How to nail incredible Fiji wedding make up
Ok, so looking FABULOUS in your wedding day makeup is highly important to most brides, but do you know how to do this in a tropical climate? We catch up with Wedding Services Manager & Senior Stylist Lydia from Totoka Hair & Make Up to get her tips about how to look natural glowy and gorgeous in wedding pics, taking into account digital photography and the hot and humid weather….
At the end of September last year, a month that is usually warm and dry in Fiji, Tennille and Conor were instead delivered a rather wet day. They chose to embrace the rain and elected to continue with their ceremony outside at a spot on the lawn they had handpicked as the perfect place to say their vows. The colour of the skies didn’t affect their joy at getting married, and as they promised to love each other forever they also got ready to reveal a special secret to their guests later on in the day.
We catch up with Bride Tennille to get the details on her destination wedding in Fiji:
BRIDE & GROOMS NAME: Tennille & Conor Murray
THE DATE: Sunday 30th September 2018
THE LOCATION: The InterContinental Fiji Golf Resort & Spa
THE NUMBER OF GUESTS: 146
Conor was raised in Sydney, NSW Australia and I was raised in Goroka, Papua New Guinea, we are both half Papua-New Guinean. Conor and I met back many years ago when we were teenagers, when he and his family were visiting family in Goroka, but nothing ever amounted of us being together. We fell out of contact until we were both in our early 20’s when we met again at his cousins 21st birthday party. Conor went on to live in the UK for 2 years and I went on to study Interior Design in Brisbane, Australia. It was only by chance that we got back into contact again after a couple of years when Conor sent me a message via Facebook. It makes me laugh thinking about it now and how easily it could have been to not keep in touch at all. 6 and a 1/2 years later and after the arrival of our beautiful baby boy Cillian (pronounced Kill-Ian), Conor asked me to marry him on a secluded beach on a drizzly summers’ day in southern NSW Australia. It was absolutely magical.
We both had visited Fiji several times and fell in love with the culture and the people as it reminded us both a lot of Papua New Guinea
We chose The InterContinental Fiji Golf Resort & Spa after spending the day playing golf and relaxing on the beautiful Natadola Beach. It made sense for us to have it at a location where all our guests could stay in one location but with enough space to spread out and enjoy their holiday as well as catching up with friends when it suited them. The InterContinental Fiji Golf Resort & Spa was perfect for that.
We did a lot of internet searches and reading up on wedding blogs such as Bula Bride. I also visited a wedding expo in Brisbane when I was in Australia. Pinterest was also my best friend leading up to the wedding. We only used the resort’s wedding planner team, everything else was sourced and organised by me. Living in Papua New Guinea it made it very difficult to tie things together with such poor internet and phone connections on our end due to hush heavy rainfall but with perseverance we succeeded.
Presenting our first Bula Bride wedding feature with the groom in a kilt! How has it taken this long?!
The unique wedding attire caught our eye and then we were equally impressed by the beautiful sunset images captured by Ocean Studio Fiji at Sheraton Resort & Spa, Tokoriki Island.
Many of you may not be familiar with this resort as it is a fairly new addition to Fiji – opening just a few years back and then reopening again after the resort was devastated by Cyclone Winston. Boasting an upmarket resort situated on the island of Tokoriki, it’s not hard to see why Alesha & Stuart choose this location for their wedding. It’s easy to get too, has stunning beaches and turquoise water, plus the 5-star Sheraton Resort make wedding dreams come true. We catch up with bride Alesha on what went in to planning her Fiji destination wedding:
BRIDE & GROOM: Alesha Stone & Stuart Davis
THE DATE: 11th of March 2019
THE LOCATION: Sheraton Resort & Spa Tokoriki Island
THE NUMBER OF GUESTS: 12
We met in 2011 at a Birthday party for Stuart’s Nephew who was turning 3. We had our first overseas holiday together to Fiji in 2015 and fell in love with the people, the culture and the Fijian life. We felt that returning to the place of that first holiday for our Wedding would be the perfect way to celebrate our union. We chose Sheraton Tokoriki Island because of the proximity to Nadi for guests to travel and the child friendly nature of the resort.
We spent a lot of time selecting where to stay and the logistics of getting everyone there as well as who we wanted for the various aspects. All in all it took about 4 months to organise however the help of our wedding planner Lavenia of Paradise Bride Fiji and the Sheraton staff made the process very simple.
Georgia was already a seasoned visitor to Fiji – so when it came time to marrying the love of her life it it was an easy decision to choose her favourite holiday destination for her wedding day. After a trip to Fiji a few months before they married, the location was in place, the suppliers booked and all that was left to do was to get ready for an amazing wedding day. We catch up with Georgia on all the details of her beautiful Fiji wedding:
BRIDE & GROOM: Georgia Magnus & Thomas Lander
THE DATE: 03/11/18
THE LOCATION: Sheraton Resort, Denarau Island
THE NUMBER OF GUESTS: 60
We choose Fiji to get married because my family have been going to Fiji for 10+ years and it was our the place of our first holiday away together.
