Wedding bliss

I'm simultaneously over the moon and rather depressed. BA, my partner in crime over here, has just become engaged to be married to the man she loves. And she's asked her three best friends in New York to be her bridesmaids, me along with F & J, at the wedding in the south of France later this year.

But it will inevitably mean she moves back to London at some point. The nature of New York - no one seems to be from here - means that one has to get used to a rather high turnover of friends. M & L have already returned to the UK & I do miss them enormously but hopefully my other wonderful friends are staying put for the time being. I certainly don't think there's much likelihood of me returning to live in London for some years. Although paradoxically, as the negotiations for my new job continue & it's looking like a runner, it means I am likely to be in Europe more as I will be covering the collections.

And I am amusing myself by sending BA pictures of wedding dresses. I can't think why she didn't like this one:

Wedding beauty for an English Rose

Years working in the fashion industry, as well as occasionally writing about beauty, has given me an admirable stash of products and tools, plus a little knowledge from watching some of the best in the industry work their magic backstage & on location.

So when Miss P got married a couple of weeks ago I got to be make-up artist for the day, as well as her personal stylist. We had thought about booking a make-up artist – well, hell these pictures are going to be around for the next forty or fifty years. But a pro costs at least £250 plus their travel and, seeing as she is seven months pregnant, she has better places to direct her money. So I did it for her.

Still, I don’t profess to be an expert so we took a couple of shortcuts to ensure I didn’t balls it up too comprehensively.

First stop: Selfridges Beauty Hall in London where we both had our brows shaped at Blink’s threading bar. This is the most effective and longest lasting way to keep them in shape. It’s also good if you have no pain barrier (like me) as it removes multiple hairs at a time.

I then marched Miss P to the Prescriptives counter. Their Custom Blend foundation (£40) is mixed in front of you to match your skin perfectly. We choose the heaviest coverage because it needed to last all day and still look good in flash photography.

Because of the flash photography we couldn’t use the perfect concealer: YSL’s Touche Eclat, as it reflects back light (that’s the reason some celebs have white panda eyes in photographs), so I just didn’t use any, blending foundation with a flat brush under her eyes instead.

Then we went to Laura Mercier to choose a lipstick so she would be able to keep the tube in her purse all day, rather than me blending a colour for her which we couldn’t then replicate. LM’s colours are wedding perfect as they are all pretty neutrals: nothing too strong or un-Miss P looking.

We also cheated by heading to Pout in Covent Garden for their Luscious Lashes application (individual eyelash extensions) (£15). They take just ten minutes, and last for up to three weeks if you buy some extras and replace each one with tweezers & eyelash glue as it falls out – a lot easier to do when you have a whole lid’s worth already in place.

On the day we kept it super simple. MAC Kohl Power Eye Pencil in Orpheus, a soft brown, smudged through the lashes, the pale creamy colour from Clinique’s Colour Surge Eye Shadow Duo in Like Mink over the whole eye socket & up to the brow, with the crease defined in the darker brown, blended & then blended some more. Brows were groomed with MAC clear mascara, and defined with a stiff eyeliner brush & Estée Lauder’s Pure EyeShadow in Espresso Cup. I used just a tiny amount of waterproof mascara on the outer lower lashes – no more because she would just cry it all off eventually. I finished off the look with pretty rosy cheeks using Shiseido’s cream stick blusher in Peach Flush.

Wedding chic

My adored best friend Miss P was married to the love of her life, Mr M, last Saturday in London. We thought long & hard about what she should wear (being seven months pregnant made it a more, well, specialised decision). Maternity wedding dresses have a curious ability to look like a bizarre combo of shroud and djellabah. And who wants a bump covered in sequins? Miss P has a tiny back and good legs, so we looked at non-maternity, empire style dresses from Whistles and various other boutiques.

In the end tho, she wore, & looked utterly ravishing in, a pale blue, knee-length silk dress she ordered, & I brought over from New York - from, drum roll..... Gap Maternity. She accessorized with very high L K Bennett gold heels, a large bead vintage pearl necklace from my collection and, underneath it all, Agent Provocateur silk maternity undies. Her bouquet was pinky blue scabious, hydrangeas, & roses. I arranged for the groom to have a fabulous navy bespoke suit made on Savile Row by the reinvigorated Norton & Sons.
The infants, step-daughter & niece, both aged four, wore pale blue, rose sprigged cotton dresses & bright pink cardies from Boden, with ballet slippers. Adorable. And me? My mother told me roundly my choices were too short, so I wore a very simple puff sleeve, navy blue silk, knee-length tunic from faithful old Topshop with beige quilted satin open toe Chanel heels, bright pink lipstick and large pearl drop earrings.

