a transgender person for instance, preparing for a wedding day, there’s a lot more on your mind,” she said. She added areas such as pressures from family, vendors and managing expectations will all be addressed.
Miller sources most of the content herself, but has some dedicated writers. For Miller, the magazine is about the community creating content for the community. The first issue has 20 pages of wedding planning, one engagement, three weddings and a photoshoot.
For the launch edition, advertisers include Stamford Hotels and Resorts, Nuri Jewelry Design, Cruising Yacht Club and Hotel Urban Brisbane.
So far, Miller said the advertisers are “very happy” with the product: “It’s very hard to launch a magazine as I’m sure you can understand and people are just taking it off your pitch. I was lucky enough that I’ve got about 3.5 years in the online wedding directory space behind me. They could see the brand, they could see the vision of where I was going and a lot of people ran with that vision.”
The magazines are on sale for $12.50.