#WeddingWednesday - Fake tan and Mother of the Bride

I'm really getting into the swing of wedding planning now and enjoying it. Around Christmas it just felt like this huge mountain to climb but now I get to help people decide what to wear (I'm talking Mother-of-the-bride) I am loving my role as bride-to-be! In fact, the past week has been awesome! Mum (previously known as Catherine to me but that's for another blog entirely) and I hit the shops last Friday to get her kitted out for her impending role as MOB. It's early, I know, Rich and I aren't getting hitched until October, but this year there is a lot going on - my sister is due to give birth to her 3rd child in a couple of weeks and Rich's family are having an epic family reunion in Canada. Both events, though vastly different, require a lot of planning and commitment.

My brother David got married about 18months ago and Mum was clear she wanted something "different" to wear for my wedding than for what she'd worn for Davids but after a few uninspiring dresses were passed in and out of the fitting room in one shop we had an emergency MOB pow-wow in the car,

"I think we should keep looking - by the time we get to July there will be summer holidays and then we'll hit September and it'll be the wedding before you know it."

"I agree - let's go to Harrogate."

So peddle to the metal we zoomed off in Mum's little red fiat. About 2 minutes after entering the next shop Mum appeared around a corner clutching a dress with a grin as wide as the San Francisco bridge. That was that. She tried it on, looked phenomenal and we were back on our way to Halifax in no time. It was a truly special day - again, one that I hadn't anticipated. To have that day, just us, was wonderful. Another job has been crossed off the list and the visual image of my mum in the dress, the colour of the material and accessories, means that I can picture the wedding in my head in even clearer detail. Which for me being a visual person is heaven!

There's an old tradition that the MOB gets to pick the colour of her outfit first, then the Groom's mother picks her outfit colour. Navigating theses old traditions is weird - do they still matter? I've heard people say "It doesn't matter, wear whatever you want." But we all want to be individual and our clothes are our way of doing that. So with a few texts and conversations here and there the MOB and Jennifer, Rich's Mum, will be wearing different colours come October.

What else? We've done a mock-up of the seating plan and are going for a tasting session in a couple of weeks. I just want Fish and Chips - what happens either side of that I'm not bothered. And I'm still thinking of my general bridal get-up after someone looked at my pasty skin this week and said

"You are getting a spray tan for your wedding, aren't you?"

Me and spray tan, fake tan, indeed normal tanning have never really gotton on. After a summer working in a bar in Marbella during uni I was so brown when I came back I looked like a wooden sideboard. It might have had something to do with the carrot tanning oil I was using....After that I've never really been able to tan so pale and interesting it is. Sali Hughes' book "Pretty Honest" has a wonderful chapter on Bridal make-up. I love this paragraph:

"Ringlets on straightening-iron devotees, fake tan on pale skins, sickly pastels on those rarely seen without bold lips and dark sultry eyes. Padded bras on flatties, elaborate fake hairpieces on short hair. Enough! A wedding day is not the time to play at being a flaxen-haired virgin from a Disney fairytale. It's the time to look your most amazing."

And with that you have your answer to the tanning question.

Til next time...x

#WeddingWednesday - My wedding day hair which I am so excited about!

Wedmin this weekend: we went to order Rich's suit from the tailor and we had a meeting with our wedding planner Emma who works at the reception venue. Favourite thing I found out this weekend in wedding land? Emma decorates the reception room for us. I had visions of me and various friends up at the crack of the wedding day hanging bunting and sorting out the table centres but Lo! Emma does it for us. I'm calling her St. Emma from now on. Other wedmin tasks related to my bonce.

I've felt my image changing ever so slightly in the past 6 months: I'm ditching the red lipstick and trying a new pink shade come Spring, I've loved my red nails but want a colour change there too. And I want my crowning glory back:

I want to be able to sweep my hair up into a bun and forget about it. 

Since starting The Wardrobe Angel my hair has been cut into a severe bob followed by an even more severe bob. It's got shorter and shorter, the fringe more and more blunt. This has taken so much upkeep - bi-weekly fringe trims, monthly cuts, straightening nearly every day. I loved how the cut has become synonymous with my image. People have stopped me in the street to tell me they love my hair. I've been offered free haircuts; I have a 'box bob' which is a great haircut for training purposes (apparently). But last September as I sat in the hairdressers chair and she said, "Am I just taking off the regular amount?" I replied without thinking, "no, I'm growing it. Please can you just trim it?" And that was that.

So 6 months of growing have passed and it is neither up nor down, as the nursery rhyme goes.  The real volume has started to show; without straightening it looks like a mushroom from Super Mario Bros but fingers crossed by THE BIG DAY it will be a shoulder length bob of epically healthy proportions.

This is what I'm aiming for, mushroom hair allowing. 

I read that on your wedding day you should be the most beautiful version of yourself - well for nearly 4 years I have been a red lipstick wearing, short-cut severe bob owning Wardrobe Angel so now I feel all these awesome hair shaped possibilities are ahead: curls, waves, an up-do, a head shroud (?) I've been all over Pinterest like a well-meaning rash this week looking at all my options; you can tell I am thoroughly excited about this! I found a great post on Bridal Musings called 30 ways to style short hair for your wedding which these following pics are from:

Photo by Tyler Branch Photo via Green Wedding Shoes

Look at that VOLUME!! Mushroom head over here can definitely achieve this!  Photo via Sephora

Head Shroud. Erm.....Photo by  This Modern Romance via Green Wedding Shoes

Let's see what the next few months hold, hair-wise. Another Saint who has been an absolute gem in wedding land is Natalie Willingham - the lady who gets to make-up my face on the day. She's opened her contact book and recommended people and businesses left, right and centre so the wedding day can go as smoothly as possible. One such recommendation is  Louise Puchalka  - a bit of a wedding headpiece angel based in the Corn Exchange in Leeds. I am genuinely excited to see what she can come up with to stick in my long lustrous locks come wedding day.

