Bridal Beauty Season: Part 1

> Spring is my favorite time of the year, and I love how the landscape here in Northern Virginia is replete with colors that are fresh and crisp with a sparkling new zest. This is also the season that brings a lot of inquiries from brides about beauty and makeup as they prepare for one of the biggest days of their lives.

Without a doubt, a wedding is a major moment when skin gets a very close up look, and immortalized forever in photos and videos. The care skin has been given is going to greatly impact how well makeup can project the bride’s most beautiful features. Even the best trained makeup artist can not fully camouflage skin that has overriding issues due to neglectful skin care or improper skin care product selection and use.

The good news is that skin responds fairly quickly and positively to simple remedies such as adopting a good skin care regimen tailored to your skin type, and using products that have the least amount of unnecessary ingredients that can upset the lipid layer (pH) balance of skin. Optimal skin care includes using products that work to enhance the skin’s natural functions and renewal process, and staying way from using products that may cause potential irritation such as dryness, flaking, or redness. Quite simply, good skin care is the major key to looking as flawless as possible under makeup.

The smart bride will also clue her fiancé in on good skin care practices to minimize ruddiness and irritation that often happens with rough handling through shaving, or vigorous washing of skin. She can even go one step further and suggest to her man that a super light touch of dual finish powder or transparently applied airbrush makeup on the wedding day can imperceptibly even out the rough spots in his complexion to give a far cleaner look to his skin for photography. I have seen tons of photos of a bridal party that made the investment of professional makeup services to insure beautiful “camera ready” looking results. However the raw faced or ruddy looking groom was a startling contrast to his stunning bride, and unfortunately those photos will be forever mementos of that fact.

Now that wedding photography is moving to the high definition format, ruddy looking or uneven male complexions become even more of a visual issue. The good news is that you can solve this undesirable contrast by using professional grade makeup products that are applied with a super light technique, just as it is done imperceptibly on male actors appearing on Television programs in HD. If it is done well it will not be detectable to the eye as makeup, and this will make for a completed look to wedding party continuity in photos.

Here are some of my important beauty tips that will help brides look their best for this grand occasion:

1. First and foremost I believe it is important to implement a good safe skin care routine in the months before the big day so that your skin has a chance to normalize as much as possible. Don’t introduce anything new to your routine at least 6 weeks before the wedding. Also, you don’t want to do anything drastic to the face such as high powered facials, peels or injections that could cause a serious reaction. Stay away from these cosmetic procedures for at least a month before the wedding.

2. Invest in good professional brow grooming! A well shaped and defined brow creates a beautiful frame for the eyes, and allows eye shadow to bring out the best in contrast to pop the natural color of eyes. Use a very high quality professional brow tweezer, such as Japonesque Artisan Slant Tip Tweezer to maintain the look of your shaped brow. Use brow powder rather than pencil to fill in sparse areas and set with a brow fixative product such as Natural Born Cosmetics Brow Fix, or Natural Born Cosmetics Brow Wax.

3. Your foundation must match your skin exactly in your undertone (warm, neutral, or cool) and the shade must not be too light or too dark for your top tone. You will have a strong line of demarcation if the match is not smooth at both skin levels, and this will show up strongly in the wedding photos and video. With today’s wedding photography and video going high definition this will really stand out as an obvious skew between the face and the neck.

Use only high performing foundation products that give you flawless looking results and long lasting wear. I use Graftobian’s Hi-Def Glamour Crème or Graftobian’s GlamAire Airbrush Makeup because it is formulated in all three undertones (warm, neutral, and cool), with over 60 true skin tone shades to select from. It delivers all the important continuities I need for bridal makeup to last beautifully throughout the wedding and reception, and especially under all lighting conditions for photograhy and video.

4. Waterproof eyeliner and mascara is a must! Those tender moments of exchanging vows in the ceremony often bring tears of joy, so you want to be sure your eye makeup survives the waterfall and wears smoothly throughout the event. Natural Born Cosmetics Automatic Indelible Eye Liner is the perfect choice for budge proof and fade proof eyeliner. Natural Born Cosmetics Indelible Lash Waterproof Mascara is 100% waterproof and smudge proof mascara that really does last until you take it off.

5. A good rule of thumb for choosing a hair style is to harmonize the look with the design of your wedding gown along with the theme of your wedding. Is it soft and romantic, or dramatic with high contrasts and details, or are you are going with a timeless classic and elegant look? You don’t want your hairstyle to be so overpowering that it becomes the main feature, and you lose the “frame” of your face. It should be balanced enough to connect the headpiece and gown for an overall pleasing look, but bringing the major focus to your face.

Stay tuned for part 2 with more Bridal beauty tips and suggestions!