With seating plans, COVID capacity restrictions, venue bookings and dress-hunting, wedding planning is hectic and stressful enough without even thinking about the finer details of the day itself, such as, your makeup artist. 

However, when it comes to booking a makeup artist for your special day, there’s a lot to think about to ensure you look and feel the best you can on your big day. 

For starters, it’s important to start thinking about the look you’re going for and collecting reference images on a pinterest board, or just simply a folder in your laptop! When collecting references, try to collect references with facial features similar to your own. 

Following that, when securing a makeup artist, try to ask for his or her portfolio to look at work he or she has done. Pay attention to the makeup artist’s detail, such as technical skills in doing contour, or even something as basic but crucially important like using the right makeup shade for the subject’s skin tone. 

If your wedding day has both an outdoors and indoors component planned, be sure to check out the makeup artist’s work for outdoor makeup too. Especially in humid Singapore, a good makeup artist is important to ensure you get makeup that stays on the whole day! 

You’ll also want to think of a budget range for your makeup artist. Here, brides-to-be should avoid one tempting mistake: opting for personal styling services as opposed to bridal makeup services. 

While browsing sites and enquiring rates, you might find that personal styling seems to be often significantly cheaper (and quicker!) than bridal makeup styling services. 

However, there’s many reasons why bridal makeup is different from makeup for other events and here’s what you need to know: 

There’s much more things included in bridal makeup than personal styling.

In bridal makeup, the makeup routine is much more complex, with more steps included to ensure that the makeup lasts the whole day while looking good, as opposed to event makeup that typically just needs to last for a couple of hours to half a day, tops. Additionally, brides-to-be can also select a trial session before the actual day, for the make-up artist to discuss your preferences and also show you the styles she does. 

At The First Refresh, our Bridal styling includes additional steps like colour correction to ensure that the bride looks good in person, and on video, and in pictures. 

Bearing in mind that cameras will be pointed at the bride all throughout the day in various lightings, contouring is also a step that is done to ensure that depth and the bride’s natural face shape is enhanced to look picture-ready, always. 

To draw attention to the eyes and to complete the look, more elaborate eyeshadow as well as false eyelashes are added as well. Unlike typical event styling which usually just includes mascara generously coated, wedding makeup services typically include falsies because they look more prominent in photos as they are thicker and additionally, sweat-proof and tear-proof to last the day and night. 

Because of all these, bridal makeup takes much longer to apply. Bridal makeup typically takes at least 2 hours while personal styling makeup would take a maximum of 90 minutes. 

Your makeup artist doing your wedding makeup would not want to rush the process of applying makeup as she needs to ensure that all the ingredients are set nicely and looks the most perfect it can be. 

Unlike event photos, there’s only one wedding day you get in your lifetime and the look for this day will be documented in photos you might be displaying in your home for years, so all the time is taken to carefully ensure an extraordinary look. 

Apart from all these, there’s also time spent making this look that doesn’t include time a bride spends in the makeup chair - the countless texting, calling and emailing about the makeup look between bride and artist, sharing questions and concerns. Compare this to a regular occasion makeup booking, where looks are often more straightforward and stakes are lower.  

Curious about what our at-home Bridal Makeup services look like? Check it out here and get in touch for questions.