Meghan Markle may now be officially known as the Duchess of Sussex, but to her friends, she’s still just “Meg.”
Makeup artist Daniel Martin — the creative consultant for Honest Beauty, Dior Beauty brand ambassador and a longtime friend of Meghan’s who helped her achieve the perfect beauty look for her wedding day — tells PEOPLE that even he was confused as to what to call her after she was married to Prince Harry.
“I asked her that. ‘Do I bow to you? I don’t want to disrespect you, but I’ve known for almost ten years. What’s up?’” he recalls. “She started laughing and she said, ‘I’m always going to be Meg. Meg.’”
Martin added, “But next time I see them I will be respectful and know my protocol. But Meg is always going to be Meg, that’s how it is!”
Martin says there were just five people around while prepping Meghan for her walk down the aisle: the bride, himself, hair stylist Serge Normant, dress designer Clare Waight Keller and Meghan’s mom Doria Ragland, who Martin said was “in good spirits.” The atmosphere was very relaxed, partly thanks to Meghan playing “1950s, chilled music” via Spotify.
“She didn’t seem nervous. She was very cool, she was regular Meghan,” the makeup artist shares. “I think we were nervous, but we didn’t want to make her nervous so it was very chilled. Of course, brides have nerves, but if we didn’t put so much expectation on it, it wouldn’t have made her nervous. It was very even, very easy.”
Martin added that the bride stayed off her phone as they caught up by talking about mutual friends.
Despite all their beauty work, putting on the wedding dress really made the moment feel real.
“It was all so easy. It didn’t hit us that she was getting married until she got the dress on,” Martin said.
He added, “It was so beautiful and so architectural, and when she put it on it was like a glove. It was so easy. The spectacle of the veil and the crown and it was, ‘Oh my goodness, this is really happening.’ ”
That feeling intensified when they arrived at Windsor Castle.
“Nothing really hit any of us until we got there and we saw the people and the magnitude of everything,” he said. “The last thing we said to each other was, ‘We’ll see you on the other side.’ ”
Martin said he got emotional when they saw Meghan after the ceremony to do touch-ups for their official portraits.
“That’s when I started crying,” he explained. “It was the first time was able to be there in person. It was almost like she looked at me and said, ‘What did you think? How’d it go?’ And I lost it.”
He continued, “It was so moving and so perfect and the day couldn’t have been better.”
This article originally appeared on PEOPLE.
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