Looking to master your wedding day look? We tap Gucci Westman for a step-by-step guide on how to do your own wedding makeup – from achieving a flawless complexion to perfecting a subtly sculpted eye.
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Many look in the mirror after having their makeup professionally done and think: Who is that? Jessie Heyman, a Vogue editor and recent bride, can relate. “I got my makeup done for a Met Gala one year,” Heyman says. “When I ran into a friend in the hallway, he literally didn’t recognise me. I felt like the makeup was wearing me.”
That’s why she decided to do her own makeup for her wedding day—and felt confident about her choice until some well-meaning friends warned it would be a mistake. “Since I’m not a professional makeup artist or don’t even wear a lot of makeup, I started to doubt myself,” Heyman says. She told me she’d long admired makeup artist Gucci Westman’s aesthetic, and a few intros later, Westman offered to give Heyman a step-by-step tutorial on how exactly to do her wedding-day glam. Together, they settled on the look for the day: English rose skin, juicy lips, and minimally sculpted eyes.
“The goal of your wedding-day look is to enhance your natural beauty,” Westman says. “It will emphasize what you have and make the very most of it.” Here’s what Westman taught this Vogue editor about DIY’ing her own makeup for her wedding – brides-to-be, take note!
Pause – frequently
Doing makeup on your wedding day should be a marathon, not a sprint. Westman describes her makeup application technique as the “dip and dab,” mostly using her fingers to apply the products. “You should be taking a step back during each step to look at everything you have applied in an area and how it looks on the entire face,” Westman says.
Know your skin
Creating a natural base for makeup will help you look just like yourself on your wedding day. “Your face isn’t just one colour,” Westman says. “When people are shocked by a makeup application, they are typically reacting to the fact that a single colour is applied uniformly across the face, covering up all of the things on your skin that make you look like you.” In a dream world, owning two different shades of a product like concealer will help create this effect.
But if that’s not an option, it can be done with just a handful of products. Instead of going for a foundation-shellacked face, try spot treating areas with an exact-match concealer shade. “It’s best for the shade to be an exact match, not a touch lighter, because you’re simply looking to counteract the darkness, not lighten areas.” That’s how you avoid the skin from looking “makeup-y,” she says.
Understand what to highlight and mattify
“Once you’re finished correcting the skin, you’ll want to add a little bit of life back into it,” Westman says. That’s where a highlighter (and even a powder) comes into play. “Dewy and matte skin add natural definition to the face without getting into the world of contouring.”
The first step is going matte. When it comes to the powder, Westman’s hand is ultralight—just a dusting with a big, fluffy brush on the areas you know get a bit too shiny. Then go in and add the luminous highlighter in the classic places, like the tops of cheekbones, Cupid’s bow, corner of eyes, and brow bones.
Know how to erase a makeup mistake
So you’ve done something to your makeup that you don’t like. It’s annoying on any normal going-out beauty routine—and devastating on the day of your wedding. “Take your foundation brush, and just dab over it to gently erase,” Westman says. You won’t want to add a fresh helping of product to the brush (or else you’ll be starting over from the beginning) but instead “rely on what’s on the brush to blur out what you don’t want.”
Enliven the skin
It’s touches of warmth — whether in your blush, bronzer, or lipstick — that will bring back the joy and life into skin. It’s also the secret to not looking washed out on your big day. “This isn’t the time to get experimental with blush placement,” Westman says. On Heyman, that meant apples of the cheeks—and Westman shares her secret face-lifting tip too. “Extend the blush up to the middle of the ear, basically where your sideburns start. It’s not too high up, but will give a slight noticeable lift to the face.” From there, swipe or pat a lipstick and gloss on, and voilà, instantly perky skin.
