When the wedding is abroad and every trip to Spain is precious, it is natural to wonder whether the trial is really needed. It nearly always is, and not only for what the mirror shows that day.
What the trial is for, beyond seeing the result
The obvious part is that the trial lets you agree with what will be done: you see the makeup and the hair on, and decide whether they are what you pictured. The shades of your touch-up kit are chosen at the same trial.
For me there is something more important still, which no photo of the result shows: the trial is the day I learn how your skin and your hair behave. Every skin takes makeup in its own way, and every head of hair responds differently to the shape it is given and to the products that hold it. That can only be found out by working on you, and it is what lets me refine the result so much on the wedding day.
Fitting the trial into a trip to Spain
For a bride who lives abroad, the trial date is arranged around the trips she already has planned, and it is often set on the same visit as other appointments, such as the menu tasting.
When a wedding goes ahead without a trial
The trial is only skipped when it is impossible to arrange: a bride who lives far away arrives with so little time to spare that no trial fits between the airport and the morning of the wedding.
Those cases are rare. When they happen, the wedding morning starts from the photos and everything the bride has told me beforehand, and the clearer her idea, the more smoothly the morning flows, as it did at a wedding at Cortijo Pedro Jiménez in Casares.
So whenever it can be done, the trial is done. It is how you reach the wedding with everything decided, and with your skin and hair already known.