The marriage was a glorious ceremony in the Victorian council chamber at Islington Town Hall (they walked, on air, back down the aisle to Love Is In The Air and the infant bridemaids & I danced in our pews), a journey on a chartered red double decker bus, photographs by the Thames, and lunch (rivers of Billecart Champagne, wondrous wines, amazing canapés, organic chicken pie, wilted greens & new potatoes, cheese, scrumptious brownie wedding cake with crystallised violets & rose petals) at The Blueprint Café on the South Bank all added up to the most perfect wedding day.

I was the non-bridesmaid. I particularly recommend this role: I got to spend two days beforehand having beauty treatments with Miss P, avoided a hen night, dressed & made-up the bride for the wedding,(bliss to get to use my prop kit on a friend rather than a model!) had confetti duties, got to sit opposite the charming father of the bride at lunch and, best of all, no need to wear a bridesmaid's dress.

Pictures © Tim Hayward

Back in London.... finally

I had the perfect journey this morning - until I actually got onto the Heathrow-bound 'plane at Newark. I could have done without the know-it-all world traveller who first tried to nick my window seat and who then spent the flight giving me handy tips along the lines of, "Ooh you don't want to sleep now, it'll mess up your circadian rhythms". By the end of the journey I was close to telling him exactly what he could do with his circadian rhythms.

We landed thirty minutes early, & were then stranded on the apron at Heathrow for an hour as a result of torrential rain and thunderstorms (ah, England!), and then my driver couldn't find me for thirty minutes in the melée at arrivals. Finally arrived at my sister's gaff at 10pm to find a frenzied dachshund spraying fountains of wee in the air as it rolled on its back in ecstatic welcome. Crawled under duvet on sofa with now exhausted & snoring dachshund, popped some lovely Solpadeine Max (terrible cramps) & ate doggy bag pad thai from supper with my attractive American friend in Manhattan last night. Quite odd to be eating NY leftovers in London.

To Bristol tomorrow for A & D's marriage & reception on the SS Great Britain. I expect your typical wedding scenario: loads of smug couples, a previously devoted (& charming) ex to avoid, and doubtless lots of Champagne. I am wearing a plunging brown print silk jersey Diane von Furstenberg number (NOT a bloody wrap dress), a cream piqué Princess collared 1950's cotton flared skirt coat and burgundy patent platform Mary Janes. No hats, thank goodness, as the ceremony is not 'till 5pm.

Rain, rain go away, come again another day

So it completely passed me by that the thunder and rain that has kept me awake for the past two nights has been a freak storm that caused the cancellation of 300 NYC flights yesterday. My American friend A is understandably perturbed as I fly (hopefully) out of Newark tomorrow to attend her wedding in London. Being English, to me rain is rain is rain - it really hadn't occured to me that it was a special, aeroplane-grounding kind of rain. It just goes to show how isolated from external events one can become in the middle of a big city.

I splish splashed my way through the puddles to meet my personal strength trainer at the torture chamber this morning - I am now lifting 120lbs and making small grunting noises rather like my sister's dachshund - and on the way back braved the tourist hoardes at Bloomingdales to buy vast quantities of beauty products (Prevage, Kiehl's, Murad, Stri-Vectin) for all my girlfriends. I also bought a pretty silk tunic for the wedding rehearsal dinner in Zara - 30% cheaper than in Europe.

Unfortunately I (and I suspect all of A's English girlfriends) had failed to realise that we were expected to wear glamorous eveningwear to the wedding. A very unusual dress code for a wedding in England where it's more usual to wear smart day wear with a jacket & hat for the ceremony, even to late afternoon weddings. (It's actually illegal to get married after 6pm in England). I am even more perturbed by the fact that she said floor length sounded great. Now I am impaled on the horns of a dilemma - do I doll myself up for A (not very English, dahling) or dress to fit in with the other female guests...