Your guide for when to plan for and when to do all things related to bridal beauty in the time leading up to your wedding day! An Easy Wedding Beauty Planning Timeline
At your wedding, all eyes will be on you. Since you’ll have a photographer capturing every special moment and lots of loved ones to catch up with, it’s natural you’ll want to look and feel your best. But where should you start? I’ve had the pleasure of helping many couples prepare for their special day. Now, I want to share some of those tips with you! Read on to learn my easy wedding beauty planning timeline. 9-12 Months Before Once you have your date locked in, it’s time to start researching nearby vendors. This includes everything from skin-clearing (and stress-relieving!) facials and an amazing nail technician to your makeup artist and hairstylist. 6-9 Months Before Since popular vendors book up quickly, getting all of your contracts signed and retainers paid around the 6-9 month mark is essential. At this time, you should start getting inspiration for what you want your “look” to be. For example, are you going for something light and effortless? Or more dramatic and bold? Time to schedule your preview session with your selected makeup artist and hairstylist to work out all the details of your beauty look for the big day. 4-6 Months Before 4-6 months before your wedding is the ideal time to start your treatments. After all, the last thing you want is to experiment with a new skincare regimen right before your wedding only to find out shortly after that you’re allergic. Plus, some treatments, like teeth whitening with your cosmetic dentist, make take more time than you anticipated. So, it’s best to start early. 1 Month Before With about four weeks left until your wedding, it’s now time to finalize all of your appointments. This can include a spray tan, haircut, massage, and any other measures you are taking to look and feel your best on your wedding day. This is also a good time to start drinking plenty of water and sticking to well-balanced meals. Both of these measures will help maintain your energy levels. 1-2 Weeks Before With only one or two weeks left before your wedding, it’s now time to attend all of those appointments you scheduled. If you need a final teeth whitening treatment to truly make your smile shine, this is the perfect time to do so. Make sure to bring along some inspiration pictures to show your hair colorist and your nail technician. That way, you can get the exact look you’re going for heading into your big day. The Day Before The day before your wedding is here! While it’s natural to have lots of adrenaline, it’s important that you do your best to relax. Consider drawing yourself a bubble bath, watching a feel-good movie, pouring your favorite wine – whatever it takes to create a calming atmosphere so you can have a restful sleep the night before. Self-care is a part of your beauty routine! Your Wedding Day! Following this beauty timeline will ensure that the bulk of your beauty treatments have been done – from getting your hair colored, teeth whitened, nails manicured, to visiting a facialist – all that’s left to do is let your day of beauty team take care of the rest and you get to sit back, relax, and enjoy your special day!
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Back at it with another blog post in collaboration with the awesome photographer Amy Huang!Coming at you today with the answer to another common question to help our clients feel more informed about what to expect for your upcoming wedding or photoshoot. If you would love to get more info from a photographer's perspective head on over to her blog where she answers some frequently asked questions too! Ok time to get this party started... let's chat a bit about camera-ready makeup  Why you may ask?… Welp, a professional makeup artist that truly understands how makeup will read on camera is worth their weight in gold! So let’s break that down for a second and talk about the differences between what you may do on the daily and what is necessary to look “camera-ready”. Your goal for everyday makeup is probably to look a little more polished than you do without it, and to basically look decent in person. What the naked eye sees is a whole different story than what the camera does though. Plus, things are so much easier when what you see is what you get. The camera on the other hand captures everything… the good, the bad, and the you know what. Even if you can’t really even see it in person. So let's say you have a bit of splotchy redness in your skin, maybe its not so bad in person… the camera will see it. Eyebrows a bit sparse… the camera notices. Lips chapped and dry… you guessed it, the camera knows. Here is the super fun part, while the camera may see all of your flaws, somehow other things seem to disappear and its never the things you want to. Eyes that aren’t defined will look tiny and beady, lips with no color added can blend right on into the rest of the face making them hard to see and the lower half of your face seem fleshy. That is where a true pro comes in. Makeup that looks great on camera and looks good in person is an art. It's about knowing how much coverage is needed, in the right finish so that the skin looks perfectly polished but not heavy. Setting with powder in the right areas so that your skin has a healthy glow and not a sweaty shine. Giving structure to the features so the face doesn’t read flat, but knowing how to blend properly so you don’t end up with ridiculous stripes (I’m looking at you so called beauty gurus!). Filling in brows enough to define them but not make them look like they were drawn on with a sharpie. And of course understanding balance & symmetry to that there is a focal feature and nothing on the face is competing for attention. If you feel confident that you can nail all that on your own, then more power to you! But I haven’t talked about one other element that can be a total game changer… Lighting! Boy oh boy can lighting absolutely effect everything about your makeup. If the photos will all be done outside in natural light then for the most part the makeup will read fairly true to however dramatic it appears in person. The reason I say: “for the most part” is because there are definitely some exceptions. If your photographer has that very light & airy vibe to their images that is incredibly lovely and soft, just know your makeup will be washed out a bit compared to how it looks in person. Or if your photographer has a style that looks like its bathed in glorious warm golden light all the time, then the colors of your makeup my read a little different from in person and warmer toned shadows might not show as much in the pictures. But as far as understanding how lighting can affect the makeup just take a look at the two images I’ve included in this post! They are the same model with the same exact makeup taken by the same photographer only a few minutes apart. The only difference is that the first image was taken outside in natural light and the second was taken inside with studio lighting. Notice how subtle the makeup looks in the second one. You can barely see that the eyeshadow is in fact gold, but it's still doing its job to make her blue-green eyes appear a bit more blue than green. The blush on the cheeks looks so striking in the first and now see how light it seems to be applied in the second (take note, blush is the first thing to get washed out by lights). Even the lip color looks different and more vibrant in the studio lighting! Who is ready for another pic that will blow your mind… here is that exact same makeup from the other 2 pics. The only difference is this one is a behind the scenes pic taken on my phone with a mix of natural light and a little help from artificial light coming from my mini ring light that attaches to my phone.  Ok here is the part you all have been waiting for… my list of top tips for getting good results if you are going to do your own makeup for photos!
