A Makeup Trial (Or: Why I Heart Sephora)

I am one of those people who doesn't really know what she's doing with makeup. On an average day I put on a tiny amount of brown eye liner, a little mascara, some bronzer that I bought about a bazillion years ago at The Body Shop, and some chapstick. Makeup look done. Despite the fact that I am fairly makeup illiterate, I decided a while back that I would definitely be doing my own makeup on my wedding day. I have a couple of reasons for this. First of all, our wedding is in a not-too-big town in Maine, and I was worried that I wouldn't be able to find a really great makeup artist for the big day. Second of all (and more importantly), I feel like it's kind of a waste to spend a whole ton of money to have someone else do your makeup just for your wedding day, when you could spend that money on some really nice makeup that you could keep for yourself and continue using over and over instead.

And that made the decision for me. I would buy myself some nice new makeup. (Or in actuality, my sister would buy me some new makeup for Christmas as a gift.) I would then be able to use my new makeup on my wedding day... and on any other day that I wanted, since it would be mine to keep :-) So... this past weekend my sister and I headed out to the mall to pay a visit to the friendly makeup artists at Sephora so that I could find my "bridal" makeup look.

Like any good bride, I went with some inspiration in hand:

Oh Leighton Meester. Your character may be kind of a bitch on Gossip Girl, but I think you're gorgeous anyways... and I love your makeup here. Can I have glowy cheeks too, just like you? Please? Thank you!

...and Jessica Alba, your makeup also looks sparkly and radiant. I like how your eyes are a bit more dramatic in this picture than in the previous one of Leighton. Maybe we can make my eyes look like this too. Mmm kay?

I showed these two pictures to the makeup artist at Sephora, and she got right to work. She was also really good about explaining exactly what she was doing as she applied my makeup, so that I would be able to recreate the look at home. And now, here is my transformation from regular old ho-hum to stunning Leighton Meester / Jessica Alba lookalike (or something like that)...

Here's the "before" picture:

Ick. The Astronomer with no makeup on!

...and here's what I looked like a couple of hours after the makeup trial, when I finally managed to get my hands on a camera:





My makeup artist gave me a cute little form, listing the names of all of the products that she used. The form also showed pictures reminding me how to apply the different products. Meet Sephora Sally. Doesn't she look just like me?



Here is the list of all of the products that were used during my makeup trial. My sister bought some of them for me for Christmas... plus a really great set of makeup brushes that I am super excited about. (I currently apply my eye makeup with my fingers, so this seems like a giant step up!)

Complexion:
- Smashbox luminous tinted moisturizer
- Smashbox flash artificial light
- Smashbox HD concealer light (for those pesky under-eye circles!)

Eyes:
- Smashbox eye shadow in walnut and shell
- Smashbox primer for eye shadow (this stuff was awesome!! It made my eye shadow stay put for hours, and I never got any pesky creases in my eye makeup in all that time.)
- Makeup Forever Aqua eye liner in colors 0L (for the liner) and 23L (a lighter color for highlighting the inside corners of my eyes)
- Korres black mascara

Cheeks:
- Smashbox blush in "paradise" (We ended up buying NARS blush in super-orgasm instead, since I still felt like my cheeks needed some extra "oomph" in the pictures, and the NARS blush has a lot more shimmer.)
- Smashbox suntan matte bronzer

(My makeup trial didn't include lips, since I'm planning on just using some lip gloss that I already own.)

Has anyone else out there had a makeup trial at Sephora? How did it go? ...are you planning on DIY-ing your wedding day makeup, or are you hiring a professional?

Look what came in the mail this week...

A pretty envelope:



From my best friends who love to lighten up my wallet:



And what's inside?

Swatches!!

Clockwise from top: Champagne (silk taffeta), Barely Peach (silk taffeta), Champagne (silk tricotine), Light Caramel (cotton cady)

My thoughts after seeing the colors and fabrics in real life are: "Barely peach" is definitely too pink for our wedding, since pink is not at all a part of our color palate. Bummer. "Champagne" in the silk tricotine fabric is quite light and could be mistaken for white, so that one is out as well. That leaves "light caramel" in cotton cady and "champagne" in silk taffeta as the two bridesmaid dress colors and fabrics that we will be going with. I am really excited about dresses in these two neutral colors, which my girls will then fancy up with gold heels, gold- and jewel-toned jewelry, and brightly-colored bouquets (featuring lots of -- you guessed it -- orange lilies).

