Wedding hair and makeup on the Mornington Peninsula
I travel from the Middle Park studio down the Peninsula for weddings, from Mornington and Mount Eliza through Red Hill and Merricks out to Sorrento and Portsea. Makeup and hair for the whole bridal party, both in the same booking.
A Peninsula wedding morning is an hour or more from town in each direction, and that changes how the booking works rather than just what it costs. I leave early in the morning, so nobody is paying for a hotel room for the makeup artist, and I arrive with a full professional kit and a chair, ready to work in whatever room you are getting ready in.
Peninsula bookings start from three or four services. That is what most bookings down here look like, and the reason is the distance. If it is just you, say so when you write and it becomes its own booking with its own figure, counted from the hours it takes. Four services is a small bridal party, the bride plus three, or two people having hair and makeup each, and it scales up from there to the whole group. If you are one person and you are coming into town anyway, the Middle Park studio takes single bookings at studio prices.
Peninsula and coastal bridal work
What the Peninsula does to a face, and what I do about it
Long wear is what I am known for, and the Peninsula is where it gets tested properly. Ceremonies here happen outside: on an open terrace above the vines, on a lawn with nothing between you and the weather, on sand. Wind comes off the water all afternoon, light bounces back up from the bay and from pale gravel, and the day itself is long, because guests drive between the ceremony and the reception instead of walking across a foyer.
For an open ceremony I build the base differently. A primer with a high protection factor goes on first, and the foundation over it carries SPF as well, so the protection is part of the makeup. Skin that has been in the sun since eleven in the morning does not hold colour the way skin in a room does, and a long outdoor day is won or lost at that first layer.
The hardest test I have had for this was not a wedding at all. On a shoot the models swam, and the makeup came out of the water intact. Nothing an open terrace can do is worse than that.
What travel costs, and what time I arrive
- $1 for every kilometre driven. The drive happens twice, out and back, so in practice it is $2 for every kilometre between the studio and your venue.
- Around $110 for Mornington and Mount Eliza. Red Hill, Merricks and Balnarring sit further down, and Sorrento and Portsea further again, closer to $200 at the far end.
- Confirmed before you book, in writing. Nothing is added afterwards, whatever the traffic did.
- From four services. The price is for the work, not for how many pairs of hands are on it or how long it takes.
I will set off as early as the morning demands, and I can be working on you at five. Your start time is worked backwards from two things: the hour the whole group has to be finished, and how many people are being done. Give me those two numbers and the arrival time falls out of them. Changing afterwards is separate, so include it in the hour you name. For a larger party an assistant comes with me, and it does not change what you pay. The reason is arithmetic: a group of eight has to be finished by the hour written on the invitation, and one pair of hands cannot do that. Full prices are on the pricing page, and travel sits on top as its own line.
The bride, her mother, her sisters and the bridesmaids
Most of a wedding morning is not the bride, it is everyone around her. Guest makeup starts at $170 a person and hair is priced separately, so a party of four is an ordinary Peninsula booking rather than a large one. Send me the list and I will set the bookings up for you instead of everyone doing it themselves.
One person does the hair and the face, which this far from town is arithmetic rather than taste: nobody else is coming down the freeway, so the two get planned as a single job instead of fighting over the same half hour. An updo changes what the eyes can carry. A veil that comes off before the reception changes where the volume should sit. Both are decided in advance rather than discovered at eleven. Prices by hair length are on the hair styling page, and how a wedding booking runs from the trial onwards is on the bridal page.
A trial is booked separately at $230. For a Peninsula wedding it earns its keep more than usual, because it is where we find out how the look behaves before it meets wind and a full afternoon of sun, rather than finding out on the day with a photographer already there.
Vineyards, coast and barns: why the venue changes the makeup
Vineyard and estate weddings, the kind held at places like Montalto, Port Phillip Estate, Polperro, Jackalope and Lindenderry at Red Hill, sit up off the water and run mostly outdoors. That means sun on an open terrace for hours, and a long gap between the ceremony and the sit down while everyone moves between them.
Coastal weddings are a different job. At the surf club end of Portsea, or looking down over the beach at Sorrento, there is wind, salt in the air and sand underfoot, and the photographs happen in flat bright light coming back off the water. Hair gets pinned with that in mind rather than left to take its chances, and the makeup is built to be seen in the pictures rather than in the room.
Barn and heritage weddings, the Baxter Barn and Tanglewood kind, start gentle and finish late, under warm low light with hours of dancing after dinner. That is a longevity problem rather than a weather one, and it gets solved at the start of the day, not at ten o clock at night.
If your venue is not named here, ask anyway. The Peninsula has more places to get married than any list holds, and the conditions repeat even where the names do not. If you would rather I met you closer to town, mobile bookings across Melbourne work the same way.
Book a Peninsula wedding
Tell me the date, the venue or the address I come to, and how many people are being done. The start time and the exact travel fee come back to you in writing before the date is held.
Online booking is for the studio in Middle Park. For a mobile booking, send an enquiry instead: travel time is planned by hand, and the start time and travel fee are confirmed first.