Vendor Reviews Round Four: Hair & Makeup

Let’s look at my hair and makeup vendors today.

Hair: Beautycalls: The Mobile Stylist/Bene
Rating: 4 out of 5

I have to admit that I was a bit worried about this vendor. While my hair trial was OK in the end, it did have some bumps. Bene, the hair stylist assigned to me, was 30 minutes late and it did take us a bit to find something that worked (though to be fair, I did have some ideas that didn’t work). The owner of Beautycalls, Charlene, also repeatedly mentioned how she was worried about me because she couldn’t reach me by phone the night before (I had confirmed the appointment by email) and I found that rather odd.

But on my actual wedding day things with Bene went great. She gave me the exact hair style I wanted and while it didn't last all night, it did at least make it through the photos and our ceremony.

 Things were a little bumpier with my sister (her first hair style was huge) but then she didn’t have a trial. Thankfully, Bene works really fast and soon my sister had great hair too while my mom had a nice blow-out.

Price-wise, Beautycalls is quite reasonable and because Charlene employs a number of people, she can likely find someone for your date. Compared to some vendors out there she is quite organized and even phoned me up post-wedding to see how things went. That’s something more vendors should do.


Makeup: Kim Martin
Rating: 3.5 out of 5

I really wanted to give Kim five out of five because she’s got a great personality, is excellently priced and does do a wonderful job. It’s just that she’s a bit on the slow side.

Now, this is Kim’s first real year of doing bridal makeup and I have no doubt that in a couple years time she’ll be quite speedy but for now, I would only use her if you had a small bridal party.

My two-hour long trial should have been a tip-off that Kim’s a bit on the slow side. But then we were playing around with false eyelashes and a few different looks and post-trial Kim did send me a face chart complete with colours/products used so I thought that would really speed things up. And while I’m sure it did, things could have been faster.

Bene, my hair stylist, also does makeup and I could see her watching Kim at one point and she didn’t look impressed. But once Kim was done, both my sister and I looked great (my only issue was that I could have used a touch more under eye concealer though my eyes did look fine right after she did them) and our makeup did last all night.

Kim doesn’t have a website but if you email me (wedtoblog[removethis]@gmail.com) I’ll pass her contact info over to you.

Wedding Hair Inspiration

Looking for wedding hair inspiration? Well, you could flip through a bridal magazine (or maybe even one of the special hair-only bridal magazines), scan through the appropriate wedding board posts or spend hours trying to put together your own creation in front of the mirror.

Alternatively, you could just head over to Google’s image search, type in “wedding hair” and get hundreds and hundreds of hair ideas in one quick, easy move.

Add in a modifier like “long” or “curly” to help narrow down the results (though note that this won’t strictly return long hair pictures, for example) or get even more specific by using a phrase like “curly bridal hair flowers”. You can even sort by colour, if for some reason that would be helpful.

I typed in “wedding hair long wavy”, “wedding hair long” and “best wedding hair” to get some ideas on how to wear my hair on Saturday (my second reception). While a lot of the results weren’t quite what I was looking for, I was able to get a few ideas that I think might work.

Spent Vs. Saved

So as promised in yesterday’s entries, here are five areas where we’re glad we spent the cash and five areas where we’re glad we saved.

Spent

The venue – As I mentioned in yesterday’s post, the Berkeley Church isn’t cheap but it was exactly what Shawn and I wanted and we received tons of compliments on the venue as well as the food. The staff was always friendly and while we had some communication snags with our initial planner, the planner who replaced her, Kathy, was quite helpful.

Open bar – No question, an open bar was the way to go. It certainly helped to get people up on the dancefloor, speaking of which…

DJ – So my original plan was to go with DJ iPod, an idea that Shawn shot down and I have no problems saying that I’m glad he did. We ended up getting a great DJ who closely followed our playlist while adding in his own touches at just the right moment.

At-home hair & make-up – I think being able to get ready in the comfort of my own home, and not have to worry about rushing to and from somewhere, really helped to make the wedding day more relaxing.

Hotel room – This is one of those areas that I initially thought was a waste of money but the truth is, being able to head to a hotel after the wedding was a nice treat, as was the swim we got to take the following morning. We stayed at the Thompson Hotel and its lovely rooftop pool totally made up for the alarm clock that went off at 6 in the morning and the scent-heavy detergent used on the bedding (and no, I’m not one of those anti-scent people).


Saved

The dress – Technically this is an area where my parents saved but whatever. My dress, which I quite liked (I’ll post a picture at some point) was quite reasonable for a wedding dress of its style. All in, including alternations, the veil, fancy dress bag and taxes, the dress cost under $1,500 which while not cheap, is a good deal considering its size and the amount of detailing it had.

The wine – Our wine was $11.95 a bottle and personally, I thought it tasted just fine, as did many other people. As any wine expert will tell you, the cost of a bottle of wine has nothing to do with its quality so don’t feel like you need to spend big bucks on your dinner wine.

Décor – We cheaped out big time here. All our décor, including our centrepieces and the few flowers we used for the head table/ceremony and the escort card table came to maybe $500. And some of that we’re getting back because I’m selling what I can on the bridal boards (actually, I should probably post that stuff on here too). While we certainly could have spent more here, I don’t think we really had to. The inside of the Berkeley is quite pretty with its stain glass and fireplaces. Plus it helps that the Berkeley includes coloured up-lighting and dozens of tea lights all over the place.

The flowers – The flowers we got were beautiful; Picasso lilies are now my new favourite; but we didn’t have a lot of them and in the end, I think that was fine. Our cake was actually supposed to be decorated with fresh flowers but for whatever reason the florist forgot to bring those so the cake went flowerless. At first I was a bit annoyed but then, as I thought about it, I was OK with what had happened because I realized that I no longer had to pay $35 for something that would be used for a few hours and then thrown out.

Transportation – We didn’t pay for any special transportation and while fitting my big dress in the back of our SUV was a bit awkward, it was certainly preferable to paying some obscene amount for some tacky vehicle.

My Wedding Hair Trial

Since I want my hair done at home on my wedding day and I don’t want to pay $200 to get it done, I’m going with a company called The Mobile Stylist. It’s run by a woman named Charlene and she assigned me a hairdresser named Bene. Since it’s cheaper for me to go to them for the trial, yesterday I headed up to Charlene’s condo in North York.

To be honest, I was a bit nervous about the whole. Though I had photos of what I wanted done and I was assured by Charlene that Bene knows what she’s doing, I was still worried that I was going to end up blowing $68 on shitty hair style and then I’d find myself in a desperate search for a new stylist.

Last night I had my hair trial done.

Thankfully my worrying was for nothing. Both Charlene and Bene were quite nice and

during the appointment they talked about their business and previous jobs in a way that reassured me that they are true professionals who show up on time, stay late if needed and get the job done properly.

Bene was great at taking criticism and suggests, from both me and Charlene. She nailed the back of my hair on the first try but the front wasn’t looking quite right. So she played with it bit and we figured out a way to make it look much better.

She also took lots of photos on both mine and her camera so that we have something to look back at on my wedding day.

So overall I think things went pretty well and I’m quite happy with the end results.

Some general hair trial tips:

1. Figure out one or two stylists that you like and then bring images of those styles
2. Bring your veil and any hair jewellery you plan on wearing
3. Wash your hair the night before are you normally. Blow drying it with a paddle brush is fine would but don’t style it or put any products in it
4. The morning of your trial just brush your hair and leave it loose, free of any products and heat