Wedding-day beauty isn’t as complicated as its made out to be, and yet I’ve found lists of tips and tricks that are hundreds of items long! I had it easy — a family friend just happens to be an award-winning stylist. He attended my wedding and was there with a lip gloss wand every time I turned around. Not everyone has it so good, but that doesn’t mean bridal makeup has to be complicated and overwhelming.

Start with a clean canvas
You’ll see a lot of bridal checklists that advise setting up a regular months-long regimen of facials and detox sessions, but there’s no reason to go absolutely nucking futz if you have pretty good skin. If you’re skin ain’t all that, I’d suggest going to a proper dermatologist rather than your local aesthetician. Don’t have anything radical done in the month and a half before your nuptials, as skin needs time to heal after harsh treatments like chemical peels. Drink lots and lots of water, exfoliate gently, moisturize, and wear sunscreen…before and after your wedding. In fact, never stop!

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Writing about all things bridal for a living does funny things to your head. For instance, being that my own wedding has come and gone, I’ve taken to rewriting it in my imagination. It’s an unusual day when I don’t accost The Beard the moment he walks through the door to tell him that “if I had to do it all over again, I’d buy/do/wear this!” It’s not that I’m unhappy with the way my own wedding turned out. Rather, it’s that there were simply all these wonderful things I didn’t know about while shopping for it!

My latest “I wish I had some reason to buy it” find is a dress from Eden Bridals, of all places. I tend not to like most of their inventory — what, for example, is up with the gathers on this number? The dress I’m lusting after today, however, is rather different than most of the ones I’ve come across on that web site.

For one thing, this organza and taffeta dress is green. Specifically, it’s a color Eden Bridals likes to call thistle, which is an incredible muted green that reminds me of twilight and old fashioned things. It is also available in all white, all ivory, or all iridescent rose. The rose sounds intriguing, but as it turns out, it’s way too much pink for me.

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All right, so I’m just a little bit proud of myself, which means I do things like tell the mailman that, hey, I wrote a book! Now that the cover image for iDo is basically finalized, I’m pretty sure that my mom has already e-mailed it around to everyone she’s ever known. Moms are like that! But for some reason the cover image hasn’t hit Amazon yet, so I figured I’d give y’all a sneak peak.

I like to read the local paper and not just because I spent too many years of my life –i.e., something like three years– getting paid poo-poo to cover dull as dirt community meetings. One, a good townie rag is a great place to find out about free stuff to do. Two, they’ll profile just about anyone so you get to read the life stories of people like Jim Bob, who won a trophy for his 100 pound pumpkin. And three…wait, there is no three.

Designer Patricia King-Davies apparently live (or used to live) a few towns over from me. I know this because they did a big profile of her in one of the local papers. The article talked about her splendid gowns, so I felt a pressing need to look her up, but the only pictures I could find were from last year’s Nolcha Fashion Week. All I can say is the King-Davies likes the shiny! Her shiny, shiny, shiny World Culture Collection apparently paid tribute to various countries’ styles and attempted to honor their traditions.

Two gowns from the show caught my eye.

Here you have the epic win. I just want to reach out and touch this one because the fabric looks wonderfully delicious and soft. I bet it’s nice to wear, too, with very nothing at all scratchy or poky on the interior of the gown. It looks like King-Davies’ logo is on the midsection, but unlike an LV or a Gucci bit, it’s pretty and subtle. My one criticism is that the model’s boobs need to be hoisted into the designated boob triangles or the triangles need to be brought down a bit.

And here you have the epic fail. Shapeless mass much? Sure, there’s a place for free-flowing fabric…however, all I can see is a sleepy bed-headed woman who was forced to improvise when the doorbell rang too early on a Sunday morning. But if you happen to like it, I’d be happy to travel to your home at your expense and drape high-end bed sheets around you until you’re sufficiently covered up.

Back in the day (where the day in question is high school) I used to love those huge angle wings made of real feathers. A few people I knew had them and wore them every Halloween. Too bad the most creative costumes they could come up with were “naughty little angel” and “saucy succubus,” which reminds me of a quote from Mean Girls: Halloween is the one night a year when girls can dress like a total slut and no other girls can say anything about it.

This post isn’t about skimpy costumes, however; it’s about wings. Specifically, it’s about colorful, gauzy, glittery fairy wings. One day I was looking for pictures of purple wedding gowns and I happened upon this picture:

I don’t know anything about the wedding, the happy couple, or the bridal party, but I do know that the bride sourced her fairy wings from On Gossamer Wings, purveyor of fine wings and (coming soon!) tutus. She is certainly rocking those wings, though I’ll admit that I didn’t even notice them at first because I was so besotted with her gown and her new hubby’s kilt. How can you not love a man in a kilt?

Back to the wings…my mantra is and has always been “Do your own thing, honey!” I will argue to the death (or to the boredom, whichever comes first) a bride’s right to wear fairy wings on her wedding day, but goodness gracious I would not wear ‘em myself.

I was browsing Manolo for the Big Girl just the other day when I came across this comment posted by one prowlcat:

ah yes! the poor taste in wearing bare-shouldered, backless, plunging-neckline wedding dresses in religious ceremonies. vera wang what have you wrought? also brides with crowns or tiaras. brides rejecting the veil, but keeping everything else. its all symbolism; borat will not put you in a sack and carry you away if you wear a veil. its traditional. dyed to match shoes, however, are not. and no flip flops at weddings, even in the jungle!

Now I do detest dyed-to-match shoes — though I’ll admit to fancying them when I was eight or so — and wedding flip flops, particularly the ones embellished with all manner of lace and rhinestones are indeed an abomination. But I can’t say I harbor any vitriol toward brides who choose to walk bareheadedly toward matrimonial bliss.

It was Vera Wang who said, “Other than the wedding ring, [the veil] is the most symbolic accessory a woman will ever wear.” I believe it was Never teh Bride (hey, that’s me!) who said, “Tradition be damned — honey, you’ll be just as married if you say ‘I do’ while wearing jeans and a bad case of bed head.”

There are as many reasons to ditch the headgear as there are to wear it proudly. I, for example, can’t stand having stuff in front of my face or flipping about my head, and thus find anything remotely veil-like entirely uncomfortable. Some brides don’t care for the potentially patriarchal origins of the veil tradition, whether or not it actually has its origins in bride-nappers tossing blankets over the heads of their prey or fathers tricking gullible young men into marrying the wrong sister. And I’m sure there are brides out there who think veils are just plain unattractive.

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The dresses below came from eBay auctions.

When I found them, each auction had about three minutes left to go. Both began at about $15 with no reserve. The origin of the dresses was Shanghai, China, and shipping was listed at around $150. Neither auction specified who would create the dresses, though they were obviously made to order as a buyer could choose from a variety of colors not usually associated with weddings.

The seller has a 100% positive feedback rating, but if you look closely, almost all of the ratings were giving by other sellers, not buyers. Some of the buyer feedback is all right, like “Stunning dress, very happy!” And some doesn’t exactly inspire one’s trust…”The shawl is lovely and was delivered very quickly, but it is not cashmere.” And even worse, “Made in very quickly, but the material of the dress I received did not match picture or description.”

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