Wedding Guest Preparation- The Biggest day for Beauty!

14:08:00

Hi All,

How cute was this pressie from the couple to get ready in!

Ok so this post has been a while coming with all the antics recently of getting ready for the wedding of the year! This was actually the biggest wedding to date in my life as being a part of the organisation (to a point, I made tea and chatted a lot) but being there for the engagement, the plans and then the big day was something super special. J’s only sibling, his big bro married long term love Fi at the weekend and it was a beautiful wedding. The wedding party looked amazing, but none more so than our lovely Bride. She had described her dress and look for the day as ‘Old Hollywood’ and my god did she pull that off to a tee, everything about her look was just sensational as I knew it would be so I was on a mission not to let the side down that day. Now to be fair to our lovely couple I won’t share any of their wedding pics here but I will show you all the bits and pieces I had done in the lead up to the big day.

To start off, last Tuesday I went to DollFace Beauty and Make Up Salon in Newbridge you can check them out on Facebook HERE. We have recently moved office so it was great to find somewhere so close to me that I could stroll up to. I had been to Dollface two weeks before the wedding for a trial of the Karora light spray tan. I liked the tan but it was just a little too light for my liking. I was so grateful to Niamh to have me in to try the tan because I had used it the day of the wedding I think I would have been a little anxious considering the colour of the tan. I am a huge Karora fan but I'm starting to like my tan dark again so back to the mousse for me.

It was my first time going to Jamie for my HD Brows. Now before I go off on a rant let me tell you, I love my brows, not currently, but brows are my thing! I started going to Louise in LuluBelleBeauty at home in Waterford god it must be 2 years ago to start my HD journey. We have been growing them out and filling them in ever since. I never touch my brows between treatments, I don’t see the point in messing up Louise’s hard work but one Christmas I went for a tidy on my brows, not a HD treatment and I ruined them, so…we started again! During this year, I have been so busy at weekends that I haven’t always been able to get to Louise. I haven’t been home in Waterford often enough in the last while to go to my favourite person that I tried a salon close to our old office. It was a HD salon, I won’t name it because I cannot say 100% the therapist got it wrong or whatever but from going to DollFace last week, Jamie was able to tell me, my brows were set too far apart (the other place had taken too much hair), the arch was wrong (again too wide) and all the measurements were off! I have not had a non-HD treatment in at least 18 months so I was livid!!

Jamie spent the god 45 mins working on my brows, doing all the steps and when she filled them in I felt like crying. All I could see was gaps and powder. Now do bear in mind I only had foundation on so I needed more eye makeup but where she had pointed out the gaps, that’s all I could now see. I went home, got over myself and started researching brow growth treatments. I have been playing around with my brows now and I am happy they will grow out so I am going to wait at least 6 weeks before I am either home to Louise or back to Jamie in Newbridge and we get these bad boys sorted. Knowing how long Jamie spent and invested in my brows has me feeling confident that she can get my back on track. I will never go back to the other salon after paying so much for the HD treatment just to be told I look like I am now starting from scratch.

Sorry the 2nd pic is such bad quality but that was straight after

So now rant over…my brows are looking really well now thanks to Jamie so next we head for tan and nails.

Elaine’s Beauty is about a 10 min drive from the Apartment and I had been treated to a shellac treatment from Elaine herself a few months ago and you can read all about my recent visit HERE. I really liked Elaine and with spacing out all my appointments for the wedding, I booked in my tan and my nails for the Wednesday as I was now off work. So nails as we know I also love, I wanted something subtle but still me with something fun on them. Because my dress was bound to be my centre piece on the day, I went for a pink nude with a little stick man and girl sending love hearts and a gold glitter pinky. It’s so funny, I was drawn to exactly the same colour we had just taken off my nails on the day for the love heart but of course Elaine knew the better option. So once the nails were done it was time to tan.

Fab pictures taken by Elaine

Elaine set up her tanning tent and gave me one coat of her tan, Sun Labs. It’s a really nice tan. I had a medium colour which was exactly what I wanted, nothing too dark and not light that I’d feel naked either. Elaine has a really tall fan which helped with drying off and although it looked really dark, I was able to shower that night and all set then with an oil free moisturiser. I had my spray tan at 5pm and as we had a real late night up with the family chatting I showered at 12am and had a beautiful glow. As we are days on from the wedding now and I have been showering and moisturising each day, I now have a faded tan, it’s not patchy or scaly and it’s coming off really nicely. Elaine has some July offers including one on her tan so be sure to check her out on Facebook HERE.

