How Going Makeup-Free at My Wedding Helped Me Feel Loved For Who I Am
I started babysitting when I was 11 years old. By the time I was 14, I noticed something uncanny. Looking at the wedding portraits on the families’ walls, the dads looked like themselves (sometimes with more hair), but the moms were unrecognizable. Unfortunately, these were often the only photos of them in their own homes.
As an adult looking back, I can imagine a few reasons for this. The wedding industry sells the idea that women aren’t photogenic and need beauty services. What’s formal, elegant, or beautiful is often the opposite of each woman’s unaltered default, so these women spent their engagements “working” at unsustainable characteristics for “perfect” photos. It’s possible that these families didn’t prioritize professional photography or getting prints, so they just hadn’t added recent pictures to their home. But I usually got the impression after asking how long they’d been married, that these mothers hadn’t seen themselves as worthy of being photographed since their wedding day. “I know it’s hard to imagine, but I was quite pretty back then,” a few told me. I thought they were beautiful still, and the way their wedding photos did not reflect them was unsettling.
Years later, in the summer before college, a friend was helping me paint my kitchen. He overheard “Say Yes to the Dress” playing in the other room, and chuckled “I would be upset if the woman I proposed to showed up on our wedding day looking like a completely different person.” He hit a nerve. On my wedding day years later, I walked down the aisle looking like myself. Afterwards, I thanked him, “I would have looked like a different woman on my wedding day if you hadn’t said that.”
However, his comment didn’t immediately spur change in me. My pocket of the world was filled with expensive and extensive cosmetic alterations, and sometimes I would wonder “could they ever look like themselves again?” After a certain number of facelifts and bone-altering surgeries, did people ever mourn the face they once had? I also imagined the pearly gates. What face would we have in heaven, the one we manufactured–or the one God gave?
Despite these unsettling thoughts, I still behaved the way magazines told me I should. I wore makeup everyday and even more for special events. I shaved the hair deemed unsightly, and groomed my allowable hair as stylishly as I could. When a benefactor offered me and my sister laser hair removal because “She wished she had this time-saver when she was younger,” I jumped at the chance. A few sessions in, a new technician was removing pubic hair. She brusquely criticized my prep work, which was in line with the former tech’s guidelines. I was on a cold table, vulnerable, and permanently altering my genitals… for what? When I pushed myself, a voice whispered back “This isn’t for spontaneous beach days, it’s in case your potential future husband doesn’t like pubic hair.” The voice grew louder between every pulse of the laser, “And the current trend against pubic hair is due to online content I don’t want in my marriage anyway. What might my future husband be doing right now? There is no chance he’s having a stranger permanently remove hair from his groin in case his future wife won’t like it.”
I never finished those treatments. I reeled a bit over the next couple of years. Every time I went to tweeze my eyebrows, whiten my teeth, dye my hair, put on mascara, I kept asking myself “Why am I fixing something that isn’t broken?” Why did I associate pain with beauty or discomfort with formality and respect? When did I start caring about my weight? Where did I learn to not see the female body as feminine?
I challenged myself to become “totally at peace” with my body. Whenever I felt less than, I asked myself questions like “Would a twin brother worry about the same thing?” or “how timeless is this standard for women? Would a healthy man 200 years ago think this was feminine or normal? 100? 50 years ago?” Or “If I had a daughter who looked like me, would I want her to feel bad about this trait?” I was shocked at how deep some of my limiting beliefs were. I’d had enough. I wasn’t going to be constantly at war with my one and only body.
When I met my husband, I had quit shaving and hair dye completely. He saw me wear makeup for the last time. He felt so unlikely, but somehow natural. He was a friend of a friend who lived across the country. I had nothing to lose with this romance, so I decided to be unapologetically myself for the first time while dating. I didn’t care if my demeanor wasn’t inviting or chill. I didn’t care if my body hair was countercultural. I didn’t care if my standards felt high or foreign to this man who was accustomed to casual dating. I realized that I didn’t want to attract as many men as possible–I wanted to attract the right man and avoid everyone else. Authenticity is both a deterrent and inducement. I wasn’t going to try attracting a spouse with a personality or appearance I’d have to maintain. I wanted to live with someone, not as someone.
When we were planning our wedding, we got the advice to spend more time planning our marriage than the wedding day, and to have the two align–to begin as we meant to continue. We spent far more time in premarital counseling (a standard practice in our faith) than we spent picking out the hors d'oeuvres. I am grateful that we designed the day to be “the beginning of many.” The emphasis on this being the beginning of our new chapter, and not the end of a fairy tale, shattered the false princess narratives which emphasize the bride and her looks over the groom and their vows.
The thing is, I was happy I was not going to be a princess in a castle. I was happy to become a wife in a home, and the embodied home of our growing family. This was how we wanted our marriage to be, so we incorporated our egalitarian, respectful standards wherever we could on our wedding day. We walked down the aisle together. The dress I designed allowed free movement and dancing and did not visually overpower my husband. I picked flat shoes in which I could celebrate the whole day.
I chose a photographer who would capture beautiful, colorful, realistic photos, instead of “light and airy” fairytale photos. Not only did I want to avoid the fairytale, I wanted the photos to accurately capture us and our guests. I specifically asked my photographer to not make cosmetic changes to anyone–as many will automatically whiten teeth, “fix” skin, or even distort body or facial shapes. The posed portrait and candid photographs from our engagement shoot led me to realize that people lie about women photographing poorly. Genuine happiness and ease makes for better photos than stress and self-consciousness masked with makeup.
On our wedding day, my husband and I enjoyed the morning getting ready with our friends. I'm glad I didn’t spend the day cooped up, only for him to see my “transformation.” Those pictures of our whole wedding party having brunch are joyful and show how the day began beautifully. Every vendor who was there declared it the “most chill” wedding morning they had ever seen, and I’m proud of having a celebration instead of a production. I’m thankful we spent most of the day together because we had really similar experiences of our wedding day. There was no major inequity where the men got changed and then drank all morning while the women spent thousands of dollars on hair and makeup. We ate, listened to music, and relished the moments together with close friends and family.
I didn’t spend my wedding day touching up makeup, or needing to be concerned about hugs ruining my hair or foundation. I laughed, ate, kissed, and cried freely. I moved and danced without inhibition. The day wasn’t special because of how I looked, but because we took a leap of faith. At weddings we celebrate the bravery, optimism, and selflessness of couples promising to keep lifelong vows. We should care about the stability and goodness of their new family, not their looks.
When it's nearly universal for women to look like strangers in their wedding photos and then disappear from their family's photos, and in a way, their own homes, it isn't a private matter, but a cultural one. Women, especially wives and mothers, should feel at home in their own bodies, and their appearance deserves to be captured and celebrated in their own homes. A culture that rejects women in their natural state and pushes them out of the frame is one that needs to change. That change happens through the collective actions of women taking up space in their natural state–especially on special occasions.
At the reception, my oldest friend’s mom, in a full face of makeup, pulled me aside and told me “My daughter said you no longer wear makeup! I am so happy for you. You are choosing an honest path for yourself! And on your wedding day! You’re saying ‘this is who I am.’” She’s right – I was accepted as I am. My future children will recognize me, and themselves, in our wedding photos, which will be displayed alongside plenty of candid barefaced photos of us in our home.
Editor's note: This article was originally published in the Winter 2023–2024 Home issue of Verily. You can purchase the issue by itself here. To receive future issues of Verily, become an annual subscriber. You'll get four beautiful issues of Verily in print throughout the year, delivered straight to your mailbox.
