TPR Bride Brittany Carter Shares Her Bridal Beauty Prep

For this edition, we feature TPR bride Brittany Carter, who married her partner in March with a gorgeous south coast wedding, where they made sure to showcase their love for the ocean, their family, and a good party on the dance floor with their friends.

The Backstory

Micky and I had been together a year and a half when he proposed in November 2018 at Kiama on the NSW South Coast. He’s English, I’m Australian. So it took a fair bit of planning from him to orchestrate the surprise, hiring a house on the water for both our families to stay in. At the time, we were already keen on having a longer engagement, and thanks to COVID, that drew it out even longer, making it a four-year wait until we finally tied the knot.

Our relationship has always been a bit unorthodox, even down to a bit of a gender role reversal when it comes to our jobs. I work as a sports journalist, and Micky is an organ donation nurse, so we both lead very busy lives and work odd hours. This makes our rare time off together extremely special, and we love to spend it bush-walking or heading down to the beach where we live on the coal coast with our border collie, Louie.

For this reason, we always knew we wanted the venue of our wedding to reflect the relaxed and nature-focused aspect of our relationship and a south coast wedding by the water and the bush fit that brief.

The Cove in Jervis Bay was Micky’s pick, and once we headed down to the venue to check it out in person for the first time, I was sold too. The property is buried in the Jervis Bay national park, and is home to lots of wildlife – like their resident kangaroos, has exclusive and private access to the beach, and can accommodate up to 126 guests on site. It was packed to the brim with our family and close friends for the three-day celebration including a welcome night, the wedding day, and recovery brunch.

The Inspiration…

A postponement due to COVID and the fact our very important English side of the family wasn’t allowed to travel to Australia for our original date in 2021, pushed our wedding back a year. However, it worked out for the better, as the venue was busy building a white barn for wedding receptions during that quiet time.

This took the hassle of hiring a marquee out of the equation for us, and the beautifully rendered white walls, oak floorboards, brass touches, hanging floral installation, and glass bi-fold doors really elevated the look and feel of our reception. We tried to keep all the florals and décor pretty minimal and classic, opting for a colour palette of powder blue, white, and green, and picking florals that reflected who we are as people (hydrangeas that were my late Nan’s favourite and also fill the garden beds in our own backyard at home and orchids that my Mum had in her bouquet).

We held the ceremony up on the grass bank overlooking the beach, where our florist Willow and Bear lined the aisle with white stem roses and set up a half-moon nest of florals and greenery to ensure that the view of the water and sandbank could still be seen as the main backdrop behind where we were standing. The styling team from Love Stoned was able to secure the perfect furniture to compliment this look, using a white cane table and Malawi chairs for the signing table, and brown fold-up bamboo chairs from Heart and Timber for the guests.

The décor for the cocktail hour held at the tree bar was much the same, as was the reception, with a real focus on hydrangeas and orchids to match the overhead hanging installation and to give the impression of blue soft clouds. I wore a Jane Hill dress with a pearl, sequined and chain-linked detail that almost looked like seaweed and shells and decided last-minute to opt for a pearl veil from One Day Bridal. I’m so glad I did – after all, it’s your one chance to wear a veil. I also had a special little saying embroidered into the bottom of the veil ‘As endless as the ocean, as timeless as the tides’ with a calligraphy design from Calligraphy en Vogue. It will now be a keepsake that I hope to pass on to my children. My second dress of the night was a really simple slip dress, with a low back and gold chain detail from Rat and Boa, that allowed me to dance the night away in comfort and style.

The other thing that was important to us was the atmosphere at the wedding. Our celebrant Jessica Mutch put a lot of effort into the ceremony and it went a little longer than a regular one as she detailed how we met, who we were as a couple and our relationship quirks. We also wrote our vowels, which made it extra special. Music, drinks, and food were also a big part of the equation in building the atmosphere.

