Why modern wedding make-up gone oldfashion?

Sun, 02/22/2009 11:47 AM  |  Lifestyle

Preparing a big day such as marriage of a lifetime can be considered as a big thing to handle. From choosing the date, venue, outfit, d*cor, catering, invitation, and so on surely can multiple major headache. Lucky these days there are services from wedding organizer to take away most of your hustle bustle. But still, appearance to perfection for *The Day' would be most brides' personal obsession. Just in case you're wondering why many bride's make up in our local wedding often look excessively thick like the face of kitsch traditional doll from souvenir shop you find on your holiday trip, let me tell you the struggle from make up artist to prepare that big day.

When it comes to decide one final look, normally a soon to be bride will consult with style gurus. That's normally involving fashion designer, make up artist and hairstylist. If I was born a female I would be so excited to decide on my own look, I will make sure that I would stand beyond just pretty, but dashingly fashionable and uniquely memorable as well. But that's me as I'm cursed by style, in general most women like to play *safe' on their wedding day. But safe doesn't mean it'll be slipped away from the family's art direction interference.

In many cultures, wedding is still believed as the parent's final project for their kids. Therefore their approval beyond who you're married to is crucial. Ironically, sometimes their approval is also carried away to the decision on how their kids should look like on their wedding day. Luckily we don't find that *wearing an ancestor's wedding gown' culture anymore nowadays, what's left is wearing a make up that looks old fashion according to the wedded couple parents' heydays trend!

As there's a wedding rehearsal, there's also a make up rehearsal. This is the sensitive part for most make up artist, as their biggest nerve breaking is not from their indeterminacy on how they should make the bride face, but likely the pressure comes from the *family judges' including the bride's mum, aunts, and even grandma that would join that make up test session as well.

Over and over again the ideal soft wedding make up is being modified according to the judges' "classic" taste. It's never seemed enough to wear bolder make up that will be inerasable for a day even under the heat of room spotlights. More layers and more color application will be continually added until most of the judges approve the look. Sadly for the poor brides, they're normally can be so undecided, and let their older generation to wear the pants on their beauty decision making instead. Perhaps this can be the first cause on why wedding make up is quite costly? To pay make up artist's stress before amount of make up they put on, maybe?

To have a test make up without ancestor judges is quite rare here despite some make up artists require the bride to be to come alone for the test session to cut too many ideas. In the end, a job as make up artist sounds just like make up applicator as their idealism to create modern simple wedding look is often vanished by the old tradition request. Furthermore, for less than modern wedding custom, many make up artist also have to compete with dukun pengantin (wedding shaman) to get the job. Dukun pengantin is a person in charge to dress and put on make up for both bride and groom in Javanese wedding. They normally look very traditional, and believed to fast several days before the D day for spiritual reason. When they put on the make up, they will look heavily made up themselves with proper make up and wear traditional costume.

With all this custom, culture, tradition, and *classic' judges involvement, it becomes very rare for me to witness the bride make up that express today's soft and chic trend. And when I see it, I could appreciate natural beauty meet modernity more rather than giving shocking stare for couple of minutes which can be very rude to the masquerade-ish bride.

If you do a traditional wedding, then masquerade theme will be fine, but when you decide on a modern one, let's stick to the new sposa trend you can easily find on international magazine rack in major bookstores. Let's disagree on gimmick theory "To appear competitively fiercer than your beautiful guests on your wedding day" is correct. You may kiss the *mask' bye now.

--Diaz

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