8.28.2022

Martha Stewart Living - The Early Weddings Issues

I've wanted to do this post for a long time but simply didn't have the raw material to do so. Before Martha Stewart Weddings became its own entity, special issues of Martha Stewart Living magazine devoted to the subject of weddings appeared annually, and then seasonally, between 1995 and 1999. While the magazines are branded with the Living moniker, and were introduced to the public as special issues, they are in fact counted as part of the list of volumes that were published as Martha Stewart Weddings in later years. 

In this sense, they are difficult to classify. They occupy that 'grey area' between being a supplemental issue of Martha Stewart Living and emerging as a fledgling publication of its own. This is why I consider them to be in their own category and do not list them as special issues of Martha Stewart Living, nor count them as editions of Martha Stewart Weddings. Although, as mentioned above, they are technically numbered as a part of the Weddings editions. 

A very kind person on the Martha Moments Facebook Group recently acquired all of them in a search to complete her Martha Stewart Living collection and agreed to scan them for the blog! Thank you Eileen! We both thought it would be helpful for collectors of the magazine to have a visual record of the covers of these often-elusive issues. They are enticing and informative in every way and full of the most beautiful weddings content you could imagine. Martha is listed as the editor in chief for several of the issues. What is interesting to note in the masthead is how quickly Darcy Miller ascended the ranks, beginning as one of several style editors and making her way to the editor by the eighth volume - just four years later. She eventually went on to become the editor-in-chief of Martha Stewart Weddings and then Executive Editorial Director of all Weddings content for the Martha Stewart brand. 

These magazines often appear on eBay, if you're searching for them, for prices that are quite reasonable, given their collectability. Thank you again, Eileen for the scans!

Issue Number One: Spring, 1995
Issue Number Two: Spring, 1996
Issue Number Three: Spring, 1997
Issue Number Four: Fall, 1997
Issue Number Five: Winter-Spring, 1998
Issue Number Six: Summer-Fall, 1998
Issue Number Seven: Winter, 1999
Issue Number Eight: Spring, 1999

1 comment:

Alison said...

I’ve started hunting for these, wish me luck. They are incredibly difficult to source here but so worth the effort!