Our Wedding // Let's talk about wedding dresses, hair & make-up

Hi, guys! Today I'll be sharing my tips and tricks on wedding hair and make-up, and the story of my wedding dress.
First, let's talk make-up. I had initially planned to ask a friend to do my make-up on the big day. And, we even did a test, but eventually I felt that I wanted to do it myself. First, because I'm a control freak (just kidding....well, sort of). Secondly, because I knew that I wanted a very "me" look, so that my husband wouldn't be all "who's that?" on the wedding day, and I already new what I wanted and how to achieve it, so it made simply more sense to do it myself. Also, my wedding was very much DIY, so I liked the aspect of keeping in that spirit.

I watched some videos on Youtube, and did some testing at home until I was a 100% happy with the end result. Of course, I had a fear I would mess up everything on the actual day - it's like when you do a hairstyle just for fun to see how it looks like, and then it turns out awesome, and the next time you need to replicate it, it just doesn't come out. You know what I mean? Luckily, everything did turn out on the big day, even better than I had hoped.

So, my experience is, that doing your own wedding make-up is totally doable, but only under certain circumstances. I was already pretty good at doing my make-up for special occasions since I had a lot of concerts. If you love playing around with make-up, and you think you're doing a good job, then why not do it yourself. There are so many great make-up tutorials out there to help, also.

 

For a very brief moment I even considered doing my own hair. But, I knew that would be super stressful, and I really wanted to relax and not worry about it (since, you know, the Murphy's law I described before). I'm so glad I decided to take on a hair stylist. She is the greatest! She is a friend of friend. Me and Rein both have our hair cut by her, and I'm always so pleased with her work. So, if you live in Tallinn or in the area, you should definitely pay her a visit. Her name is Mari-Liis Must and she works at the young hairdressers' salon called Tuuletuka. 

Mari-Liis and I did 2 tests before the wedding day to see how my hair responds to different curling methods and products and how the whole thing holds up after several hours. I would definitely recommend doing a couple of tests, since you can try out more things and get the game plan ready.

I gathered some inspiration images before our first appointment to help share my vision. I was sure I wanted something not too clean, more of a messy curls look. And I also had the idea of having flowers in my hair from the start. My Mom also had flowers in her hair when she got married, so I wanted to carry on that detail and maybe make it a family tradition. I made the flower pins myself using this method I shared over at Oh Everything Handmade a few months back. I really loved the end result!

Now, to my dress. Isn't she gorgeous! I know I'm biased, since I designed it myself, but to see that vision come to life even better than I had imagined truly makes me so happy. I also played around with the idea of making it myself, but eventually I didn't dare to put myself under so much pressure.
The dress was made by my mother-in-law, who's an amazing seamstress. Fun fact,  she actually produced three dresses that attended our wedding - mine, her's and her mother's. Did I say she's amazing?

We began working on this dress somewhere around april, but the actual sewing part started in June. I sent her tons of pictures of how I wanted the neckline to be, and how I envisioned the back and the skirt and so on. And we had several talks so I could really communicate my design vision to her. Then we went to shop for the fabric. That was the hardest part. Initially, I had my heart set on using Venise lace, but turns out that is impossible to get locally, and I didn't have the guts to spend all that money to order it from somewhere not knowing if it was going to look and feel right. So, we made a quick change in plans. I'm actually very glad we did, because in hindsight, Venise lace would probably have been to thick and heavy for this dress.

The trickiest part of the dress was figuring out how to construct the lower part of the skirt. I wanted sort of this soft cascading tulle look, but neither of us had sewn anything like it before, so we had to figure out how to achieve the look I wanted. A lot of cutting and tulle later, it was perfect.

Our wedding colors were navy blue and pale salmon pink, so I also had a navy blue fabric belt, and pink crystal earrings (I made those, too). And my mother-in-law also made Rein the matching tie and handkerchief from the same belt fabric.

 

My wedding look was exactly how I imagined, and I'm so grateful to Mari-Liis and Kristine (my mother-in-law) for making it a reality.

Phew, you're such a trooper if you made it to the end of this very long post, but I felt I just had to share. So, thanks for letting me!
If you have any questions, just leave them in the comments.

Thanks so much for visiting, and I'll see you tomorrow!
xo Hanna

Photography by Kerli Halliste