Event Cosmetics

Kathy and her team are the only choice for event makeup in Portland. They are all masters of their craft and are great choices for natural, beautiful makeup that will make you feel and look your best when you are getting snapped from every angle.
From the trial to the makeup on the big day, Kathy made me feel immensely comfortable, confident and beautiful. She has a very soothing demeanor that was so calming on the big day, I had been feeling rattled up to the moment when I sat in her chair. Being able to sit and relax and not worry about a thing while she fussed about my face and transformed me into a blushing bride was just what I needed. The rest of her team made my maids and my mom into glowing versions of themselves, and we all left feeling feeling gorgeous and confident, exactly how you want to be on your wedding day.
Kathy went above and beyond and did an unscheduled on site visit after I messed up my concealer with all my pre-​wedding/​first look tears. She stayed through photos and retouched as necessary, and even helped wrangle my toddler while I took some solo photos with my groom.
Event Cosmetics are masters of makeup and customer service. I am a customer for life now — their in house line is now a part of my daily routine and a visit back there when I am back in Portland is on my to do list so I can get a five minute face tutorial!

I couldn’t be happier that I worked with Katherine and team for my wedding. She was an incredible resource throughout our wedding year. Day off, along with doing beautiful makeup for all the ladies, she saved my flowers with preservation tips.
She is a warm and caring person, who happens to also be a talented makeup artist. I couldn’t be happier with her work.
Thank you!

Katherine and her team did an AMAZING job at my wedding a couple weeks ago.
Before I found Katherine and Event Cosmetics, I looked on Unilocal to find a make up artist. I booked trials with three of the most popular in Portland, spent a lot of time, and hundreds of dollars doing the make up trials and I had mediocre to very bad experiences with them. None of the make up looked good on me (some were worse than others), one make up artist forgot our appointment, and then another overcharged me on the trial fee and then over-​quoted on the wedding fees.
As a bride, we want to look amazing on our big day and we also want to know we can TRUST our vendors. The experiences I had with the other vendors did not inspire any confidence at all.
My luck changed when another of my wedding vendors recommended Event Cosmetics to me. First, the trial fee is a very low/​fair price! And they can do this because once you have a trial with Katherine, you will book her immediately! Other make up artists charge a high trial fee or they they tell you a % of the trial fee will go towards the wedding fee (I think they do this so you feel invested and settle with using them even if you are not 100% happy with their work). But I refused to fall for this marketing strategy, treated those trials as sunk costs, and kept searching for a make up artist that I would be 100% happy with. I refused to settle for anything less than perfect for my big day.
I loved the way katherine did my make up and booked her immediately. Not only is Katherine an amazing make up artist, she is also SUPER nice a genuinely nice and caring person. Katherine and her team are also really organized and gave fair quotes for the wedding day. A month later, I also hired Katherine to do my engagement photoshoot make up. Once again, she made me look sooooo pretty!
Katherine is really organized and thoughtful about her work. She prints out pictures of your dress (for make up inspiration), takes notes of the make up she used and will use on you, takes photos of you to see how the make up will photograph and it helps her decide if she needs to make any make up changes. If you are changing dresses at the wedding, she will also help you change up the look for the other dress (s)! :)
But the most impressive thing about Katherine…4 days before my wedding, she pleasantly surprised me with a phone call to see how I was feeling. It’s a good thing that she called because I was stressing out a bit because a day before, i had a bad facial (i still had a lot of blackheads) and my eyebrow waxing looked messy. Katherine told me to come see her the next day and she’d check it all out. Katherine gave me a mini facial to clear and moisturize my skin, and she cleaned up my brows. I looked so much better! I was so impressed that I took my mom to see Katherine two days before the wedding for a mini facial and eyebrow shaping as well.
On the wedding day, Katherine and her team made my diverse bridal party all look AMAZING! This is the diversity Katherine and her team had to work with:
Asian Bride
Asian Bride’s sister
Older Asian Mom (one who never wears make up or even moisturizes her skin)
Older White Mom
4 White Women
3 White Flower Girls
1 Black Flower Girl
And they made ALL of us look AMAZING!!! I have never seen any of us look better. haha
But the best part… ok…rewind a little bit. At the trial, I was sooooo happy with my make up… but Katherine told me, «Wait till your wedding day. I always save a little extra for the wedding day. You’ll look even prettier». I don’t know how I could look prettier… but she was right! On my wedding day, Katherine made me look even BETTER than I could ever imagine! She uses make up in a way to make you look your best version of YOU by highlighting your best features. I felt so pretty and comfortable in my skin on my wedding day. The make up also held up allll day!
I didn’t have any bridesmaids but Katherine stepped in and helped me with my dress, and she even helped walk me (and held my dress) to meet my groom for our «first look» photos. Katherine really went above and beyond. I am truly grateful for her. :)
Katherine even powdered the groom to make sure he skin wouldn’t look shiny in the photos.
I also got the premium package and I’m so glad I did. One of her assistants stayed with me through all the portrait sessions to retouch my make up and she stayed until my dress change to help me with my «second look». Her name was Jeannette, and she was great! But I was her last Oregon wedding as she is moving to Southern California.
My friends all gushed at how beautiful I looked all day. We just got our photos back yesterday and even more people gushed at how great I looked! :D
Bottom line: Book a trial with Event Cosmetics and you won’t regret it. Don’t waste your money with any of the other make up artists. I tried almost all of them… and none of them could even compare to Event Cosmetics!

And the saga goes on.
In the timeline that they posted it should be noted that they email they claim to have never gotten was a response from me to their initial contact. They sent their email at 1:10pm, I responded at 1:15pm. In the email I responded to the question of when is the wedding date and included a follow up question about the cost of services for bridesmaids.
I find it funny that they keep pointing out that my emails were short. I am not sure what kind of novel is expected, in each instance I spent a sentence to each question I had or response that was requested. My first email asked both questions I was interested in. In the second email the first sentence was in response to their question and the second sentence was to ask about information not included in their delightful 4 paragraph greeting.
I am not sure what they were expecting in a follow up email to one that isn’t answered for a week. I had sent the follow up email giving the business the benefit of the doubt; I waited 7 days as I didn’t want to hassle them. I figured they are busy and they got my initial email and just hadn’t had time to respond. I didn’t include any information that I had already sent to them (the wedding date) as I would assume that unless an email comes back to me as undeliverable that it was received.
Needless to say I was more than a little surprised to receive their response to my follow up. Yes their follow up email was more than the one paragraph I quoted. The other paragraph insisted I did not give them a date — which I did… Anyways I am not sure how they expected the implication that I can’t afford them or that «beauty is not one of your top wedding day priorities».

I was more than impressed with the team at Event Cosmetics during both my consultation and in having my makeup and my bridesmaids’ makeup done on my wedding day. They made me feel so relaxed and I was able to truly enjoy the process of getting ready. Katherine is a wealth of knowledge about all things wedding day and even gave advice and assisted with some aspects of my hair styling, my wedding gown, and did a few touches on my mother’s makeup for free even though it hadn’t been planned before the wedding. They made me feel more beautiful than I have ever felt. I would recommend Event Cosmetics to anyone and everyone who wants to be treated like a queen and look like a queen from their wedding day to any other special event you may have planned.