I got an inquiry today from a bride needing to book a makeup artist for her wedding. I wasn’t available on her wedding day, but something about the wording of her email made me really want to help her out anyway. So I decided to share some info with her about the process of finding and hiring a great makeup pro. Then I realized that this is information I should share on a larger scale, so, here it is!

A Happy Bride who booked an awesome MUA (me!)

Hello Amy!
Thanks for getting in touch. I am unfortunately booked that day, and won’t be able to help you out. But your mail is really making me want to help, so let me just fill you in on a few important things!

1) Most (good) makeup artists book up for weddings in the summer about 3-6 months in advance, so at this point you might have a rough time finding someone great. Sundays are easier, but I would definitely try to get this squared away this week if you can! Also, holiday weekends are more popular, so whoever you do find might charge you a holiday rate above their regular rate, so I just wanted to prepare you for that.

2) In terms of pricing – you really need to not fear. You don’t need to spend $1,000 or more for a good artist. I find the mid range priced ones are just as good – I’d say you can find someone for $300 or less (for just you – bridesmaids would be extra.) Anyone charging less than that you’d definitely want to know why… because just like any service, quality people charge what they are worth, and you definitely don’t want to find someone who’s prices are too good to be true (they’re probably just starting out in the industry, or not very experienced.)

3) Your family is right – the importance of good makeup on your wedding day is just as important as flowers, dress, etc. Those photos will last a lifetime, and think about how much $ you’re investing in photos, dress, hair, etc….and if your makeup choices are not flattering, that’s all you’ll ever notice in the photos! Also, on the day of, people will be looking at your face a lot more than your dress or your hair or flowers. It’s true. So you definitely want a seasoned professional helping you make you look your very best. It is your wedding day, after all!

4) In addition to holiday fees, other artists will also charge travel fees and sometimes even early morning fees. If I were available, I would actually request all 3 of those fees. If you’re on a strict beauty budget, you’ll probably want to avoid dealing with that. So – I would try to find someone coming from close by (I’m far from there, in Brooklyn) to avoid any additional fees.

5) Do a trial run! For sure! To make sure that you like the artist and her work, and also to map out exactly the look you’re wanting for the day. Also, be prepared to pay for the trial – you are booking the artist for that day too, after all. For example, I charge $100 flat fee for a trial. Some artists are less, most are more. At the trial, your artist should take photos of the finished product and should chart out the products she used on a face chart, which she will then bring to the wedding so she can recreate the look.

So I hope that helps you out! Even though I won’t be able to be your makeup artist, I really hope you do find a great one for your wedding, and that this email helped prepare you for the process of finding and booking one. You won’t regret it! In the grand scheme of what you’re spending on the wedding, this will be a drop in the bucket. Totally worth it for the guarantee of looking fantastic on your wedding day!

Good luck,
Anni

Well the green trend is certainly alive and kicking in the bridal industry. Which is good, because weddings, usually, are not very green. But Eco-Beautiful Weddings is full of ideas about how to celebrate your perfect day in a non-earth-killing kind of way. Yay for that. The magazine is so green, in fact, that it’s only available online – no trees were killed in the process!

The photographer that invited me to be a part of the team is Parris Whittingham, an excellent bridal photographer who operates out of the offices of Green Spaces (noting a trend here?) http://www.greenspaceshome.com/
It’s a beautiful, huge loft in Tribeca where all green-minded entrepreneurs can work and network. And it was a great home-base for our work.

Robin Fisher is the style editor for Eco-Beautiful Weddings magazine, and was our stylist for the shoot. She came armed with piles of accessories and ideas. (show pages 8 and 16 to feature her) She and Persephone Efessiou are the minds behind Polished Image and Style, a personal image consulting firm. These girls know about style, confidence, power, and knowledge, and it was so good to get to meet and talk to them during the shoot.

The gowns are from The Cotton Bride, by Chris Cole. All cotton, all eco-friendly.

For the cover image, they asked if I could match her eyeshadow to the gold and the turquoise in the necklace. I didn’t have a strong blue/green like this in my kit. Thank goodness for the Flash Color Case from Makeup Forever. I took my palette and spatula and started mixing up colors until I had the exact hue of the stones in the jewelry. It was awesome.

