“I want natural makeup. I just want to look like myself.”
It is probably one of the things I hear most often from brides.
And I completely understand what they mean.
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.
And actually, creating makeup that looks as though you’re barely wearing any can involve rather a lot of makeup.
Let me explain.
What does “natural bridal makeup” actually mean?
There isn’t one definition.
My version of natural might be completely different from yours.
For one bride, natural means tinted moisturiser, mascara and a tinted lip balm. For another, it might include foundation, concealer, individual lashes and considerably more eye definition — but still look natural on her because she’s accustomed to wearing more makeup.
That’s why one of the first things we’ll talk about is what you normally wear.
I’ll often ask to see photographs of you on an ordinary day and when you’ve dressed up for an event. What did you like? What didn’t you like? When did you feel most like yourself?
That tells me considerably more than the word “natural” ever could.
Natural-looking makeup can involve a lot of technique
There’s a difference between wearing hardly any makeup and wearing makeup that looks natural.
Think about relaxed, slightly undone bridal hair. It may look effortless, but somebody has actually spent quite a lot of time making it look effortlessly beautiful rather than like you’ve just got out of bed.
Natural makeup is similar.
We may still use primer, foundation or skin tint, concealer, powder, bronzer, blusher, brow products, eyeshadow, mascara and even false lashes.
The difference is in the products we choose, where we put them and how they’re applied.
It’s about thin layers, careful skin preparation and subtle enhancement rather than obvious makeup.
Ideally, somebody would need to look at you pretty closely to work out exactly what we’ve done.
How do you make foundation look natural?
I don’t want to cover beautiful skin simply because I have foundation in my kit.
For a natural bridal look, we might use a tinted moisturiser, BB cream or another lightweight base across the face and then add more coverage only where it’s actually needed.
If you have some redness around your nose, we’ll address it.
If you have a spot, we’ll conceal it.
If there’s pigmentation or scarring you’d rather disguise, we can give those areas more coverage without necessarily putting the same amount of product everywhere else.
Equally, if you have freckles that you love, why would I erase them?
There was a time when people desperately tried to cover freckles. Now people draw fake ones on.
Beauty trends are funny things.
What matters is how you feel about your skin.
Natural makeup doesn’t mean showing everything you don’t like
Sometimes there’s a slightly unhelpful message around natural beauty that suggests you’re somehow supposed to embrace absolutely everything about your face.
You don’t have to.
If there’s something that makes you self-conscious and you’d like me to disguise it, tell me.
Equally, I might point out something you’ve spent years thinking of as an imperfection that I think is absolutely lovely.
A birthmark. Freckles. A little quirk in your features.
There’s sometimes a tiny bit of therapy that goes on in the makeup chair.
The point isn’t that I decide what your “best features” are. We work that out together.
We highlight what you want to highlight and soften what you don’t want drawing attention.
How do you create natural-looking eye makeup?
Natural eye makeup is mostly about definition without obviousness.
Rather than immediately reaching for a heavy black kohl pencil, I might use a matte taupe, brown or bronzer through the crease to give the eye shape and dimension.
A soft brown powder worked close to the lash line can make the lashes appear fuller without looking like obvious eyeliner.
Then we curl the lashes and use mascara to open the eyes.
Even if you tell me you don’t want eyeshadow, I may suggest the tiniest amount of natural-toned definition through the crease.
Why?
Because your features still need to carry.
From several feet away — and in your wedding photographs — extremely subtle features can disappear. We want your eyes to look like your eyes, just beautifully defined.
Do you need false lashes for natural bridal makeup?
Absolutely not.
If your own lashes are lovely, let’s use them.
An eyelash curler and the right mascara can make an enormous difference. Some mascaras can build considerable length and fullness without adding anything artificial.
But false lashes don’t automatically mean enormous falsies either.
We can use individual lashes to fill small gaps, tiny clusters to add fullness or a few lashes towards the outside of the eye to create a subtle lift.
The idea isn’t for somebody to look at you and think, Great lashes.
It’s for them to look at your eyes.
What about natural-looking brows?
Again, we start with what’s yours.
I’m generally not interested in drawing an entirely new eyebrow onto a bride unless that’s specifically the look she wants.
Changing the shape of somebody’s brows can dramatically alter the face. So can changing the lip shape, lashes or facial contours.
For most natural bridal looks, we’ll enhance the existing brow, fill where necessary and create enough definition to frame the face without making the brows the main event.
Don’t make your lips so nude that they disappear
A “natural lip” doesn’t necessarily mean beige.
