The Bridesmaids Gifts and Goodies

Caitlin and Jayden were the only 2 girls left on my bridesmaids list, I had a couple more but for one reason or another they couldn't make it which was kind of expected due to the fact it was a destination wedding. My husband and I live in England but most of our family and friends live in either Mexico, Germany, and the USA.

Now Cailtin is my lil love bug baby girl, to my eyes she's the little sister I never had and I wish I was there in her life a lot longer to teach her all the things! She's 25 now and I'm 30, she had just began to start using makeup along with other girly things around the time I got engaged, so hair products, how to style your hair, eyeliner, all that fun stuff was new to her. She had done theater makeup before when she was in school but lets be fair, it is quite different to your everyday look or your going out tonight look.

Jayden my drama ridden half breed, British mum who is always looking for an excuse to not go to work and her very set in his ways American dad pushed her to mature a lot faster than most of her schoolmates. She just turned 21 this past weekend, she's a good kid with a good heart but is put into the position of having to be the grown-up a lot. She's familiar with makeup, getting her hair done, but as most youngins' makes a lot a mistakes along the way (heck, I still do!). My biggest beef with her is that she sometimes forgoes washing her face after a long night of partying and those ridiculously dramatic eyelashes she wore at my wedding.

I told the makeup artist I was going for a natural beauty look on my girls because they're both very youthful looking and there's nothing worse than a beautiful young girl with perfect skin caking their face up with unnecessary goop.

#bridesmaid gifts #tarte #Revlon #wedding #theknot

A photo posted by Laura Cain (@lau_is_gone_now) on Apr 11, 2015 at 1:07pm PDT

So what I got them was a lovely Tarte palette each including the mother of the bride and groom which contained very lovely and neutral colors that would enhance their natural beauty yet have a lil bit of glam, just enough for such a fabulous day and of course the most amazing mascara ever.

We all had matching earrings and bracelets and I got them each a set of makeup brushes in that lovely flowery pouch, they were about $12 a set, yes they are cheap and not the greatest brushes ever but these were their first makeup brushes so I figured it would be good for starters because even though Jayden is familiar with makeup she never really used makeup brushes, she used the applicators that come with your regular Covergirl makeup sets.

She looks so precious!

Think skinny!

Jayden (left) Caitlin (right)

We look precious! 

Our engagement photos... and the hangover

So my best friend/maid of honor has a super talented husband, Greg Bales, he did our engagement photos and most of our wedding pics too, we did hie and extra 2 photographers so he could enjoy himself as-well.

My husband had this whole thing planned out, we had gone to Edinbururgh every year for his birthday and this time was no different except he planned his birthday trip around all the wedding planning. He made the appointments with the locations, the venue, the whole enchilada and all I id was plan the engagement photo shoot, lazy bride? No, apparently this was his plan from the beginning.

But also we were celebrating his birthday and our engagement, so what did we do you ask? We got shitfaced and a heavy metal bar called Opium where they had this magical concoction called "The Opium Bomb and my husband thought having 20 of those was a great idea the night before our photoshoot. I also thought it was a great idea to drink all the scotch placed in front of me that night so of course we were super hungover the next day so here is what I did to try and avoid looking like crap in our engagement photos:

Slept in as much as I could, eat a heavy breakfast, shower for like 40 minutes and then applied the following:

I washed my face with my Clarisonic Mia and First Aid Beauty (FAB) cleanser, toned with Olay's witch hazel toner, applied my Josie Maran argan oil and then the magical unicorn Shiseido's Benefiance WrinkleResist24 Pure Retinol Express Smoothing Eye Mask
I left this on for as long as it was wet, this puppy help mask the nightmare under my eyes. Of course I packed on the makeup like crazy but I think the under eye mask helped sooooo much.

Here are some sample photos where you can't really tell that I'm actually dying inside: