I have been waiting to review Donna until I got my pictures back from my photographer. I've been very torn about my review, because while Donna did a great job, she caused us to run 2 hours behind, which greatly affected my pictures that I spen...t a great deal of money on, and was the one point of stress for me the entire day.
I hired Donna because I had met her when I went with my best friend for her hair and makeup trial in 2013, and I really liked her. She did a great job with the hair and makeup for my friend's wedding and she was very nice. I trusted that she would be a good choice for my wedding day, because my friend had been really happy, and she has great reviews. So I hired her and didn't worry about it again.
I had eight bridesmaids needing hair/makeup, plus myself and my mom. I had been promised that it would be Donna + 2 other artists, we would start at 8:00am, and we'd all be done by 2:30pm. On the day of my wedding, Donna and one other artist showed up at 8:00am. There was no explanation, no warning that we would need to start earlier.
We didn't finish until 4:30pm for a 6:00pm ceremony. Needless to say, the time I had to take pictures was extremely short, and I have very few family pictures and pictures of the bridesmaids/full wedding party to choose from. You can very much see the stress and anxiety on mine & my mom's faces in pictures because we're running so late, and since we had only 10 minutes to do family pictures, 20 minutes to do bridemaid and full bridal party pictures with a bridal party of 17 people, we didn't end up with any shots where EVERYONE looked good, because we didn't have as many shots/poses to choose from. Although my amazing photographer did the best she could to give us enough to choose from, the incredible time crunch we ended up with really limited her. We also chose our venue partially because of all of the beautiful outdoor spaces where we could take pictures, but because we were so incredibly behind, we didn't get to utilize any of those spaces.
As a professional who does this for a living, regardless of the reason she ended up shorthanded, she could have called me and said we'd need to start earlier, or she could have advised us that she needed to prioritize who she did first. Had she called me ahead of time and said she was shorthanded, I'd have asked my 2 bridesmaids who did their own hair/makeup beautifully to help some of the other girls. Or, had she pointed out at any point that it seemed like we would be running behind based on the amount of people she had left to do, we could have planned to get me done and do my first look earlier, so that when the girls were done we would have more time to do bridesmaids/bridal party shots. She was the professional, we relied on her to get us done on time, and we were greatly disappointed.
Things happen, and I'm not so unreasonable that I don't realize that people get sick and back out at the last minute, or that people make mistakes and she may have thought she'd have enough time to get us all done with just two artists. However, as a professional, I would have expected that when she realized how badly we ran behind, that she'd have at least reached out after the wedding to explain or apologize, or offer a partial refund, or even just ask if everything turned out okay. Especially because I still encouraged my friend who is getting married in November, who I am MOH for, to still hire her for her wedding day because she does do great work.