It’s May. And right around this time, proms start blossoming all around. Like little daisies. Pop, pop, pop.

As girls, we can’t help but compare our appearance with that Other Girl when we’re feeling self conscious or not pretty. But no guy wants a pouty poopy date who just sits around and disses her own dress all night. Especially when he thinks you look great, so he’s just flat out confused. None of these feelings will make for a fun night. So the best way to keep this from happening is feeling good before you leave the house, feeling gorgeous, and feeling confident. So! Here I am to give you “getting ready for prom tips”. And also, “getting ready to get ready tips”. It’s less complicated than it sounds. I’ll go in chronological order.

If you’re like me, and you’re so excited that you can’t wait for prom day to come around, and you want to get ready right now, the best way to do that is practice days. Do your hair like you would the day of prom and see how you like it or what you would do differently. Same with your makeup. Whatever. Especially practice on the things your bad at. For me it’s a little more difficult since I’m bad at everything. But nails for sure. Nails have to be my worst.

You can probably see why from the picture. . . I just don’t got it. It seems like you either got it, or you don’t. I don’t. It gets tacky while I’m painting and makes these weird crevices and blobs, not to mention the bubbles. OooOOoooh, those darn bubbles. Ugh. Those I don’t even want to talk about.

I took that picture to send to a guy friend of mine who had the greatest confidence in me that my nails couldn’t possibly be as bad as I was describing them to be. He promptly sent a reply to the pic, “wow you are bad.” He said he doesn’t even do as badly as me. How comforting. Too bad he lives in Arkansas I was going to hire him to do my nails for me.

This had to be the first time I’ve really embraced the art of nail polish, though. Usually they’re clean. I went red for a little while, but it kept chipping off or clashed with some of my outfits. But with this copper, I think I’ve been made a nail polish believer, especially when it comes to using nail color to compliment your outfits.

See, my dress is navy blue, but I was at a swap meet one weekend and felt an invisible calling to a certain tent. And that’s where I fell in love.

Me learning the hard way why not to sling my purse over my shoulder.

This purse is GORGEOUS. I absolutely love it. I’ll just find myself staring at it. It was $4 bucks. The. Best. Buy. Ever. I also fell in love with swap meets after that.

Because I had such a big crush on this purse (which at first, does not go with the color scheme of my dress) I was determined to use it for prom. That’s when the thought of copper nail polish came in, in order to incorporate the purse into my outfit. It was a beautiful moment. I might get emotional, excuse me.

The thing I’m secondly horrible at is hair. The best way to figure out how to do your hair for prom is put on your dress and look in the mirror, then mess with your hair to see what looks best.

This is what my dress looks like, btw, Kyle got it for me for my birthday, something else I fell in love with at first sight

Hair down

Hair up

I decided on a half-up half-down hairdo. And that I’d make my hair wavy (since curls seem to be popular during these kind of events), then for volume I’d tease and pull the top layer back, and sleek my bangs to the side. So one Wednesday night, I went to church and did my hair exactly like how I would do it for prom.

This was the rough draft.

The morning of prom, I practiced my makeup. I knew I’d be taking a shower anyway, so I could wash it off then.

This is me without makeup. I don’t quite understand the significance of this. But there it is.

When it comes to makeup, I was watching a youtube video from that same girl who taught us the Audrey Hepburn makeup and she said if you’re in a hurry or whatever, always start with the part of your face that is most important to you. That way, no matter what happens, you know you got that taken care of and can feel good about yourself, even if you don’t have time to finish the rest.

My focus is always on the eyes. My skin is usually clear and I tend to neglect my mouth, so my eyes are my main priority. Of course it’s different on everyone. I love the doe-eyed look, so that’s what I’m always trying to achieve.

I tried to make a video of myself to show you. . . When it comes to movies, in short, I’ll just keep practicing, haha. It didn’t really work. Though my hair video attempt was pretty funny. Anyway, I used liquid eye liner and tried that on the top lid, then coppery eye shadow, curled my lashes and used mascara, and I lined the inner corners of my eye with white. I didn’t really like the liquid eye liner though. It’s too thick and heavy for me and makes my eyes look small.  But the thing I do like about it is even when you wipe it off, you really don’t completely, because it kind of seeps between your lashes. That thin residue does look good, so if you’re ever experimenting, maybe that can work for you.

My absolute favorite way to do eye liner right now is with eye shadow, though. You just get a small brush with stiff soft bristles and use any eye shadow you want to line your eyes. I ended up lining my eyes with copper, which looked super cool, if you asked me, then I used a lighter brown on the lids. Then I opened my eyes and followed along the crease with a dark burgundy to make my eyes look deeper. Kyle’s mom even complimented me (I usually don’t wear makeup) so that made it all worth it.

Now this is what I meant by wavy. The way you do it is by pointing a hair curler down (don’t ask me why, there probably isn’t a reason and I just look stupid) and wrap your hair around it. You don’t use the clamp thing at all so forget it’s there. Then you hold your hair in place until you’re scared you’re going to burn it (just kidding) and release. Ta-da! It should look like above. I do my hair in layers all the way up my head, clipping up most of the top, curling the bottom, clipping up less of the top, curling the bottom. And so forth, if that makes sense.

Actually, here’s my attempt at a video. Even though it didn’t come out like I wanted it to. I’m kinda proud of it. Haha.

Somehow I began by unplugging the curler, which I didn’t notice until I started getting annoyed that my hair wasn’t waving. Then, you can see the mental wheel turning in my head as I’m doing the left side and keep tapping the curler to feel for heat until I finally check it. Somehow I turned it off, which is what I’m mouthing. So yeah. I kind of think it’s funny. X-)

Everything worked out in the end, and I actually finished getting ready with about twenty minutes to spare. I felt very pretty in my dress. With my purse and hair and makeup. I also had time to incorporate little braids along the poofed and pulled back teased part of my hair and a few along the bottom half. I thought it looked pretty cool.

Kyle wore a tux with a blue tie (who ever said you couldn’t wear black and blue? It’s very wrong) and we each had white boutonniere/corsage. Picture perfect.

He kept tickling my side, though I was maybe being a little sassy. .