How many hours the getting ready room actually needs

Where the buffer belongs

Fifteen percent added across the morning is a reasonable starting figure for a party of eight or more, and it should sit as real blocks in the schedule rather than as five extra minutes hidden inside every slot. Padding inside slots disappears quietly, because a service that finishes early just means the next person is not ready yet.

Blocks survive. A twenty minute gap before the bride starts and another before the ready time gives you somewhere to absorb the bridesmaid who arrives from the gym at nine twenty instead of nine. When the morning runs clean, those blocks turn into touch ups and a coffee, which is the correct outcome.

When the number says hire another artist

The moment worth watching is when the hours each artist must cover pushes your first chair earlier than the room is available. Hotels rarely let you in at six thirty, and a bride is not going to sit for hair at six anyway, so the schedule stops being a scheduling problem and becomes a staffing one.

That is the point to price a second or third artist into the package rather than absorb the compression. Compressing a fourteen person morning across two artists is where services get cut short, and the person who pays for that is usually the last bridesmaid before the bride.