So on Thursday then I was back to Lisa in Zinc Hair &Beauty to tackle my colour. When I first visited Lisa some months back, I wanted some tones in my hair so she added little highlights known as shimmers. We weren’t going for blonde so we went for a light brown. I liked the shimmers and we added more the 2^nd visit but now I’ve decided I’m gone off them again so I want a nice rich brown with some red tones in my hair. I have come to the conclusion that I really like my hair thick long and dark so I am much happier now we are getting rid of the shimmers. Next time I go to Lisa could be extremely exciting as we are again going to work on my colour, getting the last of the shimmers out, cleansing the ends of the rest of the colour pile up and….getting a half head of extensions!!

From start to dye to drying to rollers, I forgot my curly pic!

There are loads of you that would look at my hair and think, there’s no way I need extensions but since having to get some much cute off, I am just not as happy with my hair as I was and while waiting for it to grow, we are going to look into getting some length and volume added into the ends of my hair just to give it a boost and bring some length around my face while the layers grow out. I miss my really long thick full hair so I think they will really help but I will be sure to have a huge blog post on that when it takes place. As always the service and value in Zinc was 2^nd to none and I was all excited to see Lisa again on the big day.

Here we are so at Friday morning and I was now super excited for the wedding. I arrived down to J’s parents’ house at 7:15am to get my makeup and hair done and get ready with his mum. I had booked Aimee Connolly to do our makeup, if you don’t know Aimee’s work where have you been?? Check her out on Facebook HERE. I have followed Aimee for ages we’re talking since I started blogging and her makeup course is something I really want to do in the near future. It’s based so close to me in the Beacon and I just think the looks she creates not only on clients but on herself as well are just brilliant. I had booked Aimee for myself and the groom’s mum and I was so excited to finally get to meet her. It was a total fan girl moment on my part but she was so lovely to chat to and she really listened to exactly what I wanted for my look. Again with the dress being ivory and coral (pink) I wanted my blue eyes to really pop. I had asked Aimee for a brown coloured eye look and to have quite natural makeup, this wasn’t a night out, I didn’t need my half drag queen look which I bloody love, on this day, I needed sweet and soft but still flawless. That’s exactly what I got. We talked contouring and lip colour and I was so happy with the finished look. As you can see from the before and after that Aimee produced, I was so super tired looking but thankfully she had me looking stunning. I loved everything about the look including the Cheryl Eylure lashes, so perfect! These are the ones which come in the pink Cheryl box. I had lipstick ready for the day of the wedding which Aimee agreed would be perfect so again a fab result to top up all day. Thanks so much to Aimee as both myself and the Groom’s mum looked wonderful and were both really delighted with our makeup.

Aimee is away this week as I write this post but I will of course post the product list once she is back. Be sure to check Aimee out on Facebook and on Instagram @aimeemu

My final beauty prep was back to the amazing Lisa owner of Zinc Hair & Beauty. My style on the day was vintage glam and I had sent Lisa a picture I had found on Pinterest of what I wanted. It was a picture of an upstyle on a brunette so I knew it would suit me. This is something you really should bear in mind when choosing an upstyle for yourself for events, look at the style on the hair colour you have. As Lisa had explained to me in the salon before the wedding, if you are a blonde with 3-4 tones to your colour, a curl will look completely different in your hair compared to that of someone with only one colour in their hair. I was really lucky that the exact style I wanted was on a girl with brown hair and although I could only see the front of the look in the picture I trusted Lisa 100% to create something amazing at the back. Now as I said, I trusted her no problem but I was still completely blown away by the pure beauty of my hairstyle. The front was soft, vintage and elegant but the back was just a masterpiece. I wanted everyone to see it so not only did I spend the day twirling to show off my dress, I was also telling everyone to look at the top of my head LOL!

So there we have it… Between Jamie and Niamh in Dollface Beauty & Make Up, Elaine in Elaine’s Beauty, Lisa in Zinc Hair and Beauty and of course Aimee from Make-Up By Aimee, I looked a million euro on the day. I had so many likes and comments on my dress so thank you so much to everyone. I bought it months ago online from Chi Chi London, I think with the 20% discount they had on at the time it was €90, my shoes and matching bag were both from Dune about €70 each and my jewellery was very minimal, I actually had Penney’s pearl earrings and my Michael Kors Bracelet J bought me last Christmas.