Confessions Part 7: Brides, Brides & 27 More Brides

“Agata, you have a shooting for a bride magazine. You are going two days to Leon and you’re going to travel first class.” Again!? I have to put a little alarm now:
“Beeee dooo beeeee doooo beeee dooooo!”

At the agency, Damian listens carefully to my objections:
“Listen… I have fourteen brides’ pictures in my 30 pages book. Don’t you think it’s a little too much? I think it’s enough now, with the bridal things. I want to do Metropolitan*, I want to do Glitter*.”

He promises me that he is going to change his strategy but says I have no choice but go to Leon and shoot for this magazine. I am going to have a twenty-five pages editorial and get the cover. It’s a good deal. I pack my 48-hour bag and run to the bus station.

I didn’t know buses could be so fancy. The first class is a huge armchair in the most comfortable material and it can almost become a bed. I have a personal TV and a bag of (industrial) food and beverages for free. I have a pleasant and relaxing trip even though I am stressed because my skin looks awful. I have the instructions to get to the hotel in my email because nobody is going to pick me up. I have to walk to the Holiday Inn; it’s very close and just across a big avenue so it’s easy to find.
My heart beats really hard when I have to cross the street and walk alone in the dark to reach the hotel. I ask the receptionist for my room. The place seems almost empty. I open my huge suite and have no excitement to jump on the bed this time. I feel depressed.

I am in a little city, shooting for a bridal magazine and I look awful. I am all alone and the dinner is so light that I am afraid to wake up in the middle of the night craving something to eat. I can hardly sleep; I am very nervous and have terrible insomnia before waking up in an awful condition. I cut myself shaving my legs and have so many pimples all over my face that I could easily be mistaken with a calculator. Add to that huge dark circles and crappy hair.

This is how I look today. The clients and editors won’t see me until 11:00 am when my makeup is done. A driver picks me up at 8:00 am and brings me to a beauty salon. I almost don’t look at the guy because I am ashamed of how I look. The makeup artist and stylist are very nice and they slowly transform me into a bride-to-be.

Everybody gasp when I enter the big studio:

“Oh my god, she is beautiful!”

Thanks God they don’t realize how horrible I am under those thick foundation layers! We start to shoot at 12:00 because nobody is ready when we get to the studio. Nobody wants to tell me how many dresses I have to wear. It seems a lot and it irritates me because I want to know and be prepared: I always ask how many outfits I am going to wear to think about the poses and if I need to be more creative or not.

I end up shooting twenty-seven wedding gowns! Twenty-seven! It’s a LOT! Usually, editorials use between four and eight, maybe ten outfits. It’s slavery. At 4:00 pm, I am handed a lunch: A thick industrial pizza with garlic chimichurri sauce and coke. I want to throw up… I eat a slice of the awful pizza with tons of chimichurri to hide the pizza flavor. Afterwards, I drink a glass of coke to hide the garlic smell, and then two glasses of water to forget the coke flavor. I barely enter the first dress of the afternoon because my belly is massively bloated.

During this shoot, I have to be creative otherwise I will die of desperation and boredom. I create a little story for every single dress imagining the bride inside it; how would she react, and how would she love. I end up giving an unbelievable number of different poses and I think I am doing a good job! We end the shooting at 9:00 pm and they quickly drive me to the bus station to send me back to the capital. I don’t say anything because the team was nice and they really didn’t notice all those terrible details I saw but I am feeling really bad. I arrive at 1:00 am, exhausted, sick, with more pimples and I look like I am three-months pregnant because of the pizza dough fermenting into my stomach. I had never felt so disgusted of myself.