Hear, hear! i sooo agree with you - i too am a makeup artist based in (B'ham, UK) and i find alot of clients tend to ask me if i use MAC makeup, which is funny as they seem to think dat the one brand (MAC) has d best cosmetic products ever, yet dat is soooo wrong ...
My sis and i work together as a team together with two mehndi artists and one thing is for sure that i dont beleive dat there is any one brand dat does good all-round cosmetic products... we have always tried n tested cosmetic products of various brands on ourselves before we actually go out n try them on clients - this is to check the colors, staying power, etc... and i have to say although i use some mac eyeshadows, im not too fond of any of their foundations (as they are way too orange, especially for asian skins) and their concealers (which are too thick n cloggy) arent any good either..
Like u MatineeSiren mentioned us make-up artists do kno wat we are doin, we r professionals and we will definetly only use d best quality of cosmetic brands to d best of our knowledge, which means its very likely that a client may not have heard of sum of d brands dat we use as they are specialist products - mainly used for the camera/photographic look which means u get a smooth finish that lasts all day...
anyway, best of luck to all brides-to-be out there!
I worked a job that I found to be very sad. A woman paid quite a bit of money to have her makeup done for some photo's, and the artist used MAC. Unfortunately, the photo's turned out so bad that she couldn't use them and found me. I used better quality makeup and her photo's came out wonderfully.
The type of makeup matters, but brand names don't.
MAC is meant for every day use. It's not meant for important functions or photography reasons.