Hairstylist and Makeup Artist Travel Rates for Weddings

Bridal Info

Jul 22

Vendor Travel & Lodging Tips

When planning your wedding, don’t forget to factor in travel and lodging for your vendors. If your venue is in the mountains, at the beach, or more than an hour from the nearest city, it’s generally considered a destination wedding—and that can affect pricing.

A cliffside ceremony or lakeside resort sounds incredible (and makes for stunning photos!), but it’s important to understand that anything requiring over an hour of travel from a vendor’s home base is no longer considered local. Vendors have to account for round-trip “windshield time,” early start times, long wedding days, and sometimes overnight stays—all of which influence travel fees.

At Beauty Asylum Hair & Makeup, we do our best to keep travel costs reasonable by having talented artists based in multiple regions. This allows us to pair you with someone nearby whenever possible. For more remote or international weddings, higher travel costs may be unavoidable—but they’re worth it for peace of mind and professional expertise.

If you come across a stylist offering unusually low rates, be sure to check their experience level and reliability. The last thing you want is added stress on your wedding day.

What You Need to Know & Why

A wedding two hours away might not sound far initially—until you consider the round trip drive on the same day. Travel fees are based on both getting to your venue and returning home after the event. Those extra hours on the road, often before sunrise or late at night, add up quickly.
Behind the scenes, travel involves more than just time. There’s mileage, gas, wear and tear, and vehicle maintenance afterward. These factors ensure our artists can arrive safely and continue serving future brides with the same reliability and care.
Our stylists pour their heart into bridal hair and makeup, and work weekends away from their families. Many of us have loved ones who work or attend school Monday through Friday, and wedding days are time spent away from home the entire day.
We love our craft and when we commit to your wedding, it’s because we want to make your day beautiful—it’s also a meaningful sacrifice of personal time.
As a highly sought-after team of bridal stylists, we book 5–6 local weddings per Saturday during our busy season (March, April, May, June, September, October, and November).

Each lead artist is able to commit to one wedding per day— when we travel for a destination event, we’re turning away multiple local opportunities. For this reason, weddings include an incentive fee to help balance logistics and ensure your date is prioritized.
If you’re seeking the top hair and makeup artists in the industry, plan to invest a more for travel and lodging. When multiple stylists are needed for your wedding, travel fees and lodging arrangements apply to each individual. Each artist may be based in a different city.

TRAVEL RATES

Basic travel is included within a 25-mile radius of each of our primary city locations. Rates may vary depending on the region and artist availability for your date.

Our company is happy to travel up to one hour for bridal trials with travel compensation. We proudly provide wedding stylists in the Atlanta and Charlotte surrounding area, and our bridal team is available to travel within a 25-mile radius of each city center without travel cost.

If the trial location is more than one hour outside the city center, we kindly ask our clients to arrange an alternate location such as a hotel, Airbnb, or friend/ family member’s home. Beauty Asylum will not travel beyond a one-hour radius for bridal trials unless discussed and approved prior to booking. Brides may choose to host the trial closer to the city or book a day-use room for convenience.

Travel Rate (per stylist)

If your wedding day or trial location exceeds 25 miles from the city center, travel is billed round-trip per stylist as follows:

One stylist: $30/hr
Two stylists: $60/hr
Three stylists: $90/hr
Four stylists: $120/hr

Additional Fees

Gratuity: 18% service charge will be factored into all weddings.
Parking: Fees will be added per stylist, if applicable.
Relocation Fee: $150 per stylist if artists are required to pack/unpack and move to a secondary location on the same day.
Hotel Accommodations:
• Required the night before if the start time is 6:00 a.m. or earlier for local weddings, or if travel time exceeds one hour with a start time of 7:00 a.m. or earlier.
• For destination weddings (2+ hr drive), lodging is required the evening before for each stylist.
Accommodations eliminate unforeseen travel issues and ensure our artists arrive rested and ready to start the day.
We try to anticipate all potential costs associated with wedding-day hair and makeup. Be sure to review Additional Fees You Might Not See Coming →

FAQ

Absolutely! If you’d like to reduce travel cost for your vendors, we recommend a getting-ready location within 25 miles of our provided locations.
The beauty of entrepreneurship is that we get to meet people at different stages of their career.

The most common reason for lower travel cost is based on a couple options: local solo artist, newer artist, already working nearby, doesn't carry commercial insurance, doesn't compensate for drive time, or a different business model.
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Each stylist travels separately because our artists are based throughout Charlotte, Atlanta, Charleston, and surrounding areas. Travel compensation is calculated individually to cover each artist's drive time