Why A Bride is Always Late
Truth is, 70% of all bridal preparations run late… which causes everything to get squeezed, people start rushing and stress levels begin to rise.
As photographers and videographers, we do our best to hide a run away timeline to protect the mental state of the bride, but honestly, there’s a lot that you and your guests miss out on as a result.
the real cost of running late
- When everything’s rush rush, there’s no time to soak it all in. No time to process, absorb, be in the moment and enjoy the experience.
- The person doing your hair and makeup becomes rushed, which isn’t ideal given you want to look your absolute best.
- The first look with your dad isn’t recorded, because your videographer had to rush off to the ceremony to mic up the celebrant and groom.
- The amazing photo location planned for some pre-wedding pics … well, you’ll never know about it as your photographer doesn’t want you to realise what you’ve missed out on. You’ll get some quick snaps by the window instead.
- Being 37mins late to the ceremony, means there’s less time with your husband and guests, less time on your photoshoot or that DJ/Live band you paid a bucket load to be there, gets their set list cut by a 1/3, and you, less time to party.
The solution… Well, it’s not quite what we first thought. The obvious people to blame are the hair & makeup team. They are after all, still putting lipstick on the bride at 215pm when she was supposed to be in her dress at 130pm. But after some in-depth discussions with veteran make up artists who really know their shit, we’ve realised there’s much more to the story that you might think.
We’ve dug deep on this one and figured out 7 key things you can do that will set yourself up to be on time, letting you experience every part of your day in it’s fullest.
1: End times
Don’t tell your H&M artist when your ceremony begins. Tell them when you want hair and make up to be finished by.
Often a H&M artist will assume that a 3pm ceremony means they can schedule hair and makeup to end at say 145pm. But that assumption doesn’t factor in a whole bunch of other things that need to happen. Like: Time to eat, time to poo, tape your boobs, get into your complicated dress, find your earrings, first look with dad, where are the tissues? wipe tears, photos with bridesmaids, photos with family … and time to breath, look around and just enjoy the moment.
So work with your photographer to set a finishing time for the H&M artist, and tell them that time. Not the ceremony time.
2: start times
If you’re a TLDR kinda person, the take home from the entire blog is this: Complacency.
End times determine start times… and start times are crucial. The first two people in the hair and make up chairs need to know how important it is that they’re on time. And this is hard, because who would think that being 45mins late to a 645am start will affect a 3pm ceremony. But it does. The ripple effect is real and you’ll be rushing to get in your dress with no time to enjoy the process.
To overcome this, send two text messages the night before:
1. To the person in the 645am chair:
“Hey beautiful, just a reminder, you need to be at my place at 630am. You’re first up on getting your hair done. Please wash and have your hair fully dried before you arrive. All good?”
2. To your hair and make up artist: (Text them, don’t email)
“Hey ya! Just letting you know, we’ll be all ready to begin at 645am tomorrow morn. See you at 630am to set up. Just knock on the door, we’ll be awake.”
3: order of hair & makeup
The right order of who’s in the H&M chairs can help a lot too.
Hair before makeup
For the bride. Try and get your hair done first, then your make up after that. You’ll get better looking photos as your hair will look amazing as the last parts of your makeup is done.
3rd to last
Think about who will help you get into your dress. Is it mum, or maybe your MOH? They need to be all finished hair and makeup (and dressed), before you’re ready to get into your dress. Therefore, they need to be 3rd or 4th last finishing H&M.
2nd to last
The bride is the 2nd to last person finishing H&M. This gives good buffer if things are running late, that you can get into your dress while the last bridesmaid (or grandma) gets her makeup done.
Last in the chair
This is the person you don’t mind missing out on you getting into your dress should things run late.
HOT TIP
Check in with your H&M artist mid morning to make sue they’re on schedule.
If things are running late, do these two things:
1: Ask your MOH (yip, delegate), to make sure the next person in the chair is ready to go so there’s always a bum sitting on a makeup chair and no down time.
2: Feed your H&M artists bite sized bits of food. That way, they’ll work right through their lunch break to make up time.
4: allow 30min longer for the bride
— Because distractions are awesome and you want to be a part of it all. —
Often, you’ll sit down to get your hair done and…
- The flowers arrive you have to check out!
- The bridesmaids want a champagne toast.
- A gift from the groom arrives.
- And people always want to talk to you… which sometimes means the make up person has to pause their work. (Five 2min conversations can mean make up takes an extra 10mins).
Sometimes there’s just other stuff that needs to get done like:
- Teaching the bridesmaid how to use the steaming machine
- Toilet breaks
- Showing dad where his shoes are.
- And a million other random things that come out of nowhere.
And this is all ok. But just build time in for it. If your H&M artist has given everyone 90mins for both hair and makeup, make sure they’ve blocked out 120mins for you. H&M artists don’t often account for these bridal distractions, and things run late as a result.
