When you’re booking hair and makeup for your wedding, there’s a question that tends to crop up often:
How many hair and makeup artists do we actually need?
And actually, there isn’t a magic formula.
Six people having hair and makeup doesn’t automatically mean you need two artists and eight people doesn’t necessarily mean you need four.
The right size team depends on how many people are getting ready, what services everyone is having, what time you need to be ready, how complicated the looks are and – something that is very easily forgotten – what you actually want your wedding morning to feel like.
Because I’ll be perfectly honest with you… Getting everyone finished on time and having a lovely, relaxed morning are not always the same thing. But of course, you absolutely can have both!
At CJC Hair & Makeup, we’ve been getting brides and bridal parties ready for weddings since 2010, from small London ceremonies to large, multi-day celebrations. Here’s how we work out how many artists a wedding actually needs.
Start with how many people are having hair and makeup
The first thing we need to know is exactly who is having what.
That might sound obvious, but “there are seven of us getting ready” doesn’t necessarily mean seven lots of hair and seven lots of makeup.
You might have:
- A bride having hair and makeup
- Four bridesmaids having both
- A mum having makeup only
- Another family member having hair only
Those are very different timings from seven people all having full hair and makeup.
As a general guide, we usually allow around 20-30 minutes per service for members of the bridal party, although this can vary depending on the person and the look.
The bride gets more time. We generally allow around an 45 minutes to an hour for bridal makeup and 45 minutes to an hour for bridal hair, because this is not the bit of the morning we want to rush.
Once we know exactly which services are required, we can work backwards from the time everyone needs to be ready and decide how many artists are needed.
Work backwards from when you need to be ready – not the ceremony time
This is one of the biggest mistakes people make when planning their wedding morning.
If your ceremony starts at 2pm, that does not mean your hair and makeup can finish at 1.45pm.
You need to factor in getting dressed, photographs, travelling to the ceremony if you’re getting ready elsewhere, inevitable interruptions and all the little things that somehow take much longer on a wedding morning than they do on a normal day.
And if your photographer wants those lovely getting-ready photographs, you probably don’t want the final bridesmaid still sitting in a makeup chair while everyone else is dressed and holding champagne for the camera.
We therefore establish the actual ready time first and build the hair and makeup schedule backwards from there.
Could one artist do everyone? Possibly. But would you want them to?
This is where the numbers alone don’t tell the whole story.
Let’s say one artist could theoretically get through your bridal party by starting at 5.30am.
Technically, it works.
But do you want to start your wedding day at 5.30am if you don’t absolutely have to?
Likely not.
Adding another artist can mean everyone gets an extra hour or two in bed, nobody feels as though they’re on a conveyor belt, and there’s some breathing room in the schedule.
For larger bridal parties, having a team also means hair and makeup can happen simultaneously. Someone can be having their hair styled while somebody else is in makeup, rather than the entire morning relying on one person working through a very long list.
Sometimes the difference between needing two artists and three isn’t that the wedding is impossible with two. It’s that three creates a much nicer morning.
And we think that matters.
How many artists would you need for six bridesmaids plus the bride?
This is the sort of question we’re often asked, and it’s a good example of why timings matter.
If the bride and six bridesmaids are all having both hair and makeup, that’s 14 individual services before we’ve even added mums or other family members.
Trying to squeeze that into a short morning with two artists simply isn’t realistic.
A larger CJC team means several services can take place at once, allowing us to create a sensible schedule rather than starting in the middle of the night.
Equally, if you have six bridesmaids but only three are having their makeup professionally done and everyone is doing their own hair, the team required could be much smaller.
This is why we don’t simply ask, “How many bridesmaids do you have?”
We ask:
1. Who is having what
2. Where you’re getting ready
3. What time you need to be finished.
What if you have a very early ceremony?
Early ceremonies are where having additional hair and makeup artists can make an enormous difference.
If everybody needs to be completely ready by 10am, for example, there are only so many appointments one person can physically complete beforehand.
Rather than asking a bride and her bridal party to start getting ready at an antisocial hour, we can bring in a larger team and complete more services at the same time.
The same applies if you have a short access window at your venue or if your wedding schedule means everyone needs to be ready within a particularly tight time frame.
Do you need separate hair stylists and makeup artists?
No, not necessarily.
Some professional bridal artists specialise exclusively in either hair or makeup, while others – including many members of the CJC team – are highly skilled in both.
For larger weddings, we build the team around the services required. That might mean a mixture of hair and makeup artists, dedicated specialists, or artists who can move between both.
From your point of view, you don’t need to work that puzzle out – that’s our job.
You tell us who needs hair and/or makeup, your timings and where you’re getting ready, and we’ll recommend the team and schedule that makes the most sense.
More artists doesn’t mean more chaos
Brides sometimes worry that having several hair and makeup artists will make the room feel hectic.
It doesn’t have to at all, in fact, a good bridal hair and makeup team should actually make the morning feel less chaotic.
Everyone should know who they’re looking after and when. The artists should arrive with enough time to set up properly, work together, and keep an eye on the overall schedule without making you feel as though you’re being marched through appointments.
We’ve worked with bridal parties of all sizes, and organisation behind the scenes is a huge part of making the experience feel effortless for the people actually getting married.
You shouldn’t need to be checking the time and wondering whether your mum is going to be ready – you have enough to think about!
So, how many wedding hair and makeup artists do you actually need?
The simplest answer is:
Enough that everyone can be beautifully ready on time without your wedding morning feeling rushed.
For a small bridal party, that might be one artist. For a larger group, it could be two, three, four… or an larger team.
There isn’t a number you should be aiming for.
The important thing is that your hair and makeup provider has looked at the whole morning – number of services, complexity of the looks, your ready time, photography, travel, and venue logistics – rather than simply trying to fit as many people as possible into the fewest artist hours.
At CJC Hair & Makeup, we put the schedule together for you and recommend the right team based on your wedding. With a trusted team of professional hair and makeup artists, we can also accommodate larger bridal parties and weddings where several people need to be ready simultaneously.
Your wedding morning is part of your wedding day, so it should feel like it.
Planning your wedding hair and makeup?
Tell us your wedding date, getting-ready location, ceremony time and approximately how many people would like hair and/or makeup, and we’ll help you work out exactly what you need.
Tell us your running order, talent numbers and brief and we’ll recommend the right level of support.
By Camilla Collins, Founder of CJC Hair & Makeup – Camilla founded CJC Hair & Makeup in 2010 and has spent more than 15 years working with brides and wedding parties across the UK and internationally.
