Engagement photos

I would make your appointment for around 2:30/3pm depending on what you’re doing on your hair.

Talk to the Stylist and see how much time she recommends.


I recently did my hair and makeup trial on the same day as engagement photos. I started makeup at 10:00AM, hair was at 12:30PM and photos were at 5:30PM. Everything was about a hours drive away from each other which is why I started so early. I also wanted to see how my makeup would last as proxy for the wedding.

My Make up and hair artist lived close to where I was getting the photos taken so I scheduled mine at 4pm. It took 2 full hours and then we drove to the location to meet with our photographer at 7pm

I agree with the others - it will depend what you're having done. I would show your stylist a picture of what you want and ask their advice, but as a rough guide I would leave about 1.5 hours for makeup, and the same for hair, plus don't forget travel time and time to put clothing on! Generally makeup shouldn't take longer than an hour but a bit of buffer is good.

Are you doing your hair and makeup as a trial for your wedding? In this case, I would err on having it done too early, because part of what is good to test during the trial is how well the look lasts all day. Hair styling and makeup will generally always look best when fresh, but you want a good sense of whether or not the look will last 6 hours or need major touch ups after 1 or 2.

You can also let your HMUA know when you absolutely need to be done by (calculate time to change, get to your photo shoot site, etc) and have him/her give you an estimate of how long it will take to do your look, and how much time to buffer.