Hiya, I'm Sarah! (also known as berry.cosplay) I'm excited to see a site like this up and running for the love live community! :D This is gonna be a bit of a long journey, make sure you have a snack or something while reading this one.
back in 2015ish, a year after I got into cosplay, I started seeing these cute idol girl cosplays and always wanted to know what anime they were from. (I came in from wanting to cosplay vocaloids, especially the fake vocaloid/utau, Teto Kasane.) I found out it was called Love Live and I found idol groups in my area that I really loved and looked up to in my teen years of cosplay. Funnily enough I started to get into Love Live in 2016 where I heard people talk about how much they hate Love Live and how it sucks, I took that upon myself to actually get into it and it turns out its that very anime that captured my interest for years. And then after watching SIP I downloaded the game. Thank you random people at a con for talking bad about Love Live, your hate for it transpired into my love for it. <3 (I think I jumped in around the Aqours hype so in a way perfect timing)
I've always wanted to be a part of a Love Live cosplay group after I started getting into it. The problem I came across was that there was excitement at the start of some groups being formed, but it turned into ideas that never fully went through. I also use to really feel left out of the cosplay community because I wasn't close with cosplayers, that made me want to leave the community because I was extra shy and didn't know people well enough to cosplay with them. I didn't go to many cons in the past because I was focusing on school.
Fast forward to 2017 and one of my cosplay friends put up a post asking who would like to be part of a Love Live idol group. I took that opportunity to ask if I could cosplay two of my favourite characters for this new group at the time, Kotori and Ruby. And well, I cosplay them nowadays in this very group called @pastelpoplive <3
Pastelpop was one of the first groups i've been in where people were motivated to learn dances, meet up with each other, hang out, and have fun photoshoots together. I came out of my shell a little more, got confidence to meet many new cosplayers and photographers, and actually call them my friends. I also got my first Love Live cosplays for this group! I'm so happy to finally be able to cosplay Love Live with a group of people I really enjoy and love being around! And now its a little bit of a starstruck moment because other cosplayers and idol fans really enjoy people like me and my group and how they want to find people to make their own idol groups. I say go start your own idol groups, you don't have to start with the full 9. With Pastelpop's debut in 2018 we didn't have a full 9 members for our first dance and we still rocked it!
Wheew that was a long one, but I guess to sum up my story, I loved the cute 2d idols enough that I wanted to cosplay them, and then I finally joined a group that helped me come out of my shell and shine.
