Mastering the natural makeup look

Your wedding day look is a skilful balance of many carefully planned elements. The central element, is of course your wedding dress, chosen with the utmost care and made to fit perfectly.

However, all your other wedding accessories play a crucial role in the overall look, either enhancing your dress or overwhelming it. While jewellery can have a strong effect, the makeup you choose has the power to transform your face, so it's important to consider how you're going to go about it.

Highlighting your natural beauty

A wedding day is a time when a bride is supposed to radiate joy and pure happiness, with a fresh faced look like she just woke up in a bed of daisies. Realistically speaking, most brides will want the helping hand of a little makeup to create a polished perfected complexion.

If you're enlisting the help of a professional, make sure you talk over the look you're wanting to create. However if you're going to 'Kate Middleton' it and do things yourself, here are a few things to consider.

Top tips for a flawless do it yourself makeup look

– By keeping your makeup light and natural, you'll have less to worry about throughout the day. The trick to keeping it natural is to avoid caking on the foundation – no one wants to look like they have orange peel skin in their wedding photos.

– If you have specific areas you'd like to perfect or conceal, focus on covering those, and using a lighter coverage foundation on the rest of your face. Esteemed UK makeup artist Lisa Eldridge calls this the pinpoint method of concealing, and is great for a wedding day "no makeup makeup" look.

– Experiment with highlighters along the upper cheek bone and soft muted tones for your eye shadow, to create that radiant glow. A light bronzer can also help, but keep it within two shades of your natural skin tone and make sure to blend it down your neck and jaw line.

– Ease up on the liner. Eye liner can immediately darken the eyes, especially if you double line on the top and bottom lid. Why not try to go with a brown liner or extra mascara instead? If you must line, keep it as close to the lash line as possible with a feather-light touch. 

– Take care to moisturise your lips plenty leading up your wedding. Long lasting, moisture rich lipstick or gloss should be the order of the day. 

– Last but not least, practice, practice, practice! You'll find yourself becoming more comfortable with it, as well as recognising what works for you.