I'm Soni.Makeup is how I listen.

I started doing my friends' makeup at sixteen in a small bedroom in Delhi with a borrowed palette and too much ambition. Two hundred brides and eight years later, I still feel the same quiet electricity when I sit someone down in my chair on the morning of the biggest day of her life.

The thing I have learned — more than any technique — is that every face is already telling a story. My job isn't to invent one. It's to listen carefully enough, and apply product with enough restraint, that the story your family has always known simply shows up in clearer light.

My studio is in Delhi but my work takes me everywhere. Lakes in Udaipur. Havelis in Jaipur. A quiet ballroom in Dubai last October. The bride in her grandmother's farmhouse in Gorakhpur, whose mother I also did — the look the three generations made together is the work I'm proudest of this year.

I am skin-first, always. I test every product under every light before it touches your face. I do not believe in cake, chalk, or concealing you into someone else. If that sounds like the kind of bride you want to be, I'd love to hear from you.