5: ‘bridesmaids photo’
I don’t mean to be dramatic, but this photo takes some A-game time management to make it work.
To make this photo happen:
- Everyone has to be finished hair and makeup in good time.
- Photo taken. (5mins)
- Bridesmaids get into their dresses while the bride waits. (15mins)
- Then, the bridesmaids help the bride get into her dress.
And if your H&M schedule has the last bridesmaid finishing H&M at 1:00pm and the bride gets into her dress at 1:10pm, there’s simply no time for a ‘bridesmaid photo’.
If you want this photo, you need to plan an extra 20-30 mins into the schedule to have enough time for it.
But in our honest opinion, don’t delay your entire wedding, just to get this one photo if there’s really not enough time for it. It’s far better to use that extra time on your actual photo shoot and get way cooler photos then.
6: getting into your dress
Give yourself plenty of time to get into your dress. Even if your dress is a quick zip-up number, you also need to factor in the following things after you finish hair and makeup:
- Toilet break.
- Eat something.
- Brush your teeth.
- Get the dress from the other room.
- Stop in the hallway to answer someone’s question.
- Find your spandex.
- Get in the dress.
- Ask your bridesmaid to find your earrings that are in some bag somewhere downstairs somewhere.
- Put your necklace on. Quick spray of fancy perfume.
- Put your shoes on… actually no, put plasters on your ankles first.
- Call up the hair person to show you how to put the veil in your hair.
- Find mum. Get pretend photos with mum putting your veil in.
- Some quick photos with the photographer in nice window light.
- Wait 4mins till dad is ready to come in and see you.
And that’s 20mins gone just to “quickly slip on a wedding dress”. NOTE: Allow a further 15 minutes if you dress has a lace up ribbon back.
7: time really is money
It’s a common justification that … “It’s ok, the bride is allowed to be late”. And, sure, ‘it’s your day’. But then again… it’s your day…which you’ve paid a bucket load for, and you’re now missing out on.
Think about it this way:
Say your wedding cost you $50,000 and there’s 10hrs of awesomeness planned. That’s $5000/hr.
So if you’re 30 minutes late, you’ve just thrown away $2500 of paid for ‘wedding experience’ you and your wedding guests no longer get to enjoy. That might mean less time taking advantage of the expensive photographer you booked, or enjoying canapés with your guests while listening to the costly musicians you hired.
Maybe you wanted to save the $300 cost of an airbnb, 5mins from the venue by getting ready at home and travelling 45mins to the ceremony location. But that extra 40mins you spent sitting in the car cost you $3,333 in ‘wedding time’ just to save you $300 on a more conveniently located airbnb.
This is your wedding day you’ve paid $$,$$$ to have. Make sure you’re there to enjoy every minute of it.
6 bonus tips
1: Avoid becoming one more horror-story statistic. If you’ve gone with a large hair & makeup company that contracts out a makeup artist to each job, you might not have the same person who did your trial there on your wedding day. This can result in things taking longer with re-dos to get the look you had in your trial. Factor in some extra time here.
Also, if the person who’s doing your makeup isn’t the actual owner of the company, text them the day before to remind them of start times. The cold truth is, an unknown contract makeup artist (who is willing to take on a job at cheap rates) isn’t always as reliable as someone who actually owns their own H&M business.
2: Bring an extension cord and 4 way power board. Stay with me on this one, ok! Your hair person needs to be close to a powerpoint for their curler and hair dryer. If the only powerpoint is in the darkest corner of the room, then that’s where you’ll spend 45mins of your time.
It’s a shame, because it often means every everyone else is having a great time on the other side of the room (or actually in another room), while you’re missing out. So an extension cord allows you to set up the hair station where you want it, not where the power point is.
3: Make sure the make up person sets up their station next to a window with nice light. It makes for way nicer photos! In terms of good light, makeup is more important than hair on this one.
4: Try keep things tidy. Especially if it’s a small airbnb and you have 10 people in the same room. Once everyone puts their stuff on the ground, it gets messy really quick.. which means…people lose stuff… like all the time! It’s not unusual for 10mins to get take up by someone stressing over lost wedding earrings.
5: If you book an airbnb, either book two nights, so you can leave the place in a mess as you scoot off to get married, or ask a friend to stay behind to clean up. Otherwise you’ll also have to clean up everything before you hop in the wedding car.
6: And lastly, guests are almost always on time. Meaning they arrive 30mins before the beginning of the ceremony and the celebrant usually has everyone seated 5mins before go time. Maybe you want to arrive “5mins late” to really make sure all guests have arrived. But normally, things are in good order there.
RECOMMENDed HAIR AND MAKEUP ARISTS
Firstly, massive thanks to Made Up by Ruth for the 90min phone call which helped to make this blog post possible.
The H&M artists below are people we’ve personally worked with and can vouch they’re actually amazing.