As we have travelled to Fiji for many years and stayed at the Sheraton every time it was an easy decision for us. Fiji has a special place in both our hearts. We used Paradise Bride from the Sheraton to help organise and plan our wedding, they were very easy to communicate with over the planning period, very responsive to emails.
Saskia & Ardie’s wedding caught our eye when Lydia from Totoka Hair & Make Up messaged me to say she had just done a stunning bride and thought the wedding was going to be equally as gorgeous. “I think the groom plays rugby” she said, and sent me a couple of sneak peak photos that had gone online. She wasn’t wrong about all her comments – the bride WAS gorgeous, the wedding WAS stunning, and the groom is well known All Black Ardie Savea. We couldn’t wait to take a look at this beautiful wedding!!
We catch up with bride Saskia on what went in to planning her wedding day in Fiji:
BRIDES & GROOM: Saskia & Ardie Savea
THE DATE: 2/12/18
THE LOCATION: Sheraton Resort Fiji
THE NUMBER OF GUESTS: 65
PHOTOGRAPHY BY: Hollow & Co
“We met at school through friends, and have been together ever since”
We choose Fiji as a location because we LOVE Fiji. We have been many times and always enjoy the atmosphere and people.
Researching and organising our wedding involved finding a resort, and then communicating with our awesome wedding planner, Miriama from Paradise Bride. She was incredible and did everything on the Fiji side of things, while we just decided on what bridal party will wear etc. She was amazing. Everything put together just looked gorgeous.
Elopements in Fiji are hugely popular with our beautiful islands hosting hundreds of these a year. In fact, so popular is this style of wedding that our ‘Fiji Elopements’ article took out the most read article of last year with thousands of readers checking out our advice on eloping in Fiji.
We head down to the Marriott Resort, Momi Bay where photographers Ocean Studio captured this gorgeous little elopement just before Christmas 2018; and we share a few tips with you on planning a Fiji elopement of your own.
We kick off the 2019 year with this beautiful wedding feature in the northern part of Fiji – Savusavu. Lillian and Arthur said ‘I do’ in a beautiful and intimate ceremony that clearly demonstrates their love for each other. Happiness is written across their faces the whole day long!
BRIDES NAME & GROOMS NAME: Lillian & Arthur Chaudhry
THE DATE: December 18 2018
THE LOCATION: Namale Resort and Spa, Savusavu, Fiji
THE NUMBER OF GUESTS: 5
Hair & Make Up is undoubtedly one of the most important things brides want to get right on their wedding day. Most brides have a vision of what they are going to look like and spend time in pre-wedding preparation to look as good as they can for their special day.
With a good portion of brides getting married in Fiji coming from overseas, the climate can be very different to what you are used to back home. Particularly in the summer months (as early as November and as late as April), Fiji can be extremely humid and often wet. Whatever the month, it pays to think through your wedding day hairstyle carefully for the best result.
We catch up with one of Fiji’s leading Hair & Make Up Artists, Lydia Whippy from Totoka Hair & Make Up to get her top tips on great hair for your Fiji wedding day:
There’s no doubt about it – Musket Cove is a simply stunning wedding location. With all the benefits of an island wedding (think relaxed, blue ocean, white sand) it also has the convenience of being less than an hour away from the mainland and is exceptionally scenic. Here, we catch up with Fiji Bride Elle on how she went about planning her Musket Cove wedding.
We met in 2010 on site at work, I was the ‘bar chick’ and he was a HD fitter. I ended up getting an apprenticeship and we ended up being on the same team. It all started over a romantic 6 pack of coronas (lol)!
We had taken many trips over to Fiji to scope out the sites and make sure that we were making the right decision. I am so glad we did, because some of the sites didn’t look like the web pictures at all. The resort we absolutely fell in love with was Musket Cove Island Resort. We felt we just didn’t get the same service and authentic experience on the mainland and the staff at Musket Cove were beyond amazing and incredibly flexible.
Gloria and her team made it an absolute fairy-tale wedding!!! Wedding packages at Musket Cove are so stress free everything is done already and you can build on it or just leave it as the standard wedding package.
To help with my planning, I found Dee at I Do Fiji Weddings and she went above and beyond. There was a particular incident that she bent backwards to help get cleared up. There were so many times it could have gone sideways, but it didn’t, because Dee was there with back ups and back up of back ups waiting in the wings if anything were to further go wrong. The many resorts we visited were organized through Dee and that made it easy for us. She was a legend!