Kate, Makeup, Confidence and a Wedding Ramble

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Didn’t she look gorgeous? Well actually that depends who you are….to a makeup artists eye, there was plenty to be disappointed in. Dodgy eyeliner, too much blush of the wrong colour, eyebrows too dark….Ok let’s just start from scratch and make her a lot more subtle, blooming and HD photo friendly…but then, if she didn’t feel comfortable with that look, would she have looked as radiant as she did? Would she have felt as confident?

As I tweeted on the day - She wanted to look like herself not someone else. At that point I hadn’t even read that she had frequently said in the run up to the wedding, that she wanted William to recognise her. Or that she had reportedly washed the MUA applied makeup off and then done her own look before the engagement photos.

Yes we might want to ban her from that black liner under her eyes, but it’s her. It’s the look she’s used to and feels comfortable, and therefore confident in. It’s the look she know’s her now Husband fancies her in.

To deviate from that would have chipped away at the confidence she exuded on Friday.

I know what it’s like to have someone make you feel like something you’re not. I went for a wedding hair try out and hated it. My friend and I decided to do it ourselves. As for my makeup it never occurred to me to have someone else do it.

It depends who you are and what you like to be in control of. For Kate she was used to putting her hair in the hands of James Pryce and Richard Ward and most of us don’t make our own clothes. But she is used to providing the face that she has presented to the world to photograph for the last 7 years. Top that with the experience of feeling unhappy with the way she looked before the engagement photos. That element of control needed to stay with her.

Looking at our official wedding photos yesterday I remembered how much I disliked what the photographer did, too stiff and formal. One of the things I enjoy about blogging is being my own MUA, photographer and model. I know how to make myself look good. They didn’t, in every shot I am grinning mouth open all teeth. Gobby creature with a big nose. Wearing dark orange lipstick and no brows doesn’t help. I can look at the pics now and it looks all wrong. But I’m grinning cos I’m happy and I was confident because I wore dark orange lipstick all the time. It’s a reflection of who I am (then).

There’s such a big thing for natural looking makeup and especially bridal makeup. With all these HD cameras and Videos, your face will be captured for years to come. Somehow we treat weddings as our once in a life time photo shoot. There’s such an emphasis on not looking at the photos in a few years and thinking ‘oh dear that's so dated'. But what about being yourself. The fact is, you will change. Very quickly you become a different person. Life experiences change you. I look at those pictures and see 'A small person far away'…(to steal the title of a Judith Kerr Book).

The person in those pictures isn’t me, she hasn’t given birth, had a child in special care with a collapsed lung, buried her grandmother and mother in law, coped with her husband not going to church anymore. She certainly wouldn’t have had a makeup blog. Pictures last a long time. I would do things differently – but it’s my enjoyment of the day and what it meant to me that shines through.

Foundation was Max Factor – palest they did at the time.. I used a primer…they’d just started to appear on the high street if I remember rightly and Almay was the only liner and Mascara brand I knew that didn’t irritate my eyes - in brown. M&S eye shadow. Almost certainly Rimmel lipstick..... Edit: Hair product Paul Mitchell.

Be yourself, not a conformity to a stylised image of a bride, if you want an MUA get one, if you want dark liner, or bright orange lipstick just do it. Enjoy the day and don’t care if the pics will look dated in 10 minutes time. Be gorgeous because you're confident. It’a beginning, not a fairytale.

Oh and the me now would have huge pink cerise lilies – then I hated pink.