Our New Shiny Sponsor Niki Bridal Hair and Make Up in Marbella

 

We are delighted to give a warm welcome to our new shiny sponsor, International Make Up Artist, Niki Lawrence.

 

Niki currently divides her time between the UK and here in the South of Spain specialising in make up, hair and nails for bridal, editorial, fashion, catwalk, commercial and advertising.

 

 

 

Niki trained at the prestigious London College of Fashion graduating with a BA (hons) degree in hair and make up for the performing arts in 2002.

 

Since graduating, Niki has worked directly with some of the biggest names in the beauty industry including MAC as a pro artist and resident trainer, Laura Mercier and Daniel Sandler.

Niki has also assisted highly respected fashion make up artists including Val Garland and Sharon Dowsett.

 

With over 10 years full time experience working as a make up artist, Niki has worked backstage on a host of shows at London and Milan fashion week, regularly works on photographic shoots in the UK and across the globe and is also a regular hair and make up artist for top UK publications including Glamour, Zest and Hello!

 

 

Niki offers a bespoke service to suit your individual style including make up lessons, make up master classes, bridal make up, special occasion make up, hair styling, manicures and pedicures. 

Working with top make up brands including MAC, Chanel, Benefit, Laura Mercier, Georgio Armani, Daniel Sandler, Dermalogica, Paul Mitchell and Aveda you can be assured you are going to look fabulous!

Niki's style and approach to individual clients is always professional, calm, personal and ultimately creative and artistic.

 

I have witnessed this first hand as Niki was one of our clients this year and I was very impressed with her whole wedding party´s make up, it was beautifully done and lasted through the heat and tears of joy :)

 

Niki is now on our recommended suppliers list and is currently taking bookings for 2013 and is offering an exclusive complimentary manicure with all trials booked before June 2013.

 

 

Whilst we have included some lovely photos of Niki´s gorgeous brides, if you wish to view Niki´s complete bridal portfolio head over to Niki´s Marbella Make Up Website

 

Niki also has a Fashion and Beauty Website and if you would like to contact Niki to make an enquiry or ask any questions please email Niki at nikimakeup@aol.com

A Wonderful Testimonial received today!

 

Hi there Laura xx

 

Hope you're well and everything is getting better after the fires.

 

It was so devastating to see such a beauty in flames and to know so many homes were destroyed. I hear that the fires have halted now and just hope that people will get help and can rebuild their lives. Its just tragic.

 

I have been meaning to mail since arrived home on Saturday, my mail seemed to fail in Nerja every time I tried to send a message.

 

We are still very much floating from the wedding. It was absolutely PERFECT!!!

 

Everything was just stunning and more beautiful than I could have imagined.

 

 

Thank you for all your work and for making my vision come alive. You see things exactly as I do and was so happy with how everything turned out. I truly felt like a princess in a twinkling, sparkling palace.

 

 

It could not have been better so thank you so much.

 

The comments from our guests on all the details was astounding- everyone said it felt magical- even most of the men commented on the backs of chairs!

 

 

 

Felt so proud to make our guests feel special.

 

The flowers were stunning too, so were the candles, confetti petals, sweetie bags and sweet bar.

 

 

The children were in heaven- so was Dannys mum!! Really can't tell you how happy we were- starting to get some of Anna's photo's through and noticing even more details, so excited to see more!!

 

It really was everything we wanted and more. As the sun went down behind the top table the candles started to twinkle, the fairy lights and glassware sparkled, the colours changed and the ambience was even more amazing.

 

 

From the conservatory to outside with the papel picados dancing in the wind, lit by lanterns and fairy lights, it was all beautiful. 

 

 

This magical feeling is just what I wanted our friends and family to notice- and they did!! We stayed outside until the early hours, with a few singing and playing guitar- I'll never forget it all.

 

 

Take care, keep creating!!! Will be in touch soon.
Love Sarah xx

 

Images courtesy of Anna Gazda

A Vintage Spanish Flamenco Wedding

 

Sarah contacted me last year and booked me to help her create and style her dream wedding here in Spain.  All I can say about Sarah is I met a design soulmate.

 

Throughout the winter months we were designing and working on all the wedding details and I was hugely excited to see Sarah´s designs.

 

As Sarah is a fashion buyer, we were sharing design trends, up and coming colours, fab wesbites and inspirations. 

 

I loved receiving Sarah´s emails telling me about the English Vintage fayres she was visiting, what she was buying and her trips abroad to gain up to date fashion designs from around the world.

 

The details that Sarah created for her wedding were amazing from the gorgeous vintage flamenco style stationery to the handmade jewellery, lace and velvets on the dresses, it was a wedding heaven for me.

 

What I also loved about Sarah, is she trusted me and when I was busy she did not panic that she had not heard from me, she understood I would be back as soon as I had time to sit down and digest her emails properly.

 

And so the big day finally was imminent and I was so excited!

 

I had our new Petalos de Rosas Confetti Bags designed and printed, Dulces Bags for the candy bar, streams of white wedding papel picados to hang up, our silver vintage style glassware and spanish lace chair sashes with brooches all ready to dress and style Sarah and Danny´s magical day at the enchanting Cortijo Bravo Hotel in Velez Malaga.

