My Wedding Day Make-Up Secrets

This month it is an article with a slight difference - after over a decade of helping ladies with their wedding day beauty, on the 10th of December this year it was my own turn. So this time I want to share with you the make-up products and tips that I can recommend most highly - namely those that I used for my own wedding day.

Make-up artistry is the same as any art insofar as the secret is to ensure that you have the best possible canvas to work on. With wedding make-up this means taking the best possible care of your skin in the months and weeks leading up to the wedding day. In January I was lucky enough to meet a lady called Rachel who had the most incredibly smooth skin I had ever seen, and even luckier that she was willing to share her secret with me. She told me that every day she drank a ‘Green Glowing Smoothie’ which is a surprisingly delicious smoothie made from lettuce, apples, pears and spinach. I started drinking this soon after meeting Rachel, and I'm happy to say since then my skin has been the best I have known it in my life. Alongside the smoothies, in the build up to the big day I also exfoliated my skin 2-3 times per week with Nubo Diamond Peel and Reveal, and I also used a product called Eye Expert from Dr Sebagh which kept my fine lines around the eyes under control.  I had no hopes and no expectations for how my skin would look on the day, I was just ready for anything, lucky for me on the day it was all even (a fantastic feeling of relief when I looked in the mirror on the morning of the wedding!).

One of the other areas I'd been self-conscious about in the past had been my smile, and to help with this a year before the wedding I started using Invisalign braces to help to straighten my teeth. By the day of the wedding, these had also worked wonders for me, and the treatment is one that I would recommend any prospective bride investigates if they share the worries that I had.

With the canvas ready, my attention turned to the make-up. There were four important elements for my wedding day look:

Face

To begin with I applied Cle de Peau Silky Cream Foundation in I10 all over the face. Once I'd done this, I then contoured and highlighted my face with Bobbi Brown Foundation Sticks, blending numbers 1, 2.5, 4 and 7. When choosing my foundation, I deliberately went for products that didn't contain SPF as these can cause problems with flash photography on the wedding day. Before setting the face with powders I blotted my face with tissues to remove excess moisture from the skin which has the benefit of making the make-up more long lasting.

Eyes

I went for a combination of medium and long eyelashes for my wedding day look, and these were the main focus for the eye design. To create these the day before the wedding I had a set of permanent lashes applied, and then on the wedding day with the help of Sophie (a wonderful make-up artist who works as part of my team) we cut a set of Ardell Demi Wispies into 6 pieces and applied these individually to the base of the permanent lashes (I did this to help to keep the definition of the eyes under any type of photography, both in the daytime and with flash photography in the evening). As the lashes were already making the eyes well defined and stand out I opted for simpler eyeshadows using only two colours: Stila ‘Kitten’ on the eyelid and Nars Bronzer ‘Laguna’ on the crease. To conceal my dark circles around the eye area I used a combination of Bobbi Brown Concealers and By Terry Touché Velouté in 1 and 2.

Cheeks

For my cheeks I used a technique I've developed over the years called "Graduation of Colour". To begin with I contoured my cheeks and face with the Nars bronzer ‘Laguna’, after which I applied the Nars Blusher ‘Luster’ to warm up my cheeks. Following this, in the smaller area I applied the ‘Apricot’ blusher from Bobbi Brown, before as the finishing touch gently applying the Bobbi Brown Shimmer Brick in ‘Pink’ with a Fun Brush right on top of my cheekbones and a little on the apple of the cheeks, so the glow could be picked up on the photos.

Lips

Two days before the Big Day I went to Beauty Lounge in Soho to thread my upper lip (Nazia there did an amazing job and surprisingly it didn't hurt as much as I feared it might). I defined the line of the top lip with Benefit ‘Cupid's Bow’ (this product has sadly been discontinued). Then I applied my favourite lip product which is ‘Baby Pink’ from Trish McEvoy, before finishing off with clear 3D lipgloss from Bourjois to give the lips a plumper look.

Finishing Touches

To complete the look, I blotted my face with tissues again before applying Laura Mercier Translucent Loose Setting Powder to my T-zone. Then, as the last step to give a glowing bridal effect, I highlighted the cheekbones, the bridge of the nose, inner corners of the eyes, and the arch of the eyebrows with Laura Mercier Secret Brightening Powder mixed with a small amount of shimmery white eyeshadow in ‘Marshmallow’ from Clarins . Then it was off to show-off the look to my husband to be...

My wedding was a fantastic way to end 2011. In closing I'd just like to thank all of my clients from 2011, and wish you all fantastic 2012.

Article by Lina Cameron

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