Editorial Lead, Weddings & Lifestyle

We're hiring an Editor to own OTM's editorial output end to end: concept and calendar through final published deliverable, across the blog, The Directory, and the social and email surfaces our stories live on.

This is a builder's job as much as a writer's. You'll set the editorial calendar, decide what we cover and why, run the real wedding pipeline from submission to Instagram carousel, keep The Directory's editorial content sharp and current, and manage one direct report. You'll sit on the integrated marketing team and report to the Integrated Marketing Director, which means your calendar is connected to what the business is doing — launches, registry moments, brand partnerships, seasonal pushes — without ever reading like it.

We want someone with a real point of view who can hold OTM's voice, argue for the story worth telling, and ship on a deadline.

What You'll Own

Editorial Strategy and Calendar

• Build and maintain the editorial calendar for the blog, laddering up to company initiatives across all other marketing channels
• Concept stories and recurring franchises that serve both the reader and the business: real weddings, Dream Registries, planning advice, shopping and gift guides, trend and design coverage, vendor and designer interviews, seasonal and cultural moments
• Partner with the Integrated Marketing Director to align editorial with launches, registry pushes, brand collaborations, and campaign moments — and to protect the line between editorial and promotion
• Track what's working. Use traffic, engagement, affiliate, and email performance to shape what you commission next, and report on it in a way the team can act on

Real Wedding Features, Start to Finish

• Review inbound submissions from couples, planners, and photographers on a regular cadence, keeping our response window in good standing
• Select weddings against OTM's editorial lens, with design point of view, photography quality, fashion, and sense of place top of mind, then make the call on what runs, what's a pass, and what's worth chasing
• Proactively source weddings we'd want that haven't come to us, by obsessively following the photographers, planners, and designers we love
• Interview couples, planners, and photographers to get past the polite answer to the specific one — not just what the dress was, but how she found it, what got changed, what almost happened instead
• Chase down complete vendor credits and image sets, and manage permissions and delivery timelines
• Write the features in OTM's voice, including headlines in our house style
• Select and sequence images, write captions and credits, and publish cleanly in the CMS
• Translate each wedding into an Instagram feature, including image selection, sequencing, caption writing, and carousel build, partnering with the Social Media Lead on post timing and cadence

Dream Registries & The Blog

• Write and edit the rest of the blog: Dream Registries, planning guidance, shopping and registry-adjacent stories, gift guides, trend pieces, interviews, and brand and designer features
• Own SEO fundamentals on everything we publish: search-aware headlines and structure, internal linking, metadata, and refreshes of evergreen posts that are still earning traffic
• Keep affiliate and product linking accurate, current, and unobtrusive

The Directory

• Support The Directory editorially: vendor profile copy, onboarding new listings, spotlights and roundups that draw readers into it, and connective tissue between Directory members and the weddings and stories they appear in
• Keep listings accurate and current, working with the Marketing Assistant on the vendor relationship side
• Look for opportunities where Directory coverage and blog coverage make each other better

Management

• Manage the Retention Contributor: set direction, brief and edit their work, review before it ships, and give regular, useful feedback
• Connect their retention work to the editorial calendar so email and lifecycle content draw on what we're publishing rather than running on a separate track

Requirements

• You've worked in wedding or bridal media. You've held an editorial role at a wedding or bridal publication and you know this world: the photographers, the planners, the designers, and wedding taste levels.
• You've owned a calendar, not just a queue. You've decided what gets made, not only executed someone else's list.
• You're a strong, fast writer with a portfolio of published features, and you can hold a house voice that isn't your own.
• You're a genuinely good interviewer — warm on the phone, sharp on the follow-up question.
• You have real fashion knowledge. You can identify a gown on sight, and you know why the choice matters.
• You've edited other people's work and made it better without flattening it.
• You're comfortable with performance data and use it as an input, not a mandate.
• You're fluent on Instagram as a publishing surface, not just a personal one.
• You're organized enough to run thirty things in flight at different stages without dropping a vendor credit or a deadline.
• You have a point of view, and you'll argue for it.

Nice to have: CMS experience (Shopify/WordPress), affiliate and SEO tooling, light photo editing, an existing network of planners and photographers, experience working alongside a commerce or registry business.