Should I Hire a Wedding Makeup Artist?

Brides want to look their best on their wedding day, and having the "right" makeup look is certainly part of the package. In the quest for the perfect look, some brides have opted to hire a wedding makeup artist for their big day. However, hiring your own personal wedding makeup artist can add hundreds of dollars to your wedding budget. So, is hiring a wedding makeup artist worth the price? And what is the wedding makeup artist responsible for anyways?

Well, the wedding makeup artist is responsible for doing the makeup for the bride, bridesmaids, and the mothers of the bride and groom. The wedding makeup artist will typically come to the venue where the bride and bridesmaids are getting ready and will apply the makeup after everyone is dressed. The bride can specify the colors that she would like to see worn, or she can ask the wedding makeup artist for her advice in applying the makeup for the bridal party. Typically, the wedding makeup artist will charge separately for each person for whom they apply makeup to, at a price of $25 to $100 per person, making the cost for a wedding makeup artist quite steep when you have a large wedding party.

This gets back to whether the cost of a wedding makeup artist is worth the price. From my personal experience, it is not. I have been in weddings where a wedding makeup artist is hired and typically they will do your makeup much like you would do it yourself. In one wedding in which I was a bridesmaid, the wedding makeup artist told me that she would give me a "natural" look. She spent probably three minutes on my makeup (which honestly is about two minutes more than I would spend myself) and the bride spent $40 for a look that I would have given myself for free.

If you are concerned about how your wedding makeup will look but don't want to spend the big bucks on a wedding makeup artist, you can consult a cosmetics specialist (i.e. visit your Clinique counter at the mall). You will want to make sure that you make your goals clear to the Clinique helper - I tried this before my wedding and found that the Clinique specialist used way too much makeup in the wrong colors, which I purchased anyways. Luckily, my bridesmaids steered me in the right direction so I didn't look like a clown on my big day.