Onwards....only 7 months to go...wedding!!!!

#WeddingWednesday - what do I wear in my hair?

We spent last weekend doing 'wedmin' - choosing our invites, finalising which baker gets to bake us a wheat free, dairy free cake, and sorting out our Gift Registry (thank John Lewis!) All the other elements of the wedding are coming together bit by bit so it has made me get 'the fear eyes' around the other elements of my outfits. I was greeted by a stress dream a few nights ago of what to put/wear in my hair on the BIG DAY. This lead to a freak out on Sunday afternoon followed by a frantic Pinterest session looking for inspiration and hoping for an answer, whilst Rich calmly and wisely exited stage left to make a lasagne.

What I'm finding very difficult is seeing how things fit together; I usually build an outfit from scratch by throwing laying items on my bed and adding and subtracting until the outfit feels 'done'. My wedding dress is currently being made, I don't have it to hand and so visualising what else to put with it has me in a panic ridden tailspin. To veil or not to veil, that is the question. Or is the question a tiny veil and a hat? Or no veil and a tiara? Or just a tiara? Or no tiara and a dead bird ala Carrie Bradshaw in her wedding outfit?

"I made the effort, I put a bird on my head."

I thought I was pretty set on having a veil after I tried one on when I went wedding dress shopping with my sister-in-law for her wedding dress a couple of years ago. In truth I was obsessed with the veil, I wanted to buy it and wear it then and there, parading around Reading in all my veiled glory. But when I was stood in my own gown (and the tears had subsided and the snotty tissues had been thrown away) they attached a veil to my head and

it looked a whole world of wrong. 

I didn't feel like me anymore; I felt swamped. like I was pretending to be something I wasn't.

So I need suggestions, help, advice, friendly comments about what my wedding head-gear should consist of. What did you wear? What didn't you wear and why? THANK YOU SO MUCH!!!!

PS - 'the fear eyes' is a phenomenon my friend Emily noticed about me - when I don't like something or something scares me my eyes dilate uncontrollably, literally widening with fear. Hence, I get the fear eyes.

No Longer Shopping for my Wedding Dress

And now the end is here! And so I face the final curtain! Pop open that champers and charge your glasses because, by jove, I've done it!! OH MY DAYS who knew buying a wedding dress was such an emotional experience???

After 4 false starts lucky number 5 is the winner!! When I walked out of the fitting room I wasn't looking at myself in the mirror. I was looking down at the dress thinking - "a bit too long? I'm not sure about this..." My feet were lost in the train of material and to be honest, I wasn't really concentrating on the dress, more concentrating on keeping upright and not being dragged down by the swirls of fabric wrapping round my legs.

Then BOOM. I looked up. Time paused, a moment so slight passed that everything seemed suspended. In that moment a ground swell of emotion started deep in my stomach and rose up until I felt choked with the most incredibly happy feeling. I burst into tears. A thought popped into my head:

"This is the dress I'm going to marry Rich in."

And that was it - my Mum in floods, scrabbling for tissues, me sobbing whilst encased in white. I've never had such a raw emotional reaction to a piece of clothing: I've felt desire when looking at designer pieces that are out of my price range, I've felt a possessive urge for clothing when I'm grabbing something off a sale rack, knowing that it belongs to me and will be going to my wardrobe and not going home with the other sale shoppers around me. But I've never cried over a piece of clothing, not like this.

I'm not going to describe my dress or post pictures until after the big day. After a few messages showing my sister and sister-in-law I've had to delete all photos of it from my phone in case Rich walks in and sees me gazing in marvel at the dress shaped spectacle on the screen. I used to think about our wedding day; see all the guests in the congregation, imagine the food on the plates at the reception, hear the speeches and the laughter but I never imagined my dress. There was the huge gaping chasm in my imagination and for a while that really scared me,

So now a huge sigh of relief has been been sighed. Phew - that's that dealt with!! Now the shoes.....

Shopping for my Wedding Dress (Part 4)

People have now begun to ask me:

"as a stylist are you feeling the pressure of finding a dress?"

The simple answer is no. Fashion and style are intensely personal experiences which can be influenced and shaped by the media, magazines and peers but I believe each one of us has an innate sense of style which, when displayed in all its awesomeness, is congruent with who we are, where we are going, and shows what we do.

The dress has to fit certain, non-negotiable, categories:

1. It has to fit.
2. It can't show my cleavage. I'm getting married in a church.
3. I have to be able to walk, sit, stand and eat in it. I'm not paying for a fancy meal only to be able to manage a few mouthfuls. I intend to chow down come Wedding Day.
4. I have to be able to wear it again. Just kidding. Although I might bring it out at fancy dress time, or just wear it when I am cleaning...you, know...to pep up my day. Like Monica and the gals from Friends back in the day....

But aside from that, it's my decision what I wear. It's my style.

  I have NO IDEA about wedding dress trends, no idea AT ALL and I don't want to know. 

I don't want an "on-trend" wedding dress simply because everyone else has that one. I want a dress which fits (see point number 1 above and whilst you are there you may want to re-read the other points as well), which I feel awesome in, which when I put it on, I'll know

YES, this is the dress I'm going to marry Rich in.