My First Ever Awards Night (Blogosphere 2017)

I recently wrote a post about how it’s been a crazy six weeks on the blog, and part of that was being shortlisted Parent Blogger of the year 2017 with Blogosphere magazine. Last Thursday I attended the blogosphere blog awards 2017 in London.

I will start out by saying that I didn’t win, but the winner was a well deserved winner as anybody would have been from the shortlist.

It’s a difficult decision sometimes whether you attend these kind of ceremonies because it’s a bit of a catch 22. If you didn’t go and you actually won, you would have been gutted and at the same time going and not winning can be a tad disappointing. For all of that I decided to attend, which is miles out of my comfort zone.

I drove up to London with the intention of coming back the same night. I arrived around 4pm, parked the car and found my bearings and decided to make my way to the venue around 5pm.

On arriving at the venue I was quite early and they were still setting up so no one was allowed in. Thankfully I met a couple and we went off to a local pub to pass the time before it officially started.

While waiting at the pub a good friend of mine, a fellow dad blogger, Tom from The Unlikely Dad turned up. It was fantastic to finally meet him. Watch out for Tom because it wouldn’t surprise me to see him on the shortlist next year. He’s an awesome writer and one of my absolute favourites.

Image via The Unlikely dad 

At about 6pm we all went to the venue and it was straight out of Hollywood! Red carpet, torches lit to one side and we were greeted and checked off the guest list.

The whole venue certainly had a feel of an awards night and the whole blogosphere team which included Alice (editor-in-chief), Sophie (sales & events) and Albertine (commissioning editor). They had all gone to a lot of effort to make sure it was spot on and it was a perfect evening. Big thank you to Albertine for always answering my emails while leading up to the awards night with most likely silly questions, but she always took the time to answer and also saying such lovely things about my blog and Sophie for her comments about my blog too, it means the world to me.

I had a wander around and the lighting and setting was excellent. Also upstairs was a room showing all the shortlists, which of course I was one of them. While upstairs I bumped into Harriet who blogs at Toby&Roo who I met while at a blogging conference in Manchester a couple of months ago, it was fab to catch up with her again.

The event is predominantly a female based crowd, which I have no problem with because after all blogging is female dominated.

The award that I was shortlisted for was the fourth award and as I said I didn’t win, yes I was a little bit disappointed, but this is the first award I have ever been shortlisted for and I am immensely proud of that, especially when I heard how many blogs were looked at to begin with, so to be narrowed down to just five blogs was amazing.

The evening progressed and another friend and dad blogger arrived to join the event, John who blogs at Dadbloguk. He has become a really good friend over the last couple of years and it was awesome to meet up with him again.

Image via DadblogUK 

All the awards were all presented and everybody sat down to have a chat and have a few photos taken. Albertine came over to chat to John, Tom and myself and it was really interesting to hear her views on the lack of male representation in the shortlists.

My overall opinion of the evening, as it was my first awards night was YES! I like this! I can definitely enjoy being part of this side of blogging. It was great fun and I was made to feel very welcome.

The event was brilliantly organised, went off without a hitch and the blogosphere team can be very proud of hosting an awesome evening. Well done to you all.

I’m off now to cry my eyes out in a quiet corner at not winning! Only joking, haha! Well maybe.