You’ll probably spend more time looking at photographs of your wedding than you ever spend actually looking at yourself on the day.
And because of that, brides understandably worry about how they’re going to look in them.
But here’s the thing: I don’t think the answer is to spend your wedding day thinking about how you look in photographs. Quite the opposite.

Professionally applied bridal makeup is designed for a very different job from your everyday makeup. It may be going on at 8am and still needs to look good through a ceremony, photographs, hugs, kisses, dinner, champagne, tears and several hours on the dance floor.

That doesn’t mean your face needs to be covered in industrial-strength foundation.

In fact, long-lasting bridal makeup isn’t really about putting more makeup on.
It’s about how it’s prepared, applied, layered and set.

Usually, when a bride asks me for natural bridal makeup, she doesn’t literally mean she wants hardly any makeup on. She means she doesn’t want people to notice the makeup before they notice her.
She wants beautiful skin. Defined eyes. A little colour in her face. Lips that don’t disappear in photographs.

She wants to look polished, fresh and like herself – without obvious contouring, a heavy base, enormous false lashes or anything else that makes her feel as though she’s wearing somebody else’s face.

A hot, sunny wedding day sounds absolutely glorious.

Until you look at the forecast, see 30°C, and start imagining your carefully applied bridal makeup sliding down your face before you’ve even made it to the ceremony.
Don’t panic!
We’ve been doing wedding hair and makeup since 2010, through British heatwaves, destination weddings and venues of varying enthusiasm for air conditioning.

Should you have your hair or makeup done first on your wedding morning?
Our usual answer at CJC is: Makeup first, hair second.
But please don’t panic if your photographer, hairstylist or wedding schedule has already dictated otherwise. There are no bridal police coming to arrest you for having your hair done first.

There is no magic facial, serum or procedure that’s going to give you “perfect wedding skin” overnight.
Real skin has pores. It has texture. It occasionally produces a whopping great spot at precisely the moment you’d rather it didn’t.
After doing bridal makeup since 2010, my advice is much less exciting than the beauty industry might like it to be.

Plenty of women can do their own makeup beautifully. But I’d argue that professional bridal makeup isn’t only about whether you can apply foundation and mascara yourself.
Your wedding morning is busy. There are people coming and going, questions being asked, things being delivered, and approximately 400 thoughts competing for space in your head.
Having your makeup done gives you something surprisingly valuable amongst all of that… a reason to sit still.

I’ve had brides arrive with a photograph of a hairstyle they love, only for us to discover that it completely hides the beautiful earrings they’ve bought, doesn’t work with their veil, or leaves nowhere sensible to secure an important piece of jewellery.
None of these things are a disaster, but they’re much easier to work out before the wedding morning.

What does a wedding morning with CJC Hair & Makeup actually look like?
This little film from Charlotte’s wedding probably answers that better than I can.

We created it to capture what happens behind the scenes while a bride is getting ready – not simply the finished hair and makeup, but everything going on around it.

A beautiful London wedding, a relaxed bridal morning and – rather unusually for the time – a ceremony being live-streamed to friends and family around the world.
Petra and Jeremy celebrated their wedding at The York & Albany in Camden, with CJC looking after Petra and her bridal party before the ceremony.