What I Wore – Birthday Celebrations

So I’ve turned 40.

There, I’ve said it!

And since turning 40, I have been one very lucky girl!  I’ve had a surprised weekend trip to Venice with my husband; I’ve been to Champneys in St Albans, their Day Spa for pampering in preparation for this trip.  And then last night I got to have dinner with ten gorgeous girlfriends – how fabulous is that?!

With so many celebrations, I needed to do quite a bit of prep to make sure I didn’t have to worry about what to wear.

It all starts with the basics: good skincare, pedicures, manicures and of course the boring old waxing!!  

As I knew I would be wearing several different dresses and outfits over a number of days, I had to think about what would work best to compliment everything.  With gold peep-toe shoes for two of my dresses in orange/red I opted for Victoria Beckham’s new nail colour Judo Red by Nails Inc for my pedicure.  

And then for my manicure I knew this would feature a lot in the photos so I wanted a dark prominent colour, so I chose a dark plum colour as this is fairly neutral and would work with black, red and camel – the main colours I would be wearing – hopefully you agree in the photos below.

I didn’t know I was going to Venice so high-heels were a big mistake!  Never mind, sometimes you have to go with the flow.  The first night I only had to walk around the corner in my platform golds to our restaurant,  the next night though as we had to walk a good 20 mins I opted to wear black boots – although it felt strange it didn’t turn out to be too bad.

My red dress above is from Wallis (last season) and the black dress on the right is from Whistles (Autumn 2013).  My gold clutch which I use all the time, is from Linea, House of Fraser (from ages ago) – I love it as it has that vintage feel to it.  All my evening outfits were kept warm with my black faux fur coat.

Daytime saw me in jumpers, jeans and boots with my camel coat – although it was bright and sunny, it was very cold!  But my Ted Baker coat worked perfectly – and I teamed it up with my Chanel sunnies and my Missoni gold scarf which I bought in the sale at Bicester Village (Autumn 2014).

And then to last night, we had dinner in Zaza’s in Berkhamsted and I opted to wear colour – I love this bright orange dress, again from Wallis (last season).  I teamed it up with gold accessories with both new and old jewellery.  You’ll see my plum JustGel nails from Champneys had lasted 8 days and this was going to be their final outing!

It can be challenging to have numerous outfits over a short amount of days; as you don’t want to look the same in every photo but with a good range of versatile accessories, this lets you mix and match with different outfits which really helps.

I didn’t purchase any new dresses for my nights out – sometimes the ones we have hanging in our wardrobes are just perfect!