In fact, taking too much colour out of the lips can leave you looking washed out, particularly in photographs.
Instead, we can look for a colour that enhances your natural lip tone.
That might be rosy, pink, berry-toned or something warmer depending on your colouring.
And it doesn’t necessarily have to be a traditional lipstick.
A tinted balm, gloss, lip stain or even softly blended lip pencil can give enough colour and definition without looking heavily made up.
Glowy is good. Sweaty is less good.
Natural bridal makeup and glowing skin often go together.
But there’s a line.
If we put highlighter everywhere, then add naturally warm skin, photography lighting and perhaps a 28-degree wedding day, “beautifully luminous” can quite quickly become “I’ve just run for a bus”.
So we’re strategic.
A little light on the top of the cheekbone, perhaps around the outer eye, the cupid’s bow or another carefully chosen area can be beautiful.
We don’t need to frost the entire front of your face.
The same goes for bronzer and luminous products. We’ll take into account your skin type, the weather, photography and how much natural warmth your skin already has.
Does bridal makeup need to be heavier for photographs?
No.
It needs to be considered for photographs.
That’s different.
We don’t need to pile makeup onto your face because there’s a camera in the room.
What we do need is enough definition that your features don’t disappear.
That may mean subtly defining the eyes even if you don’t normally wear eyeshadow. It might mean adding slightly more colour to your lips than you would on an ordinary Tuesday.
We want the eyes, lips and structure of the face to carry both in person and in photographs.
That can still look completely natural.
“This feels like loads of makeup…”
I hear this sometimes during bridal previews, particularly from women who don’t normally wear very much.
And I understand why.
You can feel me applying primer, little layers of base, concealer, and powder. If your normal routine is one application of foundation, it can seem as though an awful lot is happening.
My answer is usually:
Wait until I’ve finished.
Thin layers of different products can create a much more natural result than one thick layer of a single product.
Makeup also settles.
What you see immediately after application can soften considerably over the following hour as everything settles into the skin.
That’s one of the reasons I encourage brides to wear their preview makeup for the rest of the day.
Go home. Go out for dinner. Walk around in your normal environment. Catch yourself in a mirror when you’re not sitting in my chair analysing every millimetre of your face.
Then ask yourself:
Do I feel like me?
Why we start small and build
It’s considerably easier for me to add makeup than take everything off and begin again.
So if you’re nervous about wearing too much, we’ll start softly and build.
You might look at the first version and decide you want a little more definition around the eyes… then perhaps a touch more colour in the cheeks… maybe you realise that the lip colour you thought would be too strong actually makes the whole face come alive.
This is exactly what a bridal hair and makeup preview is for.
I don’t want to shock you with a completely different face and then ask whether you like it.
We work together until we find the point where you feel comfortable, polished and still completely yourself.
Bring inspiration pictures – but don’t believe everything you see
Pictures are incredibly useful because they help us understand what your version of natural looks like.
Bring them.
But remember that many of the bridal images you see online have been professionally lit, edited, retouched or filtered.
A makeup look that appears incredibly light and natural on Pinterest may have been considerably stronger in real life.
We’ll look at your references together and dissect what you actually like about them.
It might be the skin rather than the whole makeup look.
Perhaps it’s the softly defined eyes.
Maybe it’s simply the feeling the image gives you.
That’s the useful bit.
You don’t have to become “more natural” because you’re a bride
This works both ways.
If you rarely wear makeup, I’m not going to suddenly cover you in it because bridal makeup is supposedly meant to look a certain way.
But if you love makeup, wear it regularly and feel fantastic with defined eyes and a stronger lip, I’m equally unlikely to tell you that you suddenly need to become a barely-there version of yourself because you’re getting married.
The aim isn’t to conform to somebody else’s idea of what a bride should look like.
It’s to look like you.
Our approach to natural bridal makeup
I sometimes hear bridal makeup described as making somebody look like “the best version of themselves”.
I’m not sure I even want to do that.
You don’t need me to create a better version of you.
I’d rather bring you forward.
The features you love. The freckles you decide to keep. The eyes you want people to notice. The things that make your face recognisably and uniquely yours.
And if there are things that make you feel self-conscious, we can work with those too.
Because ultimately, natural bridal makeup isn’t really about how much makeup you’re wearing.
It’s about whether you still feel like yourself when you look in the mirror.
That’s the bit that matters.
Planning your wedding hair and makeup? Your bridal hair and makeup preview gives us the time to talk through what you normally wear, look at your inspiration and gradually create a look that feels completely right for you.