 

The night before one of my most looked forward to weddings I was evacuated at 3am in the morning from my home, due to the awful fires along the coast last week.

 

All I could think was to grab all the details we had created for Sarah´s wedding along with the other weddings I had last weekend. 

 

Everything was thrown into my van as I shot off down the hill to escape the fires raging across the mountains here.

 

Despite all this drama for me and surviving on zero hours sleep we managed to complete this gorgeously styled Vintage Flamenco wedding for Sarah and Danny and I hope you love this as much as we did. 

 

My thanks for this wedding go to Anoulka, who is normally quiet and lets me do the talking, which I am very good at!

 

But after realising the night I had suffered and of course listening to my rather garbled account of the evacuation, Anoulka decided to chat to me on route to the hotel to keep me going whilst driving there and listened to what was needed to be done as she knew I had a tired mind and was not thinking clearly, so I was running through all the details that needed to be done on route to the venue.

 

Anoulka, as always, was a superstar, as she took over the styling and dressing of this wedding with instructions from me and made decisions when she realised I was vertical but not much else!

 

We do hope you enjoy this wedding and the gorgeous photos, our thanks to Anna Gazda for sharing these beautiful sneak peek photos with us :)  To Fi for creating this beautiful cake with gold leaf. To the venue for having a Russell Brand lookalike :)

 

We will show more of Sarah´s vintage flamenco inspired wedding with you over the winter months, but wanted to share a few piccies to show you what we have been up to, despite the disaster that unfolded last week here in Spain!



Costa Del Sol Fires

 

 

Normally I post about pretty things and all our lovely weddings here in Spain :)

 

However, having received so many concerned messages over the past few days from family, friends and clients, I thought it would be a good idea to update and try to be informative as to the news and events that are actually happening here on the Costa Del Sol, having been personally affected by the horrific fires last Thursday.

 

Last Thursday evening we were out for dinner on the beach when my middle daughter called me from San Pedro to say she could see fires near our house, as we drove back up our hill, I could see fires over by Elviria but at this time was not concerned, we do have the odd fire here often and thought nothing more of it.

 

When I got home, I was on facebook, what an amazing communication tool this is, and I could sense the rising concern that these fires were out of control and travelling fast across the mountains, updates were across Facebook, dare I say like wildfire.

 

It was one of those do I stay up or go to bed dilemmas, I chose to stay up as I look out over Marbella and could not see the raging fires behind our village, but with all the updates on facebook I was not at all relaxed.

 

At 2am in the morning I could smell the burning, at 2.30am I decided to try to get some sleep as I think in my heart of hearts I knew we were in for an eventful night.  By this time I had shut all the windows due to the smoke in the air and very optimistically decided to go to bed.  Literally 20 minutes later my friend, Sarah who lives behind me, called me to say they were being evacuated and the police were on the way down to our village.  It was one of those surreal moments and from then on it is a blur and a dreamlike memory, I woke all my family and called my sister who was next door with my parents to tell them we needed to leave our houses.

 

Having dashed around our village making sure everyone was up, all my brides will be glad to hear all I could think was my weddings and I loaded up everything I had in my house to do with my forthcoming weddings, I then grabbed my hairbrush, make up, passport, laptop and the dog and we shot off down our hill.  The police were at this time in our village asking everyone to leave urgently both in Spanish and English and the smoke was horrendous.

 

Our night was spent at the Los Monteros hotel, this is another story, but as I work with them I will not say anything on this post apart from it was an uncomfortable night with no hospitality towards the many people that had been forced to flee their homes in the middle of the night.  Some of them had fled burning homes and had babies.

 

However we have since heard that La Canada opened it´s doors at 6am as there were thousands of evacuees coming down from Ojen and Coin to the coast, the Don Carlos hotel opened it´s doors to take in all the local people in Elviria, the list of hospitality goes on, it is a shame we did not experience it!

 

The images above are of where I live and our road up to our village, luckily the fire did not travel into the villages up here, albeit close, but many people were far less fortunate.

 

There have been some amazing groups set up to help and a Fire Aid Concert being organised on the 10th September here in Puente Romano.  They are being run tirelessly by Nick Holland Morgan and Marina Nitzak.

 

http://www.facebook.com/SOSAndalucia#!/SOSAndalucia

 

http://www.facebook.com/SOSAndalucia#!/groups/312338028864557/

 

http://www.facebook.com/SOSAndalucia#!/events/201331473330842/

 

I returned cautiously home at 9am in the morning to a house completely covered in ash but thankfully OK and then had to compose myself and shoot off to create a beautiful wedding in Velez Malaga which was followed by a weekend of 4 more weddings, so I was pretty shattered and by then functioning on little sleep to be honest.

 

As I was so busy I had not had time to really take in what had actually happened and it is only now I am absorbing and witnessing the enormity of the disaster that occurred, I have since driven around where I live and it looks like something out of a disaster movie in some areas but with these amazing support and help groups that have been set up plus the Fire Concert I am sure the Costa Del Sol will be back on it´s feet again soon.