Essie 2011 Bridal Collection Swatches

Normally Bridal collections are a mess of sheer, watery pinks and lifeless off-whites... Essie managed to actually throw some fun color into their Bridal collection this year! And nothing too sheer. This is the best Bridal collection I've seen. That said, it's still a little on the traditional side...


Better Together. The obligatory pale pink. It's sheer, but it's not too sheer, which is a pleasant surprise. You can wear it at one or two coats for a sheer wash of color, or at four coats for an opaque milky pink look like I'm wearing here. This is actually a pretty flattering color. Normally I feel like super pale whites and pinks suck the life out of your hands, but this looks surprisingly fresh and cute.




Borrowed And Blue. I'm seeing more and more of this blue bridal nail polish trend and I think I'm liking it. This one is a pastel sky blue, more of a baby blue really, but with a very dense milky white base. This color gives me major lobster hands, but I'd still wear it. Sky blue polishes always remind me of the 90s- the decade of excellent nail polish. Pretty sure I still have my original bottle of Hard Candy Sky somewhere around here...


First Dance. Whoa baby. Flaming bright red. In a bridal collection? Naughty, naughty. Is the name supposed to be some sort of innuendo? I like it. This is an excellent red, too. I've really been fond of these retro pinup girl cherry red cremes lately.


Made To Honor. And here we have the very traditional bridal nude. It's also a sheer, but here at four coats, it's mostly opaque, and even looks a bit jelly-like to me. This has a beige base to it, unlike Better Together which is pure pink. This is really fleshy looking.

The formula on these was decent. It varied between colors- Better Together and Made To Honor were a little runny and unwieldy, First Dance was absolute perfection, practically applied itself, and Borrowed and Blue was streaky on the first coat but nice and perfectly opaque and even at three. The brushes were good, very easy to control and get a nice even curve with them. Dry time was great.

Overall, it's still a bridal collection, but it's a step in a new direction. Sheer pinks and whites are traditional and appropriate for bridal collections, but more and more brides are going with fun colors of their own choosing instead of the seemingly required bleh cliche french manicure. This small collection has its expected sheer pinks, but it also has a bridal blue- you know, for 'something blue', and an audacious bright red. Love that.


(This was sent to me for review.)