Wedding Blog

This upcoming weekend, I’ve got a whole lotta wedding planning going on. A six-hour drive on Friday will pretty much put me into wedding wonderland for the following 48 to 60 hours. Saturday entails a hair trial and menu planning, Sunday involves on-site rehearsal dinner research, and Monday (yay for holidays from work!), I’ll be testing out who I think will become my makeup artist. See some of the hair and makeup vendors’ work below!

Katelyn Simkin’s makeup

There’s something to be said for not getting married in New York or Los Angeles. While Denver (the nearest major city to my venue) is large, its makeup artists and hair dressers are a bit more navigable than a city thirty-two times its size (yep, that’s the Denver to New York ratio). While I tried Ms. Joey’s Craigslist method of finding wedding-day beautifiers, it didn’t quite work out. I got one reply and, alas, I wasn’t excited by it.

Tasha Valenti’s Hair Styling

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So, I scoured Wedding Wire for some recommendations. Originally, I wanted someone who could do both hair and makeup. And while the girl I think will be doing my makeup can do hair too, she had a recommendation of a superb hair stylist, since all five of my ’maids want to get their hair done.

A Before and After Make-Up Job by Katelyn Simkins

As I emailed a few various vendors, though, I began to see that the two-hour drive to my venue was creating some massive travel fees: $50 per hour or $125 round-trip. Yikes. Then I came across Ms. Katelyn Simkins, who seems to have a real talent and charges .50 cents per mile (which ends up being about $40 each way). Not only that, she recommended Tasha Valenti from Denver’s Look Beauty Boutique to do hair. Tasha agreed to jump in Katelyn’s car (they’re friends) and charge no extras for travel. So this weekend, I’ll be giving them both a shot! And, since I likely won’t be driving back up to Colorado before the wedding, I hope they work out.

Tasha Valenti doing hair for a photo shoot. She looks fun anyway!

I blogged about the Vogue cover makeup inspiration before, but besides that, I haven’t shown you anything else! So, below, are the images I’ll be handing to the respective stylists (note: while I have a few more on the hair side, here, I actually have some magazine tear-outs for makeup that I didn’t scan in time to show you).

All images below are from Project Wedding.

For hair, I’m back and forth between a low chignon and a pinned-back down look. So far, I’ve only seen one down-do that I like (below). I have stick-straight hair, so romantic curls just aren’t in the cards for me. We’ll try both the bun and the down style, I’m sure.

For makeup, I’m going to a dewy look with hints of peach and gold:

Where did you find your inspiration? And your makeup, and hair stylists, for that matter?