Fuelled by a few glasses of wine, Ali and Dom dreamed up the moniker Prezola, and registered the domain name Prezola.com that very evening.
They then spent the next year and a bit thinking more about the idea, which they finessed into focusing specifically on wedding lists. In Christmas 2010 they finally quit their day jobs and launched the company.
Ali had been an interior designer, while Dom had been a magazine publisher who had also looked after the social media at charity Comic Relief.
With funds limited, even after they had sold the car and downsized to a much smaller house, they decided to focus on surviving six months at a time.
“We never had a six year plan,” says Dom. “It was instead always whether we could get through the next six months. That was always our target.”
While the couple were confident that their website would be popular with people planning their weddings, the fact that they were initially running it from their kitchen table put off many potential suppliers.
“It was quite a challenge initially,” says Ali. “We were running it from home, and we have always been online only. This put off a lot of companies, because we didn’t have a bricks and mortar presence.
“They automatically assumed that we were going to cut prices, which we weren’t.”
















































