Many of you followed me through years of weddings, family shoots and all the lovely chaos that came with running Panache Photography, and I’m so very grateful for your support.
There is something incredibly special about spending your working days surrounded by so much joy and love. The excitement, the nerves, the laughter and all those little moments unfolding between the bigger ones were truly infectious. Being invited into that world, week after week, year after year, was one of the greatest joys of the job – and one of the hardest things to let go of.
As a business, Panache gave me something very special while my girls were little. I could work from home during the week (babe in arms), arrange editing and admin around family life and be there for them without needing childcare. It worked brilliantly for us for a very long time and it’s something I will be forever thankful for.
But as the business became busier and my girls started school, the balance began to shift. I was working almost every weekend and my busiest period fell right throughout the summer holidays – sometimes photographing several weddings in a single week (my record was five) I felt as though I saw less of them than ever.
I considered stripping the business back – perhaps photographing elopements or taking on just a handful of weddings each year – but so much of my confidence and skill came from being behind the camera regularly and I knew I wouldn’t enjoy turning up to each wedding feeling slightly rusty after several weeks away from it. For me, photography had always been something I threw myself into completely and soon I realised it was an all-or-nothing decision.
So, as difficult as it was, I decided it was time to put down the cameras and bring that chapter to a close, with absolutely no plan for what would come next!
For a while, I built websites and tinkered with different areas of our family business, before embarking on a business degree, hoping that somewhere along the way I’d stumble across the obvious next step.
But learning about so many areas of business left me with no clear direction. I assumed my creative background would lead me towards marketing, but it never felt quite right. Meanwhile, finance had been the last thing on my mind – until I became more involved in our family business and discovered, somewhat surprisingly, that I quite enjoyed it!
Thus, my decision to close Panache made room for an unexpected new chapter, and many of the things I learned from running a busy photography business have followed me into it.
Behind all the lovely photographs was a very real business: deposits arriving months in advance, expenses scattered across different suppliers, busy and quiet seasons, tax returns, cash flow and the constant need to know what had been paid, what was still due and whether I could safely spend what was sitting in the bank.
The family businesses brought a whole new collection of quirks. There were recurring services alongside one-off projects, materials bought for specific jobs, subcontractors, supplier accounts, staged payments and jobs that didn’t always begin and end neatly within the same year. Add VAT, CIS and the occasional mystery purchase into the mix, and there was plenty to get my teeth into.
I went on to spend a little time in an accountancy practice, and as my experience grew, I discovered what I really love isn’t the numbers, it’s the people behind them – we’re all trying to build something meaningful and still have a life at the end of the day.
And so, Invi Accounts was born.
Now, I help other business owners make sense of their figures and their decisions feel lighter. I help them understand what’s really happening in their business and feel a bit more grounded in the process.
Sometimes that involves gentle truths, sometimes the numbers tell a story that needs attention, and sometimes they ask for change. They might just reveal the gap between the life you want, and the reality you’re living.
I believe, though, those truths land differently when someone is holding them with you.
Invi isn’t just bookkeeping to me, it’s my way of helping people feel more supported, more informed and a little less alone in running a business while hopefully, providing a little more space for life outside it too!
It’s work I never expected to love, but here I am, and I’m so glad I found it!
To all my lovely couples and families who trusted me to capture some of the biggest moments in your lives: thank you. It was an enormous privilege to be part of them, and I’ll always feel incredibly lucky that, for a while, I got to call it ‘work’ ❤️
And to the wonderful photographers, videographers, florists and other wedding suppliers I had the pleasure of working alongside: thank you too. Some of you became far more than industry colleagues, and I’m incredibly grateful for the friendships, laughter and memories we made along the way.
I’d love for you all to follow along with this next chapter. Please head on over and give the new Invi Accounts page a ‘like’ – your continued support would mean an awful lot.
