?It’s hard to be a bride these days. You can’t look sideways at a computer screen without being sucked headfirst into an endless maze of enticing real-wedding blogs; pastel-pretty country weddings where the bride has made a homemade pot of jam for every guest, or carnival-themed nuptials with a set design reclaimed from a 1920’s travelling fayre.

It’s all a bit much to navigate. But one website to which brides return again and again when searching for inspiration on the finer details of their wedding is Etsy. Generally acknowledged to be the Ebay of hand crafts, Etsy is the world’s largest handmade and vintage marketplace, allowing thousands of individual sellers to peddle their wares to a global audience. From quirky Save the Dates to one-off Victorian hairpieces, all the bridal fodder you can think of (and lots you would never think of) can be found within its virtual walls.

Now, to make it even more of an asset to brides-to-be, Etsy has launched ‘Etsy Weddings’ – a new section in the website which aims to offer guidance, tutorials and best of all, to direct you straight to the product you need without having to trawl first through endless strangers’ weddings (I hold up my hand as being guilty of doing this at 2am on a Tuesday night).

The wedding site is divided into shopping subsections such as stationery, decor, rings and accessories, and is supplemented with how-to features from industry experts, real wedding inspiration, and even crafty little tutorials on how to make your own photo booth props or do your own wedding make-up. It’s a brilliant resource and I’m glad I’ve discovered it at this stage, even if I rather doubt I will get around to making tiny little cardboard houses to place on every guest’s place setting for the big day...

www.etsy.com/weddings