I’m so proud to say I’ve finally got my first magazine cover! Here’s hoping for tons more!!!

Oh and here’s the rest of the relevant (to me) pages from the magazine:

I have what I think is an awesome working relationship w/ Mr. Stefan Heinich, an amazing fashion/beauty/portrait photographer. He’s one of the nicest, most genuine people I’ve ever met, not only in this business, but in my life! Totally true. You heard it here. Anyway, I first met him while playing the role of both model and MUA, and then this past month we’ve done a few shoots together with our new favorite brit-girl model Rachel. Working on different beauty looks and lighting and things like that. Check out some more of his work on Model Mayhem.

Shout out to Oleg Igorin for keeping up such a cool studio space and letting us use so many of the cool jewelry and other accessories there. Lots of inspiration to play with in that studio.

Silver blood!

Hopefully there will be lots of future collaborations with Mr. Heinich. He’s so easy to work with that it usually doesn’t really feel like work.

Oh and btw, the silver blood effect? That was one of those ‘sink or swim’ moments. It was totally the photographer’s idea, and he basically said – make it look like she’s stabbing her lip and making it bleed sliver blood. My immediate reaction was omg, how do I do that!?!?!? Then 3 seconds later I realized I could totally accomplish this, and easily too! I mixed clear Lipglass with the silver pigment from the MUFE Flash Case. And thus was born, Anni Bruno brand Silver Blood Gloss. Super hot.

Rachel - red earrings

Rachel, blue background

I had the opportunity to work with the talented Jackie Weppner of Merci New York again, on an engagement shoot. I’d have to be dumb to have passed it up, as this lady really knows her stuff. I’d like to think that between the two of us, plus a talented hairstylist – we can achieve beauty and style perfection. For sure.

And we got featured on The Wedding Chicks, which is also super cool.

Christopher Duggan took these amazing photos. He did an amazing job capturing the electric chemistry that exists between our couple, Haley and Easton. It just jumps out at you, right? They’re so cute!

Haley & Easton, framed.

Framed again.

Black is the new black.

Making her look good was not hard. And as they’re both Broadway actor/dancers, we had lots and lots of theatre gab time in the getting-ready room (in the Merci NY offices), so I was happy as can be! He’s ending his run in Billy Elliot to move to Salt Lake City, where they will both be dancing in the ballet there.

Haley & Easton on the Highline

Dancing in the sunset

Cafe time

These pictures make me happy. End of story.

Dancey pose

Gorgeous couple!

Photographer: Christopher Duggan, Threshold Visions
Prop and Fashion Stylist: Jacqueline Weppner, Merci New York
Florals: Kathleen Hyppolite, Kat Flower
Hair: Elena Pinkasov, Signature Styles Salon
Makeup: Anni Bruno, NYC Faces
Haley’s blue dress: Quail

Jen Huang is awesome. In so many ways.

1. Her photography work is fantastic, beautiful, dreamy – anyone wanting to capture the perfect moments of their perfect day should hire this talented lady.
2. She is so smart about business in general, and is really an inspiration for self-employed entrepreneurial women, such as me.
3. She invited me to this awesome event, full of brides, fashionistas, and wedding pros – and we had a really super good time. It was such a pleasure to be involved and to help out. And meeting Emmett McCarthy was way cool.

Emmett McCarthy and Amy DeGiulio

I arrived at Emmett’s store a couple hours before the event, intending to do Jen’s makeup, as well as Amy DeGiulio, the creative genius behind Sugar Cake Flower Shop. These ladies were among the featured vendors at the event, so I helped them look fabulous before the party started.

And of course, in true backstage fashion, I got to do more than just the 2 ladies scheduled with me – I got to do a quick touch up on the amazing Missy Murphy, photographer, then once Jen and Amy were done, the gown designer (Janet Nelson Kumar) wanted me to do a touch up on her gorgeous model.

And then when that was all said and done – Emmett hopped in the chair. And I have never had a better client, I think. Having done a ton of on-camera stuff (including all his time on Project Runway), he knew exactly what kind of makeup works for him, so he made it really easy for me. It was cool.

