A Woodside Wedding: Getting Bee-utified!

On Saturday, I woke up around 7 in the morning….even though on the weekends I regularly enjoy sleeping until noon, there was no sleeping in today, IT WAS OUR WEDDING DAY! Luckily my sore throat from the night before was completely gone, much to my relief upon waking.

Mr. Cola thought differently about waking early, and probably didn’t appreciate me curling my bangs and eyelashes, and bouncing around the suite, getting things ready for the day. To give him a little more quiet sleep time, I got dressed in my “getting ready outfit;” white short-sleeve sweatshirt with my initial on it, purple tank top, and white skirt, and headed downstairs to the on-site Starbucks.

Down at Starbucks, I ran into one of my bridesmaids, and we stocked up on caffeine for the day. I knew I couldn’t get through a long day without my usual quad shot iced latte, and I picked up a Double Shot can too, just in case I needed it later!

By the time I got back up to our room, Mr. Cola was finally awake and in the shower, so I could open up the drapes and lay out my jewelry, garters, shoes and rings. I wanted to have everything ready to go for when our photographers arrived, so they could easily shoot my accessories, and also in case we ended up running late; I didn’t want to have to find things at the last minute and potentially forget something.

Then I just had to wait until Mr. C left to go hang out with the groomsmen before I could get out my dress, and hang it on the large mirror that was bolted to the wall in our suite. And since 2 of our 3 hair and makeup artists were running about 20 minutes late, a bridesmaid and I had time to snap a few pics of my accessories ourselves.

(waiting for everyone to arrive, sans makeup)

Around 10:20 the rest of the hair and makeup team finally arrived, with so much stuff they needed a luggage cart to get everything to our suite!

(Tons of after party drinks in the corners of the room!)

And then it was time to get pretty! The stylist who’d arrived on time had already started on my sister’s hair, since she would need to run up to my parents house later to pick up her dress and my toss bouquet, which I’d planned to use for our first look, to save my real bouquet for the ceremony.


My 3 bridesmaids traded off between the two secondary stylists, with one doing everyone’s hair, and the other doing everyone’s makeup. And other than requesting that my sister wear her hair up, I let everyone decide on how they wanted their hair and makeup to look. My bridesmaids feeling comfortable and beautiful was more important to me than having them conform to any particular look or style!


And I had to snap a couple shots from the second story of our suite!


While my bridesmaids were switching off between the secondary stylists, I had my miracle worker stylist all to myself. You may remember Aimee Lam from Mrs. Pug’s wedding, and she is seriously worth her rate in gold! She remembered everything from my trial back in November: smoky eyes, double layered eyelashes, and the fact that since I wear contacts, I have trouble with others putting eyeliner on my lower lids, so she let me do it myself.


Once my makeup was done, it was time to tame my hair. In case you haven’t noticed, I have a LOT of it, and it’s pretty long and very thick. So industrial strength hair spray, a super powered curling iron and pin curls were necessary to get my curls to mostly hold until the wee hours of the morning.

(Mobile blogging again!)

It was so nice to have a relaxing morning of getting fawned over, especially after the stress and near heart attacks of the previous week. I'm happy to report that I was able to "get in the zone" and there was nothing that could stress me out or bother me on the morning of our wedding. What would happen would happen, and there wasn't much I could do or worry about, so I just didn't. I just listened to the relaxing playlist of Ingrid Michaelson and Joss Stone I'd put on, chatted with my bridesmaids and the stylists, and soaked up the morning.

Around this time our DOC called to check in, make sure I was eating, and reminded me to take an allergy pill (thankfully, because I probably would have forgotten and it was much needed for our day outside). She also took the opportunity to confirm our hotel room numbers, so she could let our photogs know so they wouldn’t have to bug me to find out themselves. Yet another reason why having a DOC is a must, on your big day there are so many other things to think about than the little details, so having someone on top of their game is extremely valuable, even before the wedding starts!


While I was getting my hair curled, my bridesmaids were finishing up their hair and makeup. One of them ordered us some yummy sandwiches from room service, and made sure I actually ate some of it, since coffee alone wasn’t going to get me through until dinner. Another bridesmaid called the bell desk to request a van cab for 2:30 for most of the wedding party to get to the venue, and my sister went up to my parents house to get her last minute altered dress (but sadly my toss bouquet was forgotten, so I didn’t have a bouquet for our first look pictures).


Time was drawing near for our photographers to arrive, and my bridesmaids were mostly dressed and ready to go, but my hair was still a work in progress. Since we’d been 20 minutes behind all day, I wasn’t all ready to go except for putting on my dress as I’d planned when our photogs arrived at 1:30. Unfortunately this meant we didn’t get any fun bridesmaid pictures around the hotel like I’d wanted, but it was worth it to have my hair all securely pinned in place and perfect.

So instead of getting into my dress right when our photogs arrived, we broke out the bottle of champagne I’d bought a year ago on a trip to Sonoma, and had been saving for this very moment. Doesn’t the bottle look perfect for a wedding?


Next up, what the guys did the morning of our wedding, and I finally get to put on my wedding gown!

