
The Beautiful World of Bridal Styling:
Your Introductory Guide to a Unique Career Path
Even if you’ve only been in the beauty world for a hot second, it’s probably pretty clear that the career avenues, niches, and specialties in the field are seemingly endless.
To us, that’s an insanely good thing—you have all the options in the world, plenty of room for growth, and can consistently add to your skillset while remaining in the same industry. Plus, there’s basically no room for you to ever get bored.
But just because we’re big fans of the wide array of career paths doesn’t mean we don’t understand that it can be tough (not to mention confusing) when it comes time to whittle down your options and pick a niche.
If you’re sitting there wishing you could have someone (anyone!) explain some of the lesser-known career paths within the beauty industry, guess what—your wish is our command.
Today, we’re diving into one of the most fascinating, unique, and specific career paths you can tackle in the beauty industry—bridal styling.
We’ll take a deep dive into some of the basics of bridal styling to give you a better idea of this career, why it’s a solid choice, and of course, to help you determine if this specific career journey is the right fit for you and your beauty biz plans!
What is a Bridal Stylist & What Exactly Do They Do?
We’re going to start with a super broad definition at first, then we’ll get down to the nitty-gritty specifics. Sound good? Excellent.
At its most broken-down definition, a bridal stylist is a professional who assists a soon-to-be bride, bridal party, groom, or entire wedding party with creating and perfecting their perfect wedding-day look.
A bridal stylist is basically in charge of helping someone find their perfect look for their most important day, helping them curate a style they love and that represents them, and then putting that plan into action on that person’s wedding day.
A bridal stylist can be a professional who does it all—a fashion consultant, a hairdresser, a hair colorist, an esthetician, an eyebrow expert, a lash pro, a makeup artist. Or, a bridal stylist can niche down their offerings even further and offer just one or two services—you could be a bridal stylist MUA or a bridal stylist hair expert.
The cool thing about the bridal stylist career path is that it leaves room for options. Sure, you could niche down and be the absolute best at one specific bridal offering, but you can also continue to add services to your offerings, leaving room for your business to expand gradually.
Why Consider a Career as a Bridal Stylist
OK, so now that we’ve all built a foundation of what a bridal stylist does, now we’ll get to the good stuff—let’s break down why should you become a bridal stylist.
The Ultimate Flexible Schedule (With a Few Exceptions)
Here’s the deal, unless you absolutely jam-pack your schedule, you’re not going to have to attend a wedding every day of the week—this means you can likely have an incredibly flexible schedule that’s basically up to you.
If you work for a bridal stylist agency, you’ll likely have a little less control of your own schedule, but if you decide to go rogue and build your own biz, the rest is up to you!
Sure, tons of weddings will happen on the weekends, so working on your Saturdays and Sundays might be unavoidable, but if you want exclusive weekday weddings, we can bet there’s a way to make that happen, too.
Opportunity to Create Your Own Niche
The cool thing about being a crossover professional in both the wedding and beauty industries? You can combine your passions in insanely unique ways. People get married in all different ways all over the place, so that means you can create a business to best match your passions.
Love the dependability of a good ol’ fashioned traditional wedding with 300+ guests? Cool, there’s a market for that (and you know it). Want to help a bride get ready on a mountaintop before her adventure elopement? Yeah, there’s a market for that.
Prefer to travel around the country in your mobile beauty salon and work with brides all over the place? You can bet there’s a market for that, too.
Put Your Passion to Work in an Amazing Way
If you’re working in beauty and that’s your thing, you’re always putting your passion to work no matter what niche you decide on. But as a bridal stylist, you’re channeling that passion in a unique way.
For many people, their wedding day is one of the most important days of their lives—and for good reason, right?
You get to be a big, important part of that and you get to help a bride, groom, or entire wedding party look and feel exactly the way they dreamed they’d look and feel. That’s pretty amazing, isn’t it?
How You Can Kickstart Your Bridal Stylist Career
Kickstarting your bridal stylist career doesn’t have to be a terribly complicated process. Obviously, there are certs out there, classes you can take, and courses you can enroll in. And honestly, we think you should explore those options to get started.
But one of the best ways to grow in this industry? Find a mentor, someone you can shadow, or become an apprentice. You can only really get a feel for what the industry is like by being in the industry—so before you fully commit, find a kickass bridal stylist you can shadow or talk to.
Get a feel for the industry. Then set up some kind of mentorship program if possible.
While you're building your career as a bridal stylist, it's also important to protect your career and your reputation. One step in doing so is securing bridal stylist liability insurance. This type of insurance offers you a safety net, covering you in the event of unforeseen accidents, mishaps, or even misunderstandings that could lead to legal claims.
Are you (yeah, you, the one reading this here beauty blog) a bridal stylist? Any chance you could share some industry-expert knowledge with our crew?
We can bet that our beauty community would be thrilled to hear anything and everything about your decision to niche down in this particular sector of the beauty biz.
Drop a comment in our reply section below—share the good, the bad, and the beautiful about being a bridal stylist!
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