Let me begin this review by saying that everyone’s hair and makeup looked great on our wedding day.
That being said, we feel we were not taken care of by Kiss the Bride. We are a same-sex couple so one of the biggest things we looked for in v...endors was the ability to make it through our wedding process without being made to feel other.
Initially, Katy was super helpful. My now wife, Brittany, had several “extras” on her list as she needed a fairly large back tattoo covered and was putting extensions in to give some extra volume to her hair. Katy assured her that even without a trial, everything would be perfectly fine.
Ten days before our wedding, we received our final invoice. This was my first inclination that we might be in for some awkwardness as only one bride was included in the breakdown when it should have been two. We definitely made it very clear to all vendors that they were dealing with two brides. This was self-preservation tactic to avoid this exact type of thing. I was irritated by this but no real problem, Brittany called Katy and a second bride was added to the invoice within minutes.
Fast-forward to Saturday. We chose not to do a first look so we were getting ready in separate areas with our respective groups (Brittany with her four bridesmaids and mother and me with my four bridesmaids, mother and stepmother). As the artists started to arrive, there was a ton of confusion about where they were supposed to be (though Brittany emailed Katy and let her know exactly where we were and that again, there were two brides). The artists had no idea that it was two brides and all of them said, “we’re supposed to be with Brittany”. One of the hair artists was particularly frazzled about the situation forcing me to feel as though we had somehow inconvenienced them.
As you might imagine, this isn’t exactly how you want to feel on the most important day of your life to this point.
Beyond this, it dawned on me after the fact, that none of my party or myself were airbrushed though our understanding was that this was standard for all Kiss the Bride packages. When I asked Brittany, she said that she and all of her girls received airbrushing — no prompting necessary. Makeup for my group went extremely slowly. My mom was the last to go, it was a rushed job, and she was asked to apply HER OWN eyeliner by the artist. My mom was extremely disappointed by this and quite literally finished as we were walking out to the ceremony so we had time for one faked mother-daughter getting ready photo. We conveyed our concerns about time constraints months prior and Katy told us there would be no issue.
We gave ourselves Sunday to relax and then called Katy Monday afternoon.. hoping to, if nothing else, bring awareness to how the artists’ confusion about two brides made us feel and to prevent this for future couples she may encounter. She was extremely defensive, made several excuses, and even said something to the effect of, “well 99.9% of our couples are a husband and wife”. We were simply trying to convey that it was her responsibility to make her artists aware of same-sex couples ahead of time to save the awkwardness and embarrassment of us having to tell them. I believe she was under the impression that we were hoping to get a return of some sort for my group not being airbrushed and while she probably should have offered it, that really was totally secondary and not the point at all.
Long and short, same-sex couples beware.