There are so many things to schedule and plan for your wedding day and one of the most important is Hair & Makeup. This is where your entire wedding day begins! It’s also a lot of fun! Just you and your girls hanging out, getting all dolled up and getting pumped up for one of the biggest days of your life. But leading up to your wedding day, trying to plan and schedule when (and where!) hair and makeup should be can be a bit overwhelming. Today I’m going to give my Brides a few tips on how to schedule hair and makeup to work with your timeline of the day and make sure everything goes as smoothly as possible 🙂

1. Do your makeup trials and make sure you trust and love your hair and makeup team!

The only way ANYTHING is going to work out is if you love who is doing your hair and makeup! You need to be 100% confident you have chosen the right people for your wedding day and that you love not only what they have done for you but their personalities as well! The last thing you’d want to feel at the end of doing your hair and makeup on your wedding day is that you felt totally disconnected from them and in the end, ending up taking off your makeup or changing your hair the moment they walked out the door. TRUST ME – I’VE SEEN THIS HAPPEN! And this can happen because you may have settled for someone you didn’t love just to have it done and booked OR because you’re not “into wearing makeup” and didn’t think you’d care about how you looked that much on your wedding day. This is HUGE. This is what you will see FOREVER in your photos – how you looked and you need to make sure you pick a team that will make you look AND feel fabulous! Only a great hair and makeup team can do that for you! (I should note – when I say team, I don’t mean a studio that provides both but just the people that you’ve chosen and put together to be your “team”. It’s an endearing term I use for wedding day vendors!) Also, don’t be hesitate to ask your normal hair stylist that you’ve been going to for years if she’d do your hair on your wedding day. That’s the best person you could ask to do your hair! Someone you know and have trusted for a while 🙂

2. Decide WHERE you will do Hair & Makeup

Something that will make or break how your day flows on your timeline when we put it together is how long your hair and makeup will take. But it will also depend on WHERE you will do it. When you decide to have hair and makeup come to you, either at your house or hotel that you will be getting ready at, this saves a LOT of time in your schedule. Then we don’t have to account for you traveling to where you will get ready and chances are… if you ARE traveling, things are going to fall a bit behind. The girls will need to bring all their bags from location to location and it does not take 5 minutes for girls to get their things together and ready. Deciding where you will do hair and makeup is crucial when we write your timeline. If I am aware you’re NOT getting ready at your getting ready location, I can make sure we account for that time to travel! Also, you have to decide if you’d want me to be there capturing those moments or if I can get started at your getting ready location on your details. Since details take me almost an hour to capture, if I get a head start on that then by the time you arrive all dolled up – I’m halfway done and we can capture you touching up your lipstick, toasting with your girls in your robes and than get you dressed! It makes for a smooth day this way than having me travel along with you and than having you wait a whole hour to get dressed while I capture your details. For this option – you would have someone (typically your dad) either at home, ready to let me in so I can go upstairs and get started capturing your details… OR have Dad drop off your details at your venue where you will get dressed and than your maitre’d will let me in and I’ll capture your details there!

3. Schedule enough time for your Bridal Party!

Deciding what time to start hair and makeup will be different depending on a bunch of different factors (how many people will work for both hair and makeup? how many bridesmaids do you have? are both moms getting their hair and makeup done as well?) but the best way to plan this is BACKWARDS. Let’s say you are not going to do a first look and your ceremony is at 1pm. Typically I arrive 2 hours BEFORE that and we want to coordinate it so that when I arrive, You (the bride) are in the hair or makeup chair! That means everyone else is done and ready to go already and that is exactly what we want! It all depends on your on the hairstyles the girls will have and if your hair and makeup team will have assistants so based on the information they give you and than what time I would start on your day, you can determine what time you will need to get hair and makeup started. Make sure you talk with your hair and makeup team about this step, since they will ultimately be the ones determining how long everything will take and how long they’ll need. I’ve worked with some great hair and makeup teams that have done ALL hair and makeup in as little as 3 hours! Be sure to email me for some recommendations 🙂

I hope these tips are somewhat helpful as you narrow down your hair and makeup and figure out your wedding day schedule! Remember – I will create your timeline off all of the information you give me so don’t stress things out too much 🙂 I’m still always here to help! And if you have any more questions about scheduling hair and makeup, feel free to email me at tina@tinaelizabethphotography.com 🙂