Bridal Pricing Guide

A hot topic right now is the “wedding tax”. As a bridal vendor and a 2026 bride I feel like I have a unique take on this, and it is that the wedding tax does not exist (for the most part). Now before I lose you, let me start with my own wedding pricing and why bridal may be more expensive than your standard appointment.

If a client books me to do their makeup and a blowout for their birthday dinner and their appointment is at 2:00 p.m. and they arrive at 2:30 I will let them know they now need to choose between hair and makeup services or maybe I can give them an express curl service with makeup, but there is no time for the blowout, because I have another client at 4:00. Most of the time the client understands it is their fault and is fine with it. With a bridal appointment the client is almost always running late - even when you go to their home to do the services. If you tell a bride on her wedding day that you cannot do their services because they came 30 minutes late, you haven’t bummed them out before a birthday dinner, you have ruined their wedding day and thousands of dollars of photos - you feel me? I always book an extra HOUR of time for bridal. Because on top of that, I want the bride to be able to change things, take calls, tear up, and stop to hug her bestie she hasn’t seen in years. I do not want her stressed about a timeline.

Now with that being said - the stakes are also bigger for wedding days so because of that I REQUIRE trial services for brides. And I hear you “but Angela, I just need something simple, a trial isn’t necessary”. I can assure you that it is. I have NEVER had a bride say they wish they didn’t have to do a trial run. I would say about 80% of the time my trials end with the bride saying the look was executed exactly as they had hoped and they loved it, and then the next day I get an email explaining how it just didn’t feel like the and they want certain things toned down or they will go with neutrals instead of color, or they want to change the lip color. Is this a criticism of my ability to execute their vision? No! It is after the client sees the look on them, they change their mind. And I am SO GLAD that they had the opportunity to do that before the wedding day. Once in a while we find that the products I am using don’t vibe with the client’s skin care or I need to purchase something special for them. I can’t do that on the wedding day. For the biggest day of your life where you are spending thousands on a dress and a photographer, where each photos most important quality is how your face looks, I promise that the three hours of time and $300 on a trial are so worth it.

So once again, when it comes to my services, let’s break down the prices I charge - take for example my bridal hair and makeup package, which includes travel in the Denver market AND trial services. I charge $175 for an airbrush makeup application and $100 for Formal Styling which are two 60 min appointments in the salon. 120 minutes for $275 breaks down to $2.29 per minute. For a bride I extend those appointment times to 90 minutes AND I require a trial services and I include 45 minutes of drive time one way. So that is 450 minutes for $650 So that is $1.44 a minute. Plus you will receive a complimentary Custom Touch up kit and all the invisible labor I do behind the scenes.

I find this math to also match up with photography most of the time. With a mini-photo session usually being about $250 for 30 minutes of coverage and 30 photos or less, with only 5 people or fewer. Large family shoots with an hour of shoot time are considered a very good deal at about $500-$800. A wedding photographer averegaes at about $5,000 which includes a one hour engament session before the day of, 8 hours of coverage, hundreds of people being photographed and 300+ photos back. For the family shoots you are paying $500 per hour conservatively. With a $5k photographer that comes out to $555 per hour and you get WAY more photos back. And of course some charge far more, others less. But you need to find vendors that align with your budget and not get angry that the high quality vendors you love charge more than what you have planned. I get the pain of it, I do, I was a budget bride myself.

Now while I have talked about me and how I do things - I know the industry is vast. But I also think that weddings ALWAYS require more work, attention to detail and stress. Being in the industry for 14 years the stakes for bridal are always so much higher, and the pressure has multiplied massively with social media. Is the pink buttercream used for the the florals on the cake too dark? Nonna won’t care for her 90th birthday but the bride might ask for a full refund because you ruined her wedding cake. Did you mispronounce Andrea’s name? Not that big of deal for her retirement party but could cause a melt down if Andrea is the bride. Was something on the Do Not Play list played by the DJ at cousin tom’s bar mitzvah? what a laugh! But if it was Larry’s wedding there will likely be a large bad review and a request for a refund. Do 10 chairs not match at Sally’s sweet 16 because they added on more a few days before? Who cares? But Sally the bride certainly does. The expectations, stress and pressure that brides have is unmatched by other events. And I GET IT! It’s a big day that takes a lot of time, planning and money. You (hopefully) only have it once. You have dreamed of it since you were little. You SHOULD care. But let’s not act like that pressure isn’t applied to all other vendors. We charge more because it takes more. We answer more questions, we communicate with coordinators and other vendors, we have to do more research and prep, we have to carve out more time in the schedule because you DESERVE it. Your big day warrants all the extra care and effort wedding vendors make. But that means we need to charge accordingly.

Now I have seen the videos of a cake being ordered for $150 and the bakery saying they want $800 because it was for a wedding, and I think that is crazy. I am also not entirely sure that is truely what happened. And I am not saying that some vendors do not go overboard. But hear me out - maybe we should be honest about what the occasion is and find vendors whose rates align with our budget instead of tricking them. Integrity goes a long way. If you want that high end celebrity MUA and they charge double for bridal, you should choose if you want to pay double, ask them if they can accommodate your lower budget or find a less expensive artist. Even if you feel like you do not see the invisible labor of being a bridal vendor, even if you don’t believe that labor exists, your integrity isn’t worth it. In addition I would say you do not get to dictate people’s value and rates. You would not be okay with a large employer going to an employee and saying “well as a manager you are working the same number of hours and doing mostly the same job as a cashier so we are just not going to pay you differently.” - that is what you are doing to a small independant business owner when you lie about what work you are having them do to get lower rates. It’s uncool.

My goal in this is to help create understanding about this topic, lessen animosity and encourage a more harmonious atmosphere for your wedding day.