Also working on the event was a familiar face – Ms. Tammy Golson, event planner. She made everything look amazing, of course.

Jen took lots of photos of the event, check ‘em out!

Lovely Gowns!

Our model for the evening

Me - Prepping Missy

Missy Murphy and Jen Huang, wedding photographers

Jen, Ana, Tammy, Amy, and Missy

Jen's work on display

Floral Designs by Castle and Pierpont Floral Designs

Shout out to Ana Dolan, who did the stationery for the event. Catering was by Creative Concepts NYC. And here’s me with some wedding industry peeps, Kimberly and Juliet!

Me with Kimberly of Inspired Goodness and Juliet of Popies and Posies

I met the excellent and amazing Sofia Negron earlier this year, and we have a similar life story. We’re both performers that now do other stuff – she takes pictures, I paint faces. it makes sense. Sofia and I hit it off right away and I hoped I’d get to work with her soon – and low and behold, when this bridal inspiration shoot for Merci New York came up, I grabbed the opportunity and ran with it.

Life Is Wonderful

Barbara & Pamela

The concept was a collaboration between Sofia and our stylist, the amazing Jackie Weppner from Merci New York. The concept was to juxtapose NYC grit and the urban landscape, with pretty girls in pretty dresses. So we headed down to the Meatpacking district to scout some gritty/pretty locations. After snapping a few photos in Hogs and Heifers, and getting kicked out (even after buying beers! Not cool!), we found a double decker bus, and managed to sweet-talk our way into using it as our set. Pretty cool. After hitting a few more locations, it started to rain, but not before we got some beautiful photos, as seen below, here.

On A Tour Bus / At The Standard

This Dog Is Cute

The makeup design I did on our model Pamela was really very 1960s – Audrey Hepburn was my inspiration. Heavy brows and really precise, black liquid eyeliner – to create the Audrey cat-eye. On Barbara, I got to play with a bit more color, and she was my fresh, colorful bride, done up in plums and pinks.

That’s me, there, in the hot pink dress, workin’ it!

Prep Time

Street Touchup

Here’s some more pics of the getting ready room, at Merci New York.

Me, workin' it

Blank Canvas!

Audrey-esque brows and precision liner

Focused. Intense.

Eyeshadows! Pretty.

And here’s a few more shots from the day. Awesome stuff.

Another one with Barbara

Another one on the Bus

Canine Style

Best Model Ever

Photographer: Sofia Negron, Sofia Negron Photography
Stylist: Jacqueline Weppner, Merci New York
Hair: Kiwi Remy
Makeup: Anni Bruno, NYC Faces
Short dress: Anne Barge, Lovely Bridal Shop
Long dress: Sassi Holford, Gabriella Bridal Salon
Models: Pamela Bell, Barbara Sam

I recently had the honor of getting the great Eve Ensler camera-ready for One on 1 with Budd Mishkin, a weekly NY1 segment featuring local celebs and notables.

The piece is really great; she talks about her new book, I Am An Emotional Creature. She also discusses her early life, her development of the Vagina Monologues and V-Day, and what she’s up to now. An amazing, inspiring woman. I am so glad to have met her and to have been a contributor to the piece.

And it was so cool to meet Budd Mishkin! He’s just as nice as he seems on TV.

Check out the full piece on NY1.

Eve Ensler on NY1, Makeup by Anni Bruno

Eve Ensler on NY1, Makeup by Anni Bruno

I had a great time working with the awesome cast & crew of Inky Cloak Productions’ Hamlet last month.

It was a collaborative process, and I was brought on to work as a makeup consultant to help out some of the actors better bring out their characters through their stage makeup.

Already being extremely familiar with the play, having studied it in the past, I arrived on the first day full of ideas of how these characters are supposed to look (or, how they look in my brain). It’s been a while since I designed anything for the theatre fully on the production side, and it was nice not to have to think about performing too!

Ophelia (Madeleine James), Makeup Design by Anni Bruno

Gertrude (Lisa Millinazzo), Makeup Design by Anni Bruno

Gertrude & Claudius (Liam Torres), Makeup Design by Anni Bruno

Photography by Jane Stein.