The winners! -- "Light Caramel" in cotton cady, and "Champagne" in silk taffeta

It feels so good to check this item off of my to-do list. Now it's just up to my girls to go out and buy their dresses.

Have you checked any important items off of your wedding planning to-do list lately? Which ones?

An In-form-ative Form

Tee hee. I love a good play on words, if you couldn't tell :-)

Before I move on, I want to show you one more piece of our wedding website that I am very excited about... and that I had pretty much nothing to do with. I have already told you that the Architect is the design genius behind our website, so really, the credit is all his anyways. But... he decided that he had to show off just one more time during the design process, by putting together this lovely form for me:

Click on the image below for a larger version

See... there are literally hundreds of hotels, motels, inns, B&Bs, and rental houses to choose from in the Bar Harbor region, so we sort of expect that our guests are going to be scattered all over an area covering many tens of square miles. (We have put together room blocks at a couple of hotels, but I'm still pretty sure that a large number of our guests are going to find their own accommodations.)

Seeing that 95% of our guests are from out of town, we would still like to treat them to things like out-of-town bags, and complimentary transportation to our wedding. (Don't worry, I will blog about all of this later on.) So... it would really help us if we knew where our guests were planning on staying. As an added bonus, this information will also allow us to hound some of our procrastinating guests, who may have the tendency to wait too long to book their hotel rooms.

Rather than calling or emailing each of our guests to figure out where they are planning on staying during the weekend of our wedding, the Architect pointed out that he could easily create a quick response form for our website, where our guests could reply to a short questionnaire about their chosen accommodations.

It took the Architect about an hour to put together the form with some software that comes with his website host (and then at least another hour to deal with all of my "minor" tweaks)... and then he put together some snazzy html to imbed the form into our wedding website. The responses to the survey will now automatically download into a spreadsheet that we can check at any time.

Et voila!! Done and done.

Now, while our invitations won't be going out for a number of months, we will still be able to gauge which of our guests are planning on attending our wedding, and how far they have come with their travel plans. This is especially important since our wedding is taking place smack in the middle of tourist season in Bar Harbor, and summer hotel rooms tend to book up way in advance.

Destination wedding brides, how are you keeping track of your guests travel arrangements (if at all)? Are you doing anything to encourage your guests to book their travel and accommodations in a timely fashion?

Getting Bedazzled

I know I told you that I didn't want a wedding dress that was beaded, jeweled, sequin-ed (totally not a word), or in any other way bedazzled. (BTW, sorry I haven't told you more about my dress yet... Those posts are coming soon, I promise. Well... just as soon as I can figure out how to keep the Architect's prying eyes away from this blog.) But anyways, I am trying to make a point here... Just because I didn't want a bedazzled dress, doesn't mean that I don't want me some bling on my wedding day.

I would really truly love to wear one piece of statement jewelry on my wedding day. (That is, aside from my beautiful ring!) In my case, I have decided to stay away from necklaces... but I would really love to wear a big pair of blingy earrings instead.

Here is the first pair that I saw, that I instantly fell in love with:

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Unfortunately, I quickly found out that they cost a whopping $175, so I continued on with my search in the hopes of finding something just as beautiful, but not so expensive.

I knew that Etsy would be a good place to look:

Pair #1 from LuxeDeluxe -- Cost: $40

Pair #2 from Precious Meshes -- Cost: $58

And then of course, my friends at J.Crew also had a lovely pair of earrings that also wanted to play a round:

The Infinity Earrings-- Cost: $65.

So lovelies... any thoughts? Which ones would you choose? Have you had trouble deciding on your wedding day jewelry, or was the choice easy for you?

What to wear, what to wear?

