I am thinking of firing my make up artist...
I'm getting married in my hometown this year, and my fiance and I work in a city faraway so planning has mostly been done remotely. I don't have lots of vacation days, but I did try to go back during the holidays and long weekends to meet the vendors. I picked my make up artist last year based on her portfolio and social media posts without doing a trial, since it wasn't practical for me to travel home at that time and vendors were getting booked up FAST.
Fast forward to last month, I asked her if she's available for a trial since I was in town for the long weekend. She said she's on vacation. So I told her the only other time we can do a mini trial is the week before the wedding. and she said okay. Last week, I reached out to her to ask her if she's available on a specific date for the mini trial. She replied with a scorn that I would even consider doing a trial that late. I insisted on doing a trial run so I can feel comfortable about how I look on the wedding day. She proceeded to instruct me to dye my hair to anything "other than black, but preferably light brown." I am Asian, I have black hair, and I love how my hair looks - never even considered dying them. The make up artist is Asian too. I was quite shocked so I asked her why, and she told me to just do it, because if she's recommending it, there must be good reason for it.
At that point I'm feeling very uncomfortable - not just that by her logic, 1/5 of the world's population would need to dye their hair to look good on their wedding day, but that I feel like she won't listen to me and style me the way I want it. I already paid a deposit, so I decided to give her the benefit of doubt. I asked her if she's open to doing a 20 minute zoom with me, since we won't get to do a trial makeup or meet each other until right before the wedding. She told me that 10 minutes is more than enough, and that we should use facetime, since she's never used Zoom. I proceeded to tell her my availability so that we can find a time, but she just replied that she's never available on weekends, and maybe available on weekdays. I never heard anything from her again.
At that point I feel like the communications have completely broken down. I paid a moderate amount for deposit, but I'm okay with letting it go if that means not stressing over my makeup over the next few months. Am I overthinking it though? Her portfolio and social media posts all look really nice, and I initially picked her because I liked her work. I was going to msg her tonight, but I saw her latest post just now and the bride has black hair and looks very pretty... I have asked around and found someone else who has availability - should I go ahead and break the contract with the makeup artist?
