Meet Suppliers, the directory that grows itself

Every wedding I shoot ends the same way, and it isn't the bit you'd think. It's not the culling or the editing. It's the quiet pile of admin that lands afterwards: writing the blog post and linking every supplier, sharing the gallery with the venue and the florist, tagging everyone on Instagram without spelling a single handle wrong. None of it is hard. All of it eats an evening. So I'm building a tool that hands most of it back.

One link, and the couple does the fiddly bit

You get one bespoke link. You drop it into your CRM's automated emails — for me that's Studio Ninja — and it goes out a few months before the day, when couples are keen and have time. They click it, pop in their names to start their own event, and fill in who's helping bring their day to life. As they type, a shared directory suggests suppliers already in it and fills in the website, Instagram and email for you. They only add what's genuinely new.

Built Scotland-first, on purpose

I shoot a lot in Scotland, and a generic supplier list doesn't cut it. So the categories are the ones a Scottish wedding actually has — celebrant, kilts, a piper, a ceilidh band, a marquee — and you can reorder or trim them to match how you work. It's scoped to the UK by default, too, so when a couple types "Perth" they get Perth, Scotland, not the sunnier Perth in Australia. Small thing; saves a wrong credit.

Every wedding makes it smarter

Here's the part I like most. When a couple adds a supplier that isn't in the directory yet, it waits in a queue for your OK. Approve it and it joins the shared library — ready for the next couple, and for every other photographer using the tool. Your list of couples builds up in one place, each one a click away, and the directory quietly gets richer every single wedding. The database is the whole point, and it only grows while it's being used.

Then it pays you back

Once the couple has submitted, the tool hands you everything you need to credit them, one tap at a time:

• Website links, copied in one go, ready for the blog post.
• An email list of every supplier, to share the gallery with the whole team at once.
• Instagram tags done two ways: a plain string of handles for a story, and a labelled version for the grid (Venue @…, Florist @…).
• A ready-to-paste HTML credit block with every supplier hyperlinked, plus a CSV of the lot.

The best admin is the admin the couple has already done for you, months ago, without either of you really noticing.

It's a concept for now — I'm building it in the open, and there's a clickable four-step walkthrough you can play with, plus a page on exactly how (and why) I'm building it. If you're a UK photographer and this sounds like your kind of evening back, I'm gathering a small founding group to shape it and use it free while the directory grows.