How To Look Good in Engagement Photos

As I already announced…Yours Truly is engaged! I'm the happiest, luckiest girl in the world who is gonna marry the man of her dreams. If you're recently engaged, this post will (hopefully) help you surmount the difficulty of taking good-quality, flattering engagement photos. This is a huge milestone in your life and, like Yours Truly, I'm sure you want good pictures. Here are some tips to help you survive a 500+ picture photo shoot!

Tip #1: Be in love. 'Nuff said, me thinks. ;) 

Tip #2: Wear pastel toned clothing, or alternatively neutrals and dark colors. Basically wear whatever's flattering, except super bold or crazy prints/colors. You want these pictures to last your a lifetime, so don't wear something that's gonna look painfully dated twenty-five years down the road. Yours Truly and my fiancé chose pastel blue and blush, because they are staple colors that complement our complexions. Remember: wear what suits your personality. 

Tip #3: Don't look directly into the camera. This will make you look forced/unnatural/uncomfortable. Instead, look at each other or angle your gaze away from the camera. See all the above pictures as examples. 

Tip #4: Pick a photographer you feel relaxed around. A photographer that grates on your nerves or makes you feel uneasy will only translate into awkward photos. My fiancé's brother took ours; he's talented and fun to be around. 

Tip #5: This is more of a personal preference, but all my favorite engagement shoots are the ones shot outdoors, either in a rustic barn setting or on a trail (like Yours Truly's.) It gives a classy, natural look to the photos hard to recreate indoors. 

Tip #6: Remember to have fun! This is the time to glow before the camera. Let your love shine. 

Yours Truly would love to hear about your dream engagement photo shoot in the comments! Feel free to share your oh-so-sweet proposal story as well. I'm a sucker for romance. Thanks for reading and have a merry, merry Christmas! 

On a quick side note, the nail polish I wore for this photo shoot was L'Oreal's Smell the Roses (my post about this polish here.) 

Yours Truly,

Monica

CoverGirl's Outlast Nail Polish: Star Wars Edition

 I promised you all I would write about CoverGirl's nail polish but then life stepped in the way: Mostly in the form of a proposing boyfriend and a pearl ring! Yes, Yours Truly is engaged! I'll be writing about that later, so stayed tuned. But today we talk about one of the most fun and self-expressive parts of self-care and beauty: nail polish. At least, nail polish should be fun but sometimes it's the devil frustrating. I, for one, could not get nail lacquer to stay immaculate to save my life, until I met CoverGirl's Outlast. You know if a nail polish can outlast Yours Truly it must be good. Or maybe it just uses The Force. Anyway, the color on the left is part of CoverGirl's Star Wars collection. Major nerd alert. 

These two are absolutely gorgeous. The deep red on the left is from Star Wars collection and is aptly entitled Nemesis. I literally bought it for the name. It's a deep, rich, purple-crimson which almost looks black in a certain light. Definitely a great stocking stuffer for the femme fatale in your life. 

On the right is a rose-gold-bronze, also from CoverGirl Outlast (not from Star Wars though.) It's a metallic, unlike the glossy but solid-toned Nemesis. The rose gold needs more coats than the Nemesis (3 versus 2) but nonetheless is plenty pigmented. It's not a wimpy metallic which needs 5 coats just to be visible on your nail--you know what I'm talking about. 

Yours Truly's verdict on CoverGirl's Outlast nail polish collection is 8 out of 10. The Nemesis lasted over a week with minor chipping which was easily enough touched up. The rose gold lasted less long, as metallics tend to do, but still survived a whopping 4 days. The colors are strong and tasteful. I recommend this product highly. The best part? The bottles are $5 or less at Walmart. Check it out here. The Star Wars nail polishes are sold out online at Walmart but maybe you can snag some remaining ones in-store. (EDIT: CoverGirl still has some in stock.) 

Any of you have an affordable (as in, found-in-walmart-affordable) beauty product you'd like me to review? Let me know in the comments!

Merry Christmas,

Yours Truly,

Monica :)