If you end up running late getting ready for your wedding, will it stress you out, or will you be able to just go with the flow?

Miss any wedding week details? Catch up here:

- I packed an emergency bag that saved my dress
- We had a crazy 4 days prepping for house guests and stuffing favors
- Shopping for a ton of wedding flowers to arrange ourselves
- Mr. Cola drinks a 40 and I have a night out on the town for our low-key bach parties
- A day of DIY'ing flower arrangements
- I kicked off our official recaps with my #1 wedding tip
- We began the weekend festivities with a sunset cruise for our wedding party
- We rehearsed our quick and easy ceremony
- I panicked, but we got our rehearsal dinner decorations set up just in time
- Our families met for the first time at our rehearsal dinner under the trees
- What went wrong on our wedding day, and my tips for future brides

(All pictures in this post are personal photos, taken by myself or my bridesmaids)

The Moment I Wake Up....Before I Put On My Makeup...

Warning, this post contains A LOT of pictures of me, including an unsightly one of me without any makeup on or my hair curled. You've been warned!

Alright, now if any of you are still reading, I'm ready to share my hair and makeup trial with you! I first started researching stylists and MUAs around the 10 months until the wedding mark. I knew this was going to be very important since I was going to be the center of attention all day (along with Mr. Cola, of course). My hair and makeup are super important to me on a daily basis, so the wedding day had to be extra special!

Enter Yelp, OnceWed, Project Wedding, Weddingbee, The Knot, every site I could think of to find reviews of bridal stylists in the area. I contacted several for their prices, and to find out if they're good with working with long hair, but one stuck out to me, Aimee Lam. At the time I'm writing this she has 29 reviews on Yelp, of which 27 are five stars, and the other two are four stars. And all the reviews were so glowing, I just had to have a trial with her!

I decided to go to the trial with my regular "day to day" makeup on, but without my hair curled. I really wanted something more special and glam for my wedding day look, since I wear a fair amount of eye makeup usually (I have a serious mascara and eyelash curler addiction!), and wanted Aimee to have a reference. These were the inspiration pictures I brought in:


(photos from The Knot, Brides Magazine, Google Images, and YouTube screenshot)

I also brought in these hair accessories, along with my bumpit:


(cheapie rhinestone pins from Claire's and a flowers from a silk flower stalk I got from Michael's for $9.99, photos taken by me)

Some pre-trial shots of me with my normal makeup on, but uncurled hair:


Upon arriving at Aimee's I sat down with her to go over the inspiration pictures I'd e-mailed her ahead of time, then I took off my makeup and she took this (scary!) shot of me:


(my Cover Girl Lip Stain was still on though!)

Then Aimee got to work on beautifying me! She airbrushed my face, which I'd never had done before, but loved it. It felt so light and airy, hardly any different than the pressed powder I normally wear. She then gave me sexy smokey eyes, and applied false lashes. Aimee actually layered two sets of lashes on each of my eyes, one set that was longer and one set that was fuller, for a great full and long look! I would have never thought to do this, but am totally gonna try it next Halloween!

Next up was the long process of curling my hair. I have very coarse, thick hair, that curls well, but tends to hang itself out by the end of the day because of the weight, so I shared my concern with Aimee, so she knew to spray the heck out of it. It was then that I learned another neat trick, she used a smaller barrel curling iron on the bottom two layers of my hair, since those bottom layers usually go straight first. Another thing I plan to try at home, since I spiral curl my hair all the time for a loose wavy look! She then used a larger barrel curling iron for the top layers, and after everything was curled, she proceeded to pin my curls into a work of art, with strategically placed rhinestone pins and the flowers (my bumpit wasn't needed, but I still love it!).

And here is the final look!


(Aimee took these great pictures in her on-site photo studio, and e-mailed them, and lots more, to me later that night.)

I, of course, signed her on the spot to do our wedding, along with hair and makeup for my 3 bridesmaids. She'll be bringing an assistant too, since my hair alone takes so much time. I'm so excited, I know she'll do a fabulous job again on the wedding day!

And at the end of the day, after playing with my parent's dog, going shopping, changing my outfit, and leaning back on the couch to watch TV, this is how my hair held up:


(Not too bad in my opinion, a little frizzy and not as curly, but I did a lot of stuff while it was done, and didn't make an effort to be gentle with it, to see how it would really hold up to a night of dancing. And I think by the end of the night a more tousled look will go just right with my after party dress.)

Here's how the makeup held up. You can't really see it in these pics, but there was a bit of makeup gathered in a line in the crease of my eyelids. I'm used to this though because of my deeper lids, and a quick scrape with my fingernail takes care of it.

(Sick of looking at pictures of me yet? Yeah, me too!)

So all in all, a great trial, and I have my wedding look from the neck up all set! The only down side was it took Mr. Cola about 15 minutes to help me get all the pins out of my hair. Aimee really had them in there, which is great for the style, but will be a pain on our wedding night! 53 total pins were used, plus the accessories!


How many hair and makeup trials did you have before finding the perfect stylist? And did you try more than one look, or did you know what you wanted from the start?