Good luck to all of you getting yourselves camera-ready out there! And for anyone who is leaving this in the hands of a pro I hope I gave you a little insight into some of the reasons why they may do the things they do! Both Amy and myself are looking forward to answering more questions from all of you out there! So if you have a burning question yourself please drop it in a comment below and who knows- maybe we will be answering yours next! xoxo Kimm
Imagine just finishing up getting your makeup done the morning of your wedding and looking in the mirror and feeling absolutely gorgeous… then realizing you still have 3 hours till the ceremony and 4 hours till the start of the reception and you know that when you do your own makeup its already a hot mess by lunch.
Eek! But this is just something that comes with long wedding day timelines and is totally normal. 
Photographer: Kara Reynolds Venue: The Lakehouse San Marcos
Good news is there are things you can do to make sure your makeup stays looking great all the way through to the final send off at the end of the night!
If you hired a professional then you are going to already have a little bit of advantage as they will use long-wearing products, but contrary to popular belief that doesn’t mean your face is now completely bullet-proof, so here is what you can do to help... #1) Hands Off! The more you touch, the worse your makeup will last. A lot of people don’t even realize they are face touchers so try to be a little more aware. Every wipe of the nose, scratch of the eyebrow, and rub of the eye you are removing your makeup artist’s beautiful work. What to do instead? Try using the back of your finger (the area between your nail and knuckle) to gently pat any itch. The biggest key is to never touch with fingertips #2) Pat, don’t wipe This goes hand in hand with the 1st point, but now I’m talking about what to do when the tears flow. Try to catch those tears before they streak down your cheek if possible. And the best way to do this is to gently pat a tissue to the corner of the eye. But please promise no matter what you do you will never rub or wipe! Long-wear, water resistant, and even water proof makeup can survive the wetness of tears but it can’t survive the combo of wet + wiping. #3) Have the right touch up products Most of my brides report back that they never had to worry about touching up their makeup, but I still let my brides know that I recommend having blotting sheets, powder, and lipstick on hand just in case. Blotting sheets will remove the oil on the surface of the skin, so if you are looking a little more than just glowing you may want to blot up some of that excess shine. Powder is key for ensuring your complexion remains looking flawless. To avoid cake face you need to remember to never powder on top of excess oil (hence the blotting sheets). The powder will smooth out your skin and blur any pesky discoloration that may start peeking through your coverage as the night wears on and you get your dance on. Lipstick is important because lip products are the first to wear off. The moment you eat something you can kiss that perfectly painted pout goodbye, unless you are extremely careful with each and every bite! It just makes more sense to give those lips a quick refresh than to deal with eating like a snake with an unhinged jaw though so just have a little lippie in your bag. Plus my brides get a full sized lipstick to keep included in my rates so they don’t even have to worry about picking out the right one- I do it for you! If you are putting together your touchup kit on your own here are a few of my favorites that you can get on amazon... #4) Keep your pro on standby Did you know that most makeup artists offer touch up services? If you want the celebrity treatment you can opt to pay to have your artist stay with you to keep that shine at bay and lipstick in place. Different artists will handle this differently but I find my experience on set for photoshoots is a huge benefit to clients because I've learned when I can step in and when to stay back out of the way, only doing touch ups when needed based on what I know the camera will see and what is important for in person so I am never slowing down the show. I will also personally touch up anyone who opted to have their makeup done by myself or my team before the wedding so not only will you stay looking great but your whole bridal party stays picture perfect all for a flat hourly rate. I specifically geared this for my brides out there who may be wondering but you can absolutely use these same principles to make sure your makeup stays fresh on any long day (well besides having an artist on standby lol) 
Bride: Angeline Photographer: Westlund Photography
Hope these tips & tricks will help you look and feel absolutely gorgeous for your entire celebration!
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