Red and Beautiful – A blog by Monica at MHG Beauty.

Oh blimey are you in for a treat today. My wedding chums have teamed up to create a gorgeous styled shoot captured by Bernie & Bindi Photography. The red haired model looks effortlessly beautiful in a gown by Vanila Wedding Boutique and of course Monica has perfected the makeup and hair. oh and did I mention this shoot was just for us?? Booya!!!

This is for all of you gorgeous redheads getting married, whether you were born a redhead or had it beautifully created by your hair colorist.

As I have mentioned previously, I don’t like to say that there are rules when it comes to make up, for me it’s a form of art and an expression of who you are. There are obviously shades that look better on certain skin types and with certain hair colors, it’s all about balance and determining what look you want to achieve that both suits your personality and compliments your dress and accessories in a harmonious way.

The Eyeshadow colors that by color theory are most complimentary to redheads are earth tones (from light yellow or gold to dark brown) greens and plums. Yet, as I said you could choose to wear a black smokey eye and balance it by adding gold as highlight on the center of the eyelid or by using a green eyeliner on the waterline. The options are endless.

For this shoot we went for a “Romantic-Chic” look. The team members at Vanila Wedding Boutique are great at understanding your style, body type and personality, helping you find the perfect dress for your special day, and that’s exactly what they did when Natalia came to them to try on dresses for our shoot. We chose a beautiful Wedding dress from designer Helen Miller, which looks perfect on our model Natalia, who is a natural redhead.

With a romantic look you can go different ways with makeup. Either very natural, barely there makeup or go bold with a cat eyeliner and red lip. In this case, I went for a natural day wedding makeup. Natural redheads regularly have fair skin and light colored eyes, so I love focusing on highlighting both the area around the eyes and the cheekbones. I am obsessed with freckles and I think it is such a unique and beautiful quality that I don’t like to hide it under foundation, unless the person asks me too. To achieve this, I use a very light coverage foundation or even a tinted moisturizer and use a concealer and highlighter on specific areas to bring out the eyes and give the face dimension. I used a light soft gold eyeshadow all over the upper and lower eyelid and defined her crease with a nice light brown to bring out her astonishing green eyes. All kept in earth tones. If you wish to go darker on the eyes, plums and darker browns also look amazing on redheads. I finished the eyes with 2 coats of mascara, which immediately made her eyes pop.

As for the skin, I finished by adding a light pink-peachy blush and a touch of bronzer. The lips were kept very natural with a pink lipstick and a soft gloss applied to the center of the lips. You could also wear a dark lip just always make sure it doesn’t clash with your hair color too much, so that your eyes and skin are still visible. Balance, balance, balance.

For the brows I used two shades of brown, a taupe and a warm brown. You don’t want them to look red. Always stick to brown, they will look much more natural.

And then came the hair, oh, how I love red hair, there is something whimsical about the way it looks when light touches it…I used a 1 inch curler to make loose curls on her hair and afterwards ran my hands through it to make it messy and perfectly imperfect. I did different hairstyles and we added different headpieces and accessories so you guys could have more inspiration looks. There are so many hair possibilities, specially with a strapless dress. You can never go wrong, wear your hair half-up, in an up-do or completely down, it will look amazing anyway and your dress will still look good. You can find all the beautiful headpieces and accessories at Vanila Wedding Boutique.

The look was excellently completed with Blossom Tree Dubai‘s stunning bouquets and flower headpieces. Gorgeous and very unique flowers in perfectly hand picked colors, were used to create masterpieces that made it all come together.

I wouldn’t be able to show you any of this if it wasn’t for the talented Wedding photographers Bernie and Bindi who were there to capture it all as amazingly as they always do.

“When photographing a bride with beautiful red hair like Natalia, we look to getting as much light into the hair as possible. Specially we look to get light from the side or from directly behind to really bring out the color. ” they mentioned.

Their inspiring images say more than I could ever describe. They not only took pictures of the final look but also getting ready images and detail shots of everything we used to make our red beauty shoot a reality.