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My bridal trial didn't go very well...

Hello everybody,
I had my bridal trial for both hair & makeup 2 days ago, and I hated it!
I have a contract with beauty company, I gave them a deposit and the owner, also lead makeup artist assigned with one of the artists on her team.
The artist I got was nice, but I could tell right away that she was tired (which is understandable as she just came from doing wedding hair services that morning), and I could feel that she trying to reduce the amount of work she has to do, and not in a good way. She said that this is only a trial and it's on the wedding day when we do everything perfectly. Well I know that the trial is not the real deal, but I thought the trial was for me to see how I will look on wedding day, and artists supposed to go all the way with it so bride can see if there was anything she doesn't like in my hair or makeup so it can changed!

At the end of the trial, I looked worse than when I came in, without any makeup! My hair looked nothing like the picture I showed hair, the updo was much higher than what I asked for and my hair looked messy from the front. I know that an updo or makeup will look different on me than it will on women in the pictures I found online or in magazine, but it wasn’t just different, it was an entirely different updo, and the makeup… I can’t begin to tell you how many issues there were with it. I asked for a winged defined eye liner look, the liner turned out with totally different wings on each eye. When I asked her to fix it, I had an eye with a smudged wing and then one eye with thick eye liner and one with thin.

I asked her to fill in my eyebrow and define them, as they’re naturally thin and not defined, and I was trying to explain to her how I usually define them myself, she interrupted me and said she understands and just filled them in quickly without adding any definition, even after I asked to go back and fill them in more. Every eye brow ended up looking different.

She used a shimmery bronzer to contour my cheekbones, isn’t that a no-no in the makeup world?

The lipstick and lip liner ended up way outside the natural outline of

I left the studio to look at myself in the natural light and find my face looking exceptionally yellow, with a drastic different difference between my face and neck colours. My skin (especially around the tzone) also became oily with an hour after the trial. My my everyday makeup application, I go for hours before that starts to happen.

Now, I was very nice to her all along (maybe too nice), asked her to fix things that I didn’t like but at the end I gave up asking because nothing was going how I envisioned.

I didn’t know what to do as I can’t have her doing my makeup on my wedding day, but I felt bad because she was tired and she seems to be also starting out her career, so I don’t want her to get in trouble. At the same time, it wasn’t all lack of experience that made me end up with a horrible look, a lot of it, I felt, was carelessness and laziness, and my bridesmaids and I will be paying a lot of money for these services, and we deserve much better.

I ended up emailing the owner the next day and telling her that I would like to work with a different artist, as the one this one and I don’t match in style. I mentioned only a couple of issues, like the yellow oily face, the updo and eyebrows, but I did say that she was nice and I don’t want her to get in trouble. The owner hasn’t responded yet.

Did I do the right thing?

Otherwise I would love to cancel my contract with this company altogether and just work with a different one, and have the trial before signing the contract, that if I find availability as my wedding is in less than 3 months. Can I cancel with them if I want to; I only paid for the deposit, not yet for the trial as the owner still has to follow up with me about its payment, so I figured the deposit can pay for the trial (it’s $30 more than the cost of the trial), and I just let them know that I’m cancelling.

Re: My bridal trial didn't go very well...

  • I would find wait to hear back from the owner. If you're that upset, hopefully they'll offer to do a new trial with another person. If they don't I would find someone else. You're correct to think that they shouldn't be doing a half-ass job. 

    Some places, if you pay for a trial and then actually hire them to do day of, will apply the amount you paid for the trial towards your "day-of" cost or package, and it doesn't hurt to ask if they'll do that if it's not advertised. 
  • Don't wait too long to hear back from the owner. Personally, I would get them on the phone, while at the same time trying to find another company so you have a Plan B. When you do hear from the owner of the first company, as Augsum15 mentioned, I would ask them to do a second free trial with another artist and confirm that the first artist will not be involved in doing anything for your wedding.

    I understand you wanting to be nice, but you are paying them to provide a service and you did not get the service you paid for. You can still be nice at the same time making your expectations very clear about what you want and what is not acceptable.

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