For the ceremony, Nick Read Entertainment kept the music very acoustic and meaningful, then he ramped up the tunes with his looping skills to give more of a Sunday arvo set feel during the cocktail and canape hours to boost the mood. For the reception, we instructed Simon from the XYDJ team to play a bunch of songs that would get people in the mood to dance, so that by the time the party started, everybody was raring to go. Every song he played during that late hours of the night had to be an absolute banger to keep everyone together and he nailed the brief. Having different food and drinks on offer throughout the day also helped to build the atmosphere, with certain cocktails available after the ceremony to compliment the canapes (shout out to Garnish and Co catering) and different cocktails available later on. Henry Clive gave us a great idea to keep the night kicking by making up espresso martinis and lychee martinis right as the guests hit the dancefloor to inject some energy for the big party.

The Prep…

Skincare

I had already been on a bit of a journey with my skin before I got engaged, as it had broken out badly for the first time in my early twenties after coming off the pill. It took me years to get it back to a clear base. After we got engaged, I decided it was time to ramp up my attention on the texture, as it was still rather congested under the surface, so I started seeing Leah Cindrić at Skin By Leah where she recommended getting regularly peels to break down the congestion. Based on her advice, I started using Cosmedix and Aspect Doctor products in my skin routine, and the introduction of a vitamin B serum in the morning and a retinol serum at night made a massive difference. SPF every day was another must.

Once we had tackled the congestion, Leah switched to skin pen needling, and that’s where I really started to see a difference in the texture of my skin, as well as less redness and scarring from previous acne marks.

Right before the wedding, we did a gentle peel and an oxygen face mask to ensure I was ready to go, and honestly even through all the last-minute stress of planning a wedding my skin held up and there was not one blemish on the day. Because I took care of my skin for a good two years in the lead-up, it made it easier for our makeup artist Alex Perrin to do her thing while keeping the skin looking fresh and light.

I wanted to ensure my nails were at their best for the big day, so in the months leading up, I started getting regular manicures at The Parlour Room in Clovelly. This meant they did my nails before my hens, and we already knew the colours and shapes I liked when it came time to do my wedding nails. A couple of days before the wedding I booked out one of the rooms at The Parlour Room and brought two of my bridesmaids, my Mum, and my mother-in-law to get pampered. It was such fun getting all our nails done together with some bubbly and nibbles and the team at The Parlour Room were phenomenal – especially keeping our minds off some of the stressful flooding happening around our venue at the time with some light-hearted conversation. For our nail colours, we went with two coats of Bubble Bath and one coat of Put It In Neutral with French tips. We then had Put It In Neutral on our toes. Our tans were done by a local business in our hometown, Allure Spray Tanning, meanwhile my good friend and bridal specialist Karla McDonald from KC Collective curled our hair.

Her advice for future Brides-To-Be…

Make sure that you don’t get carried away by how big the day could be and think you need to copy what other people have done for their wedding for it to be the absolute best day. It feels way more special when you’re able to personalise things that link back to who you are as a couple – for instance, having my cousin sing our wedding aisle song and our first dance. Keeping that in mind while we were in the planning stages helped to keep us focussed on where to dedicate most of our attention and also our money. Also, in this day and age, if you don’t want to do a heap of traditional things, don’t. We got rid of things like the garter toss, bouquet throw, and gifting bonbonnieres. We even slept in the same bed the night before rather than splitting up into our bridal parties because that’s what felt right to us as a couple. As someone that’s career-focused, I’m also still undecided if I’ll ever legally change my name, and that’s okay because it is really up to you about what a wedding means and how you want to execute it.

A good wedding planner (shoutout to Wed Event Creators) are worth their weight in gold and thanks to COVID and so much flooding in NSW around the time we got married, we leaned on our planner for support. Who’s going to help you when your venue and the only road into the venue is underwater 24 hours before the wedding day? You won’t regret getting a planner or at least an on-the-day coordinator then. Trust me.

The last bit of advice is to try and spend the day with your partner as much as possible. Naturally, you’ll gravitate to each other, but if you aim to stick together as you say hello to your guests or even have planned stages throughout the day where you come back together after spending some time apart, that will ensure one of you doesn’t get stuck talking to someone in the corner while your partner is off dancing and you’ll get to experience the day together.