Ask me what I regret about my wedding, and I’ll tell you: Nothing. Not the fact that a freak October snowstorm plunged Manhattan into a frozen, dystopian Day After Tomorrow scenario that morning, shutting everything down and forcing me to procure my flowers from a deli; not a misjudgement regarding the alcohol content in our signature cocktails so grievous that I spent my first hours as a bride with my childhood best friend holding my hair back while I barfed; not even my decision to get a last-minute bang trim the night before, which left them slightly too short and too blunt, like a toddler’s bowl-cut. But ask me again—and I mean, really press me—and I’ll admit that there’s one thing that I would change. I would have hired a makeup artist.

I’ve had a ring on it for five (happy!) years now, but I thought about this again recently, when a fellow beauty editor posted snaps from her wedding on Instagram in which she glowed gloriously alongside the makeup artist—an actual famous makeup artist—who did her face for the Big Day. She would have looked gorgeous regardless, but I’m sure it must have been supremely confidence-boosting to have someone with actual skills on board. The topic, too, has been in the news recently as rumors circle that Meghan Markle might do her own makeup for the royal wedding, just as Kate Middleton did.

My choice not to hire someone for my own stroll down the aisle was partly penny-pinching, and partly because I honestly thought that it wouldn’t matter that much. I guess I also assumed that having so much exposure to beauty products at work meant that I had acquired macquillage mastery by osmosis. Turns out, I hadn’t.

That morning, after squinting into the mirror and assessing my options, I ended up applying my makeup in the same way I do every day—with maybe a teensy bit more eyeliner—because I wasn’t quite sure how to amp it up without veering Vegas. My wedding was small and thrifty—my now-husband is British and was subject to visa constraints, so we had to act quickly—and the whole ethos was no-fuss. We held our ceremony at City Hall, then toasted (and toasted, and toasted) our future along with a 30-strong mob of friends and family at a downtown restaurant. I wore a $250 TopShop dress (because it was inexpensive, yes, but also because I loved it infinitely more than any pricier gown I tried on); his suit was from Asos. The Royal Wedding, it was not.

Still, when I look back at the photos, I wish I had considered the state of my face a bit more—and yeah, spent a little extra money on it. For one thing, the lighting at New York’s City Hall seems designed to render everyone a 1,000-year-old troll: under the direct-from-above fluorescents, even my 5-year-old niece had eye bags. A trained professional would have known how to compensate for that cruel, unforgiving glare, and might even have known how to turn it my advantage—instead of inadvertently giving myself Trump-tan raccoon eyes by using too-light-reflective a concealer, the appropriate products could have made me simply luminous.

And honestly, it would have been fantastic to have someone on hand even for the basic stuff: making sure that my eyeliner was straight (it wasn’t), or that I was wearing a mascara that wouldn’t run down my cheeks a la The Joker if I cried (which I did, and it did). I loved the spectrum of beauty looks I saw at City Hall that day, from the OTT faux-lashes-and-Kardashian-contouring bride to the just-wearing-a-sweatsuit-and-getting-this-thing-done bride to the incredible septuagenarian white-gloves-and-red-lipstick bride. It was a forum in which everyone could be uniquely themselves. But somehow, I felt a little too much myself. In retrospect, I know that if there’s one day in your life when you should look a little wow, it’s when you take a vow.

This sounds vain, I’m sure. As does the fact that I don’t show many people my wedding photos. It’s unlikely that anyone who was there that day would have noticed the difference whether I was painted to perfection or had just rolled out of bed—certainly not my husband. And in the moment, it didn’t matter. I never looked in the mirror and thought, I look gross. When I caught my reflection, I saw a giddy, slap-happy, dancing-eyed bride, and even if I had noticed the wonky eyeliner, I was having far too much fun to care.

But here’s the thing: The moment doesn’t last forever; the photos do. And in the tangible memories of my wedding, I see the difference between the way I felt inside (radiant, glorious, rapturously happy) and the way I looked on the outside (exhausted, a little greasy). If I could go back in time and pay someone to close that gap, I’d do it in a heartbeat.

Oh, and did I mention that I also didn’t hire a photographer? Maybe I would change that, too.

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