Being a wedding hair and makeup artist in the early 2000s was not a career choice the way it is today. No one did it on purpose. It was just something that happened as a side hustle, a fun sidequest outside the norm. Back then, everyone who did wedding hair and makeup did so after working in the salon doing cuts and colors all week. Before there were educators and online tutorials, we had to buy DVD sets and books, and we might be able to catch a specialty hair class at a major cosmetology convention. There was definitely no 30-second tutorial you could pull up for free just by scrolling.

Amelia C & Co became an official agency in 2011. By then, I had picked up a few skills that were not very eye-catching but turned out to be extremely useful. I learned that personality cannot replace professionalism, and that people still needed an email response or a phone call returned in a reasonable amount of time. I learned that being organized and planning ahead is the best way to avoid a panic-filled weekend. (I do not miss printing MapQuest directions between locations on Friday nights, a necessary prep step ahead of a busy Saturday). I learned that the best way to get other wedding professionals to refer you was to not make their job harder by running late, doing half-hearted work, or otherwise creating a problem someone else gets stuck solving.

Before there were reviews and social media and AI software that could build a website in minutes and generate fake brides for a gallery, I was just working with a WordPress site and hoping reliability would be enough. I only meant to work for myself, but word travels fast when you’re doing it right, and I had to keep finding more hairstylists and makeup artists to send the overflow bookings to. Within a year, I was referring out more weddings than I was keeping. The Co grew. We won awards. We got published. In 2015, I started serving on the Board of Directors for the Wedding Industry Professionals Association. Nine years later, I completed my service after two nominations to chapter presidency.

The Co today looks very different from what I had in mind when it first started, and in a way that’s better than I could have imagined at the time. But what made it possible for it to even begin has not changed. Our hairstylists and makeup artists hold themselves to the same standard I held for myself. Because we have maintained that standard for so long, we have earned a reputation that extends beyond our brides to other wedding hair and makeup artists. We have the luxury of a waitlist to join our team, which makes being on it a privilege. The artists of Amelia C & Co are the best Las Vegas has to offer because we have so many talented people to choose from who want to be on our team.

Today, we are big enough to have a small admin team dedicated to client communications and reservations. The level of responsiveness and organization I had when we were doing eight weddings a month is the same whether there are eighty on the calendar. My time and energy are best spent working with our artists and our admin team, so I may be out of your sight, but the people and things that matter most are never out of mine. And no matter how many weddings we service in a year, I have never lost sight of one truth: to us, it may be a normal workday. To our brides, it is one of the biggest days of their lives. I take that responsibility seriously.