Happy Monday! Feast your eyes on the third and last installment of KIS (cubed) Event’s gorgeous photoshoot. Enjoy these traditional Indian bridal looks (with a little twist)!

Fashion: Charisma Designer Studio
Hair: Joseph Nunn, Salon Lux
Make-up, Henna: KIS (cubed) Events & Bridal Elements by Nirjary Desai
Venue: Atlanta History Center & Swan House
Photography: Chelsea Patricia Photography

Part two of KIS (cubed) Events bridal shoot is an unconventional bridal look in peach and white. Check out how stunning the headpiece is—a great addition to any Desi’s bride look!

Fashion: Charisma Designer Studio
Hair: Joseph Nunn, Salon Lux
Make-up, Henna: KIS (cubed) Events & Bridal Elements by Nirjary Desai
Venue: Atlanta History Center & Swan House
Photography: Chelsea Patricia Photography

Anyone that knows The Sari-Clad Bride team knows that we’re suckers for beauty products (especially since one of us is a former beauty editor!) so when we learned about Birchbox a couple of months ago, we felt as if we had stumbled into heaven. Birchbox is a monthly subscription service in which for $10 every month, you get anywhere from 4-6 samples of amazing and usually pricey beauty products. Most of the time, the sample sizes are pretty substantial so you can try out a product for a couple of days or weeks and then decide if you like it. It’s a way better process than wasting money on products that don’t really work.

Birchbox decided to take it a step further by putting together a bridal package chock-full of goodies tailored for a bride to use on her Big Day.

The Limited Edition: Here Comes the Bride includes:

• Automatic Apparel Roll-up Ballet Flats in Gold
• Ban.do Mini Pom Pom Set
• Benefit Finding Mr. Bright
• Dr. Hauschka Radiant You
• Eboost Natural Orange Tablets
• Oribe Dry Texturizing Spray
• Tiny Prints Thank You Cards

While we absolutely love the idea of this package, we think it’s better suited as a bridesmaid gift than for a Desi bride. South Asian bridal makeup is often colorful and intricate and this kit doesn’t really include much to keep that in balance. However, many of the contents of the package could be extremely useful to bridesmaids!

For example, the roll-up flats are perfect when bridesmaids are running around completing tasks or when they’re ready to hit the dance floor after a long day of servicing the bride and groom. Benefit’s Finding Mr. Bright’ contains four illumining products that can brighten up your makeup and keep bridesmaids’ looking fresh. The gals will also appreciate Dr. Hauschka’s ‘Radiant You’ clarifying skincare set, which they could use the night before and keep for after-wedding use. The Oribe texturizing spray is great for fixing updo’s and can be a handy member of the Maid of Honor’s bridal arsenal to use on the bride. The mini pom-pom set is sort of useless as are the tiny prints thank-you cards (a bride will most likely need more than the few included in the kit). The eboost Natural Orange Tablets is self-explanatory and can be useful.

We really adore at least five out of the seven of the products, so we’re definitely sold on this idea. For $55, Birchbox’s ‘Here Comes the Bride’ package makes a great bridesmaid gift or a pretty kit to include in the bride’s beauty arsenal!

We’re so, so excited to show you our bride of the day! Kanchana’s traditional Telugu bridal avatar totally blew us away, especially her floral headpiece. We’re such suckers for old-school beauty and Kanchana definitely made one gorgeous Telugu bride.

Make sure to come back to see this fantastically traditional wedding from Australia!

To get away from this brutally hot summer, we’ve mentally traveled to a winter wonderland full of crisp snow and cool breezes. To echo that sentiment, we decided to show you this breathtaking photoshoot by House of Talent studios and Singhar by Ayesha. For all our brides planning an engagement shoot in the winter, take cue!

Ayesha (Stylist)

“It was in February on a Monday and it wasn’t suppose to snow but it did and we weren’t sure if we were gonna do the shoot. But we went for it and it came out amazing!”
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By Sabrina Ali

Red henna, black henna, Arabic henna, Moroccan henna, the list of all the mehndi terms you’ve ever heard could go on endlessly. Every South Asian bride wants her hands and feet to be hennaed perfectly for her big day, but not knowing some very important fundamentals can not only cause your plans to backfire, it could be dangerous! Know what your henna artist is putting on your skin before you hire—it could make the difference between a bridal debut and a bridal disaster!

photo: IWP Photography

Preparing for Your Bridal Henna
As you start looking around for a good henna artist, make sure she knows her stuff. Henna artists should be able to show you pictures of their own work without a problem so you can get an idea of what styles they’re capable of. Talk to your henna artist before hiring to see if they would be comfortable with new designs, or ask if they would mind sketching the design they’ll be doing on you. Once you’ve booked an artist, pick a date. Many brides make the mistake of applying their henna the night before the wedding, as tradition dictates. We freak out the day of the wedding because the henna hasn’t darkened as much as we’d hoped. If you want your henna to be the darkest possible, have it put on two days before the wedding—this way, it has 24 hours to darken to maximum capacity.

photo: Sephi Bergerson Photography

What’s In Your Henna?
Henna is created from ‘Lawsonia Inermis’, a flowering shrub native to the subtropical regions of Africa, Southern Asia, and some parts of northern Australia. The word “henna” comes from the Arabic name for this plant. The leaves from the henna plant are dried and ground into a fine powder and are packaged to be sold, or mixed with various natural ingredients and sold in ready-made cones. Be careful when buying ready-made cones, because many companies add cheap chemicals like gasoline into the paste to speed up the staining process, but this can be potentially harmful to your skin! The allergic reactions that people may have from henna most often result from unknown chemicals that were mixed into the paste before it was applied. Your henna artist should always be able to tell you exactly what is in the henna going on your skin. If she can’t, don’t use her henna! Make your own, or find an all-natural brand that lists ingredients on the cone or container.

photo: Serendipity Photography

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One of the best parts of being a Desi bride is all the fun things we get in our bridal trousseau from the groom’s family. Help your hubby-to-be by dropping a few hints about the following makeup palettes and your beauty collection will thank you forever.

Too-Faced ‘The Blushing Bride’ Beauty Collection

This kit has everything you could possibly need on your big day, just in case your makeup artist isn’t there to patch things up. It comes with a eyeshadow pallet containing nine super-wearable shades for all skin tones, a volumizing mascara (it’s one of our favorites!), an adorable shade of lip gloss, and three primers for the eyes, face and lips. Bundle up these must-haves in the adorable makeup bag it comes with and pass it on to your maid of honor, so she can touch you up right before you make your grand entrance down the aisle.

Cargo Catwalk Kit

You might ask Mr. Fiance to act on this one fast, because it’s on sale for an awesome price and definitely going to sell out fast! Cargo’s Catwalk Kit is a must-have for the glamorous bride who is conscious of looking trendy and fashionable in her role as the Mrs. This super-slim volume contains six bombshell eyeshadows, 4 single eyeshadows perfect for creating a dark smoky eye, two sexy bronzers and three blushes.

Hint: Swirl your blush brush in all three of the blushes to create a pretty shade!