Hair Glow Up – Aveda Hair Care
This is one at-home beauty glow-up to start way before the wedding, so the fact that products are 90+% natural, smell amazing and won’t break the bank is important. Aveda is a brand for everyday haircare, a good habit to start well before you want healthy-looking hair and one I’ll be taking with me beyond it into summer.
I tried out the Botanical Repair, Nutri-plenish and Be Curly ranges, to work out which works best for my hair as it is right now (- it’s an ever-changing game). The deep hydration of the Nutri-plenish products makes them a great place to start for any hair in need of a little TLC, and one product I’ll be replacing as soon as it’s out is the daily moisturising treatment (£15) that goes on damp hair, post-wash. Infused with a superfood blend of oils and butter, the creamy leave-in hair treatment nourishes my dry, coarse hair beautifully.
When I was deciding on hair up or down, and trying out styles, the Nutri-plenish styling foam offered a soft, natural hold without any stiffness or product build-up. It’s definitely one for the at-home hair product arsenal, even though I went more natural on the day.
The Be Curly (£30) product range is what I landed on for my soft waves recently-turned proper curls. The citrusy scent makes hair wash day all the better, bringing out body and shine in my newly curly hair, taking down frizz. The Style Prep serum works on settling the frizz even more, while Curl Enhancer (£15) increases curl definition. Vegan with natural ingredients derived from plant proteins, all Aveda packaging is also recycled so it’s all the more reason to invest. Visit aveda.co.uk to purchase.
Electimuss Hair Mist
On a day you embrace everyone you care about in life, it’s important to give off the right scent. Wearing my hair down for the day, I decided on a hair mist, expecting to fling it around a fair amount and not wanting to overdo it with both hair and skin perfume. What’s more, Electimuss London’s Hair Mist claims to benefit the structure of the hair and the condition of the scalp, as well as providing its delicate layer of Mercurial Cashmere fragrance.
Pink pepper, cardamom, and bergamot give a spicy citrusy top layer to the scent, with oud, caramel and cedarwood giving a woody base. Tuberose and iris add top-note floral tones. Its non-oily formula means it can be spritzed directly onto styled hair to provide shine and scent, making it the perfect finishing touch to the whole outfit (alongside a lippy…)A bottle is £235 and available at electimuss.com.
Nails Glow Up – 14 Day Mani at-home gel manicure kit
This one is bittersweet because it takes away the luxury of going to the nail salon to be taken care of for an hour or two. However, I do hit my limit of time spent in the salon, and patience lasts for either my feet or hands – not both – with an hour usually my max.
In front of the TV, following online tutorials, doing my nails is ideal. With 297 nail colours to choose from, from nudes to neons, finding your match won’t be hard. Or it will be, depending on which way you look at it… What I do know is that I haven’t gone back to the salon since getting this and have saved more than the cost of the kit, all in, which is £79.
The starter kit includes prep tools, a top and base coat, a UV/LED lamp and four polish colours of your choice, buy at 14daymanicure.com.
Skin Glow Up – Skinny Tan Fake Tan
New to fake tan, or new to modern fake tan after a spate of disasters with it in my teens, I’m a new convert… And seeing how well it works, I’ve vowed to never sunbathe again. The (fake) tanning journey is one to start well before the big day – we’re talking months – to get the technique down. Practise again and again to get it right. After trying the lot, I found Skinny Tan clear tanning foam the best entry-level product for easy application and a subtle tan that warms skin rather than transforming the colour (at least for my skin tone, using Skinny Tan palest tone – Medium).
Or for regular users, the Tan & Tone Wonder Serum (£31.99) gives a long lasting colour that hydrates skin with Q10 as well as Vitamin E. The silky smooth serum texture helps an even distribution – no streaks! For a finishing touch, the After Glow Gloss (£9.99) adds a dewy look, perfect for arms, legs and decolletage. But it does smell strongly (though wonderfully) of coconut and is better suited to summer holiday evenings rather than the big day itself, overpowering any other subtle scents you might wear.
For last-minute touchups, the instant bronzer can fill any gaps and mistakes and wash right off, whilst avoiding transferring onto clothes, which is impressive. Again, its fruity scent means I prefer to keep it for legs and away from battling other more subtle perfumes. Products are available online at skinnytan.co.uk.
- For the wedding, I’d say less is more; don’t get carried away and go too dark. It’s not all about the photos, where a dark tan might seem like a good idea. I prepped my skin three days before the event, exfoliating the night before tan application, and regularly moisturising afterwards to keep my skin from drying out and the tan even.
- Don’t skimp on buying the Body Buffing Brush; with eyes (and camera lens) on your newly ringed hand and wedding shoes, you don’t want to goof with orange ankles and knuckles, or white gaps between fingers.
Teeth Glow Up – Polished London Teeth Whitening Kit
What comes in an at-home teeth whitening kit and does it work? In my delivery came a teeth whitening powder (£27.99), a whitening pen (£16.99) and the LED mouthpiece with whitening gel syringes and, crucially, a shade guide (£49.99), so you don’t get carried away.
The pen is super convenient for removing stains on the go, formulated using whitening formula PAP (a peroxide-free gel) that works within minutes. The powder promotes brighter teeth with hyaluronic for hydrated gums, PAP Pro to naturally remove stains and something to remineralise tooth enamel. You can generally see results after a few days, and the ideal time to start is after a professional cleaning when teeth are free from all that clogs them up.
The LED device comes with whitening gels with ingredients that are activated by the lights inside the mouthpiece, which have two functions: accelerated whitening (blue mode) and combined whitening, sterilising and odour reduction (blue and red mode). While in-dentist teeth whitening costs from several hundred pounds, Polished London’s products cost significantly less and deliver the results I was after: stains gone and teeth genuinely brighter, without being dramatically different.
Although since using them I have had plenty of comments on my teeth, so perhaps it’s more dramatic than I think… All products are peroxide-free – my teeth experience zero sensitivity after use and there’s no worry over damaging enamel or gum inflammation. All done in the comfort of your own home. Available online at polishedlondon.com.
In the salon Glow Up – Cloud Twelve Spa
I think it’s fair to say that one glow up thing you just can’t do at home to the same effect is a facial, either for the occasional reboot and rejuvenation or to prepare skin for a special day. My chosen spa? Cloud Twelve in Notting Hill, which is the perfect location for a spot of wedding shopping beforehand, is located in a mews just off Westbourne Grove.
Designed following the Feng Shui philosophy, the hidden away city spa and members’ club offers treatments and non-invasive procedures supported by science and modern technology. Arriving an hour before the treatment, I made the most of the thermal areas – the sauna, steam and Himalayan salt room – before following a guided meditation in the relaxation room.
The 60-minute High Impact Facial included a crystal-free microdermabrasion and microneedling to resurface my skin, reducing fine lines and wrinkles, and the appearance of scars, which was my main concern after a recent bout of acne had left my skin red and marked. Perhaps the best of all was the ‘foot ritual’ (that comes with all facials!), making me feel like I’d had a full-body, head-to-toe treatment by the time I left. Priced at £195 you can book at cloudtwelve.co.uk.
*Although I was assured my treatment would not cause a flare-up or breakout, I went four weeks before the wedding date, just in case, with the effects long-lasting.
