Nine women to get ready. Four hours. Two hair and makeup artists.
This was Emma and Nathan’s wedding at The Waldorf Hilton in London, and although it was quite a few years ago now, it’s a great example of something we still do every week at CJC Hair & Makeup: work out how to get a larger bridal party ready without making everyone set an alarm for 5am.
For Emma’s wedding, I looked after Emma, her mum, her sister and two bridesmaids, while my lovely colleague Fanny took care of another four members of the wedding party.
And importantly, we were finished with enough time for everyone to actually enjoy themselves.
How long does hair and makeup take for a large bridal party?
It depends on who’s having what.
We certainly didn’t perform 18 hair and makeup services between two artists in four hours!
As a general rule at CJC, we allow around 45 minutes per person for bridesmaid hair and makeup, although some looks will take a little less and others more.
If somebody is having just hair or just makeup, we’ll usually allow around 30 minutes.
We give the bride longer.
Bridal hair and makeup will usually have been worked out during the preview, so although the preview itself might take a couple of hours while we experiment and make decisions, recreating the finished look on the wedding morning is much quicker.
It’s why the number of artists you need isn’t simply determined by the number of people in the bridal party.
We look at how many actual services there are, what time everybody needs to be ready, and how complicated the chosen looks are, then build the team around that.
Do you need a hair and makeup schedule?
We can create one… but, perhaps surprisingly, I prefer not to make it too rigid.
Wedding mornings have a habit of ignoring spreadsheets.
A bridesmaid gets delayed. Someone needs to sort something downstairs. A child needs attention. Someone is still at breakfast. The florist arrives. A bridesmaid who’s supposed to be in my chair at 10.15 has mysteriously vanished.
If we’ve scheduled every person to the minute, one delay can throw everything that follows.
Instead, I prefer a planned but flexible approach.
We know how many services we need to complete and by what time. We know roughly when different members of the bridal party need to arrive. But if the next person is ready, we’ll get them into the chair.
It gives us room to adapt to what’s actually happening around us.
Should the bride have her hair and makeup done last?
Generally, yes.
I like the bride to be one of the last people we finish so her hair and makeup are beautifully fresh.
That doesn’t necessarily mean we don’t start her until the end, though.
If her hairstyle needs setting with heated rollers, pin curls, or another technique, we might begin with the bride, set the hair, and then leave her to cook while we get on with everybody else.
We’ll then come back to her for makeup and finish the hair nearer the end.
What I don’t want is the bride being finished at the exact moment she’s supposed to leave.
Where possible, I like her completely ready around an hour before she needs to leave the getting-ready location.
That’s time to get dressed, have photographs, drink a little champagne, gather everything she needs, and generally experience the fact that she’s about to get married rather than being launched out of the door with a lipstick still in my hand!
Why not just start earlier?
Sometimes we do, but there comes a point where adding another artist makes much more sense than dragging an entire bridal party out of bed at an antisocial hour.
Sleep matters. So does food and water.
If adding another stylist means everyone gets another hour or two in bed and the wedding morning feels considerably more civilised, that’s often the better option.
A larger team does come at an additional cost, so it’s something we’ll discuss with you when we work out the timings. But we’d much rather recommend the team you genuinely need than squeeze too much into too little time.
What actually causes wedding mornings to run late?
Often, it isn’t the hair and makeup.
We’ve arrived at hotels to discover everybody is still downstairs having breakfast. We’ve had people turn up with wet hair. Bridesmaids disappear to deal with other jobs. People change their minds.
I’ve even had a bride trying to deal with a melting wedding cake on an exceptionally hot morning.
One of the best pieces of advice I can give a bride is therefore:
Delegate like a motherf*cker.
That’s what bridesmaids are for.
You shouldn’t be tying bouquets, chasing suppliers or sorting out table decorations while somebody is trying to do your eyeliner.
Although there is a slight catch: don’t delegate so enthusiastically that every bridesmaid disappears and we have nobody left to put in the hair and makeup chairs!
Think about the room, too
With a larger bridal party, the physical space matters.
Ten women, a bride, several hair and makeup artists, dresses, bags, breakfast trays, photographers, videographers, flowers and the occasional wandering groomsman can turn even a decent-sized hotel room into quite a gathering.
Sometimes that’s exactly what you want. A busy room full of your favourite people can be enormous fun.
Other brides prefer something calmer.
If space allows, we can split the hair and makeup team between rooms. Perhaps the bride gets ready somewhere quieter while the rest of the bridal party are looked after next door.
There’s no single correct setup. It’s about creating the wedding morning you want.
And this is what good planning gives you…
One of the things I love about Emma’s photographs is that once everyone was ready, the girls had time to pile onto the bed together, have photographs taken, and enjoy those last moments before the wedding.
That’s the bit we don’t want to lose.
Getting everyone ready on time isn’t about running your wedding morning like a military operation.
It’s about doing enough planning beforehand that you don’t have to think about the operation at all.
We take care of that bit.
You get to sit down, have your hair and makeup done, and enjoy being with your people.
Planning hair and makeup for a large bridal party?
If you have six, eight, ten or more people who would like hair and makeup, don’t worry about working out how many artists you need before you contact us.
Tell us how many people would like hair and/or makeup, where you’re getting ready, and what time you need to be ready by.
We’ll work backwards from there and recommend a team and timings that make sense – without unnecessarily turning your wedding morning into a dawn raid.
Images from Emma and Nathan’s Wedding – 15.10.2017 – (C) Blake Ezra Photography 2017
