Tips for Hair/make-up

Unpopular opinion but don’t tip anyone until at least a week after the wedding has passed. That way you can assess objectively without any bias how well the vendors performed. Never tip for bad service or no shows. Never tip for someone simply showing up to do their job. Only tip those who went above and beyond the call of duty. You decide how much you feel comfortable tipping. No one else has any business saying “you should tip this amount minimum, you should never tip the owner”, etc.

Your hair and make-up artists are most likely hired as a team, so they know to work collectively and step up as a team. You can tip on the total bill. The wedding day provides many hours to fix a style that is not working so you shouldn't have to worry if someone starts to be unhappy. For yourself, I would have trials so you're happy. I would not take the above posters advice and wait to tip as that would be unorthodox and rude for Beauty professionals, so add tip to final payment on the day-of.

I calculated hair & makeup tips separately, even though they were from the same company. I calculated based off the total # of services (we had more hair than makeup and we had 2 hairstylists vs 1 makeup) so for me I did 20% for each, we had 10 hair @ $100 each (total of $1000, so $200 for a tip, which is $100 per stylist) and makeup I had 8 @ $100 each (total of $800, so $160 tip for the makeup artist).

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Good point, Ashlee.

OP, my hair and make-up were two separate teams. I tipped on the bill for each, but did not consider satisfaction of work from each stylist (if that was your original ask).

I really have to agree with Michelle’s point. If I had just automatically tipped my hair and makeup artists without considering their performance I would have been “rewarding”them for: 1) taking too long and running our entire timeline late 2) doing a rush job on my sister because they realized they were running too late.


It’s not bad to consider your vendors work and tip them after it is complete. You can certainly prepare tips in envelopes before the day of, but if they cause problems and you aren’t satisfied, you don’t have to hand over that envelope of cash.
If they’re the same company, you can tip on the total bill.