Scheduling Beauty Into Your Big Day

You’re getting married! Yeh! Now, it’s time to book the vendors. Whether it’s two years to the big day or two months, it’s ideal to have an idea of the timings especially when you book your beauty entourage. Generally, makeup and hair artists book more than one wedding a day (hopefully without compromise.) You want to make sure they have the time slot you’re looking for or a time slot that you can work around. Take into consideration factors like transport time and photography time. After the timings are worked out I  recommend incorporating this into the contract.

Here is a basic work-back exercise I go through with my brides to figure out our on location arrival time to start the beautification process, (assuming any professional images taken will be taken at the same place you get ready:)

1. Determine the time the event begins and your desired arrival time at the venue.

2. Determine transportation time from your getting ready location to the venue using Mapquest or Google Maps.

3. Based on the above, determine your departure time from youre getting ready location.

4. Will you be taking professional pictures before departing? With or without family? If yes, discuss the amount of time required with your photographer.

5. Based on the above, determine the time you will have to be beautified by; dress, makeup, hair and all.

6. Discuss with your beauty team the amount of time that will be required to get you ready and consequently their arrival time.

IMPORTANT! If you want the beautifying process captured whether it’s makeup, sari tying or dupatta/veil setting, make sure your photographer arrives at least 30 to 45 mins prior to the time the process will be completed to get the shots. This way everything will occur simultaneously and it’s is respectful of everyone’s time commitments. Otherwise if your photographer arrives when the process is complete, he/she won’t be able to capture the ‘action,’ shots.  And if your artistic team has surpassed their allocated time with you, they may not be able to reenact the shots in case they have to leave.

Here’s a hypothetical: Say your event begins at 9:00am and you want to arrive on location at 8:45am. Given that your transportation time is 30mins., plan to leave your house by 8:15am. Now, if you want to take pre-event photos for 45mins (determined by your photographer,) plan to be ready by 7:30am. If your beauty entourage will take about 1.5hrs to get you ready, they need to arrive at 6:00am. And if you want to have action shots, have photographer arrive for 6:45am.

If your professional images will be taken at a different location than where you get ready, you want to incorporate the transportation time to and from the location in your work back schedule as well. Alternatively, if you decide to take shots at the venue versus your getting ready location, you will have to massage the work back schedule a bit.

Hope this helps! If you need clarification, give me a shout!

xoxo,

Shobana