The Architect and I will be heading home for the holidays in just two short weeks. I'm so excited to spend the holidays with our family and friends! ...and while we're at home, we will also have our engagement session with our uber-talented wedding photographer, Ashley O'Dell.

I've been procrastinating on this, but it is now definitely crunch time, so I need to choose an outfit for our pictures. Of course it is probably going to be COLD in Boston in late December, and we are planning on taking our photos outside. (Ashley thinks that an engagement session in the snow would be awesome, so we'll see if the weather wants to cooperate.) This certainly calls for a cute winter coat and some winter accessories -- scarf, hat, and gloves or mittens:

This is not my coat... but it is pretty similar -- mine has a double-breasted set of buttons on the front and no hood.

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As far as what I wear under all of my winter layers, I'm thinking of going in 1 of 2 different directions.

(1) Jeans, boots, and a warm sweater:

Something along the lines of this look à la Katherine Heigl

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(2) Tights, boots, and a sweater dress:

Gwyneth is just too adorable, no?

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Before I tell you which of these 2 looks I am leaning towards, I would love to get your opinion. So... any thoughts? Which look would you go for?

Wicked

Yes... I come from the state where this word -- wicked -- is generally used far too often as an adjective to describe an adjective.

Huh? Am I confusing you?

Let me explain...

You buy a brand new pair of gorgeous heels, and, while in Massachusetts, the correct reply from your best friend is, "Those shoes are wicked awesome!"

...and of course there's that well-known Boston area music store whose slogan is: "For a wicked good time".

But this posting actually doesn't have anything to do with New England slang. Instead, I want to talk about the musical called "Wicked". Remember when I told you about the time when the Architect surprised me with tickets to see "Wicked" on Broadway and then proposed to me later that night? Well... as a result, I am now totally head over heels in love with that musical. It also doesn't help that they covered my absolute favorite song from Wicked, "Defying Gravity", on Glee a few weeks ago. (Any other Gleeks in the house?! Holla!)



(I spontaneously burst into tears pretty much every time I hear this song.)



I totally love Wicked... and I would really love to feature some of the music from this (wicked) amazing show during our wedding as a tribute to our engagement story. Unfortunately, many of the most beautiful songs from Wicked are just so sad. Even the song "For Good", which is about lifelong friendship, is ultimately about letting go of the people we love most. This is definitely not exactly the right message for a wedding.



So my question to all of you is this: Can you think of any good ways for us to feature music from Wicked in our wedding? I would love to use the music for a first dance or maybe our processional or recessional... but I just can't justify using a heartbreakingly sad song for anything wedding-related, even if the song is also breathtakingly beautiful (and also meaningful to us as a couple).

Have you struggled to include music in your wedding that is also wedding appropriate? Do you have any good advice?

Some More About the Wedding Website...

I'm really sorry that I can't share any good tutorials on how we created our wedding website. Unfortunately, like I told you before, the process was pretty much trial and error, so there's not a lot of wisdom that I have to share...

Still, I would love to tell you a little bit more about the website design process. In particular, the Architect really wants me to show you some of his original inspiration. The Architect is excellent at sketching. (I think that is a prerequisite for his profession. No?) So... he started off by doing some drawings to come up with an overall concept for the website.

I gave him some input early on and told him that I definitely wanted the orange garden lily to play a role in our website, so this is what he started with:
(That is supposed to be the garden lily BTW. This one is a very rough sketch.)

Next up was the design concept. The Architect wanted to have a simple Flash frontpage where the lily would draw itself on the screen, and then you would have the option of entering our website:
This is what it ended up looking like (using Flash) as a first draft:

I wish I had a movie of the Flash intro, but basically, the thick line draws itself on the screen from the right side to the left side of the monitor. After the outline of the flower has been drawn, the thinner-line detailing then fades in. Here's the final version, with the colors changed and some of the lines cleaned up:

At any time during the Flash intro you can click on our names to enter the website itself. From this jumping off point we designed the entire rest of our wedding website... and hey, it only took 2 months of round-the-clock effort ;-)

What is your design process? Do you use sketching to help focus your ideas (wedding-related or NWR)?