Meg Cabot - Queen Of Babble - In The Big City

However, too many brides who opt for professional makeup on the big day end up looking as unlike their normal selves as relatives lying in a casket whose faces have been done over by a mortician. Make sure you and your cosmetic specialist are on the same page about color, amount, and shade… and make sure he or she uses a light hand. Yes, you want to look good for your photos—but you also want to look natural and pretty up close to your guests as well. A talented professional makeup artist can easily achieve both.

Some makeup tips to remember:

— Have your first meeting with your makeup professional four weeks before your event. That will give the two of you plenty of time to come up with a look with which you are both happy.

— Your makeup should not be so heavy that your neck and face are two visibly different shades. BLEND!

— You will be shiny on your wedding day from nerves and possibly the heat. Make sure you and your bridesmaids have plenty of blotting tissues on hand, as well as powder.

— Curling your eyelashes with a heated curler can create lasting oomph for the eyes.

— Be sure to use waterproof mascara—you will be crying. Or at least sweating.

— Under-eye concealer will hide any dark circles from a restless night’s sleep.

— And lastly, opt for lipstick that stays on permanently—you will be using your mouth to kiss, eat, and drink throughout the day/evening, and you don’t want to have to stop for constant reapplications of your favorite shade.

LIZZIE NICHOLS DESIGNS™

It didn’t take long for the press to figure out where Jill Higgins was meeting her new mystery pal—though I managed to keep my own picture out of the tabloids by not walking her to her car anymore.

In no time word was out all over town that Jill Higgins, the bride of the wedding of the century, was using Monsieur Henri as her personal certified wedding-gown specialist. The next thing anybody knew, we were beating off the hordes of brides descending on the little shop demanding that we work on their gowns, as well. Jean-Paul and Jean-Pierre had to be employed as doormen/bouncers to keep the paparazzi out, and the brides coming in.

Any residual resentment the Henris might have felt toward me for not letting on that I knew French fell by the wayside when they realized they were booking so many appointments with desperate brides, they had to buy a two-year calendar.

Not that either Henri had laid so much as a finger on Jill’s dress since she’d brought it in. Monsieur Henri had tried after I told him my plan, telling me that it could never be done and that I was going to get sued by John MacDowell’s mother.

His wife, however, calmly lifted the gown from his fingers and handed it back to me, with a gentle, “Jean. Let her get to work.”

Which I appreciated. Especially considering the “stupid” remark. She had evidently changed her mind, and now the dress—Jill’s dress—hung on a special hook in the back of the workroom, where every day I flung back the sheet that covered it, took in what I’d done the day before, and what I needed to get done in the next few hours, freaked out, then got to work.

They say it’s always darkest until right before the dawn. I’ve worked on enough projects to know how true this saying really is. A week before Christmas—I’d promised to have Jill’s dress done by the day before Christmas Eve, so there’d be time for any last-minute alterations before the ceremony on New Year’s Eve—I was sure the dress would never get done on time… or worse, that it would get done but look awful. It’s no joke making a size twelve out of a size six. Monsieur Henri had been right to say such an undertaking was impossible.

Except it wasn’t. Impossible, I mean. It was just really, really hard. It required hours of backbreaking seam snipping, even more of sewing, and the consumption of many, many, many diet Cokes. I was in the shop from two-thirty in the afternoon—as soon as I could make it there after my shift at Pendergast, Loughlin, and Flynn, still my only paying gig—until midnight, sometimes even one in the morning, at which point I would stagger home, fall into bed, and wake at six-thirty the next day to shower and dress and go back to the law firm. I rarely if ever saw my boyfriend, let alone anyone else. But that was all right, because Luke was just as busy studying for his finals. If he hoped to finish his postbac program in a year, he had to cram as many classes as he could into each semester, which meant he had four finals to worry about—basically the academic equivalent of making a size-six dress into a size twelve.

But even though I haven’t seen much of my boyfriend in the past few weeks, I’ve seen plenty of the box he placed under the tiny Christmas tree he bought on the street—complete with a miniature stand—and put in front of the windows, so the twinkling lights he wrapped around it could shine down on Fifth Avenue. I saw it (the box, I mean) the minute I stepped through the door one night after a long, painful battle with the tartan on Jill’s dress. It was kind of hard to miss—again, I’m talking about the box.

Because it’s huge.

Seriously, the box is the size of a miniature pony. Or at least a cocker spaniel. It’s almost bigger than the tree itself. It is definitely NOT a ring box.

But, as Tiffany said, when I mentioned this to her, “Oh, maybe he’s one of those.”

“One of what?” I asked.

“You know, one of those guys who don’t like it when their girlfriend guesses what they’re giving to her, so they put it in like a million different boxes inside of boxes, so she won’t be able to shake it and guess.”

This makes brilliant sense, of course. Luke knows perfectly well I can’t keep a secret (though I’ve been doing pretty well since moving to New York. Really, I think I’m maturing). It’s a short step from not being able to keep a secret to not being able to keep from snooping in one’s Christmas presents. It’s true I already accidentally snagged the silver foil wrapping paper on the box just a little by vacuuming too close to it the other night. But I stopped myself from peeling the foil back.

I know Tiffany’s right, and that Luke is doing the box-within-the-box thing. That’s just so like him.

Which is why I did the same for the sleek leather wallet I got him from Coach. The box I used to disguise the much smaller box the wallet actually comes in is a box Mrs. Erickson gave me that used to contain multiple bottles of dishwashing liquid that she bought two years ago during a trip to Sam’s Club in New Jersey. It’s taken her this long to get through enough bottles to throw out the box.

I just hope Luke doesn’t take a big sniff of his gift. Because if he does he’ll get a snootful of liquid Dawn.

And then, before I know it, it’s the day before Christmas Eve, and I’m as nervous as a kid about to visit the Santa in the mall. Not about Luke’s gift to me—although that has me plenty jittery—or about the fact that the two of us are about to spend over a week apart in totally different parts of the world, but about what Jill’s going to think of her dress. Because—as these things do—it had finally come together a few days before, and now… well, even Madame Henri had looked at it, then at me, and said gravely, “Good. Very good.”

Which, from her, is high praise indeed. But even more meaningful was her husband’s critique, which included several scratchings of the chin… much pacing… two or three pointed questions about tartan ribbon… and finally a nod and a“ Parfait.”

Not the ice cream, but “perfect.”