Your Complete Guide to South Indian Bridal Make-up

South Indian bridal make-up is a unique and intriguing art that can’t be compared to any other bridal or beauty style. They require techniques that can seem quite tricky and particular, but once you look into it, is actually quite simple.

This article is an easy guide to this seemingly tricky, but actually quite simple art of South Indian Make-up.

The basic idea behind South Indian bridal makeup is that it should be soft and must complement the bride’s attire instead of being too loud and jarring. Therefore, a lot of attention is paid to the bride’s skin tone, and to accentuating the bride’s best features. Seems pretty difficult, right? Well, it’s really not. Let’s jump right into it.

• Choosing the right foundation: The first step to making sure your make-up blends in and looks soft is to pick the right foundation, which requires an understanding of not only your skin tone but also your skin undertone. Both cool and warm undertones exist and foundation colours and textures cater to these. The best measure is to check if silver or gold jewellery suits you better. If silver jewellery suits you better, your undertones are cool. If it’s gold jewellery, you have warm undertones. Based on these, you can pick the foundation that matches your skin colour best! For example, south Indian bridal makeup for dark skin would include picking a dark shade that matches your skin tone and an undertone that matches your jewellery. The application process for foundation is also really important to avoid nightmarish unnecessary patches. In my opinion, Olay’s BB Foundation Cream and sponges are the best way to make sure your foundation has blended and is compact.
• Bold, not dramatic: A lot of people mistake bold and fierce make-up, like using darker shades, for a dramatic look. The premise, however, of South Indian wedding make-up is quite different to this notion. Due to the variety of colour, the bright flowers, and the use of gold in the bride’s sarees, the make-up too is bright with dark lipstick and sultry eyes. However, this doesn’t mean the eyes have to be highlighted through heavy winged eye-liner or that one’s lips need to be emphasized by making them larger. The beauty lies in the subtlety of detail, like picking the most suitable shades.

The shades that one chooses are also affected by undertones. Those that have warm undertones are better off using warm, golden, and bronze hues, while those with cool hues look better with metallic and grey-tinted make-up.

Also, while you finalise your make-up look, it is essential to zero down a hairstyle from various traditional south Indian bridal hairstyles available!

• Let the light lead you: Now, I know this sounds a little dramatic, but bear with me! It’s really important to understand the role that light plays in one’s makeup, especially when the South Indian Dulhan makeup is as subtle as it is. The idea, therefore, is to understand where the light falls on one’s face and highlight those spots further. This can be carried out using highlighter and contour, which is typically carried out on one’s cheekbones, one’s nose-ridge, one’s chin, and one’s cupid’s bow. By applying highlighter to these areas, we’re letting the sun reflect off them more, giving us a dewy and fresh look. By contouring these areas (using, again, shades that match our skin tones and undertones), we’re highlighting our bone structure, giving our features a sharper edge.

There you go! Our 2 pennies on what makes a South Indian Bridal make-up unique and gorgeous! What are you waiting for? Get make-up-ing!

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Safiya

Safiya is the editor and founder of TheBeautyInsideOut. With 7 years of experience in the beauty industry, she has been contributing content since its inception in 2016. She’s keen on trying out skincare from various verticals – be it Western skincare, Korean beauty, or Indian Ayurveda and sharing their unbiased opinions on them.