Prepping for your wedding hairstyle

Hi sweethearts,

With the upcoming wedding season, I thought it would be fun to share with you guys my wedding hair tips and tricks. I'll share everything I tell my clients, in order to prepare themselves for their big day- hairwise!

Before the big day; how to prepare your hair?

First of all it's important to not wash your hair the morning of the wedding. Your natural oils are essential for the hairstyle to last longer. You curls will hold longer and updo's will stay tight for a longer time.

I'd say to wash your hair the evening before the wedding, or even

days before the big day. I mean, there's always dryshampoo to save the day. If you have blonde hair, choose a light colored dryshampoo. If you have darker hair, choose dryshampoo for dark hair, yes this exists! It won't make your hair look white and people won't notice that you haven't washed your hair that day.

If your hair gets a bit "dry looking" or loses the shine that you have after just washing it, choose for a decent hairoil. You can find hairoils everywhere. Make sure to not over-use it otherwise your hair will get too oily and the hairstyle won't last long.

Before the big day, I'd reccomend to go for a hairstyle trial. A trial will give you the opportunity to fully love your hairstyle. How I work with my brides? I ask them to send me ideas of styles they like. At the trial, I try out some of the styles and with the bride together, we choose the style we liked most. This is often a mix of two or more of styles we did before. This can be an updo they loved, mixed with a braid from another hairstyle they loved.

A small tip here: beware of extentions. Most of these pinterest-picture perfect hairstyles were made with extentions. If you don't like extentions, then make sure to know that your hairstyle probably won't fully look the same. Okay, there are a lot of cheat tricks that I use to cover this problem up, but stil..we need to be honest with ourselves too!

My last tip here is to never ever cut your hair after the trial or right before the wedding. Your hairstylist will thank me for this! And if you do, make sure that your stylist knows this. Your hair just won't look the same in pictures with a new haircut.

Choosing the right hairstyle!

Another tip that I can give you is to make sure what kind of style you want to see in the wedding pictures. If you don't like your hair in your face, then don't go for a boho hairstyle with a lot of loose hairs.

And if you choose a style with all your hair up, then know that you probably won't see the style in your headshots. If you do want a super tight, sleek style but you also want something visible of the style in your headshots, then go for an updo with some sort of braid in it. In the shot, you probably won't see the chignon, but you will see something of the braid!

Picking the right style will also be important because of your own hairtype (long/short hair, thick/thin hair, colored hair,...).

When picking the right hairstyle, make sure that it matches your dress. The style of your hair will depend on the style of the dress (boho, satin, sleek,...). It will also depend on the neckline and the back of the dress. If you have for example a super tight dress with an open back and you have long hair that you like to wear down, you need to know that you won't be able to see a lot of the dress itself... It's all in the details basically.

The wedding theme: Your hairstyle also needs to match with the entire theme of the wedding. If the wedding's theme is more bohemian, then a super sleek chignon just won't look right. Also; make sure to check the weather of that day (or season). If you're having an outside wedding with hot temperatures in the middle of the summer, then it might be interesting to wear your hair up. You'll sweat a lot less and you'll be more comfortable. Thank me later for this tip ;).

If your wedding is at the beach, know that it'll be windy so choose a hairstyle that you're comfortable with.

My last tip about choosing the right style is about wearing a veil or not. If you choose for a veil, know that the veil will weight your hair down. Finding hairstyle that you can wear with a veil isn't easy, but it's not impossible. If you have the veil early, you can bring it to the hairstyle trial, to try it out with your hairstyle.

If you want a big updo, it might be interesting to wear the veil under the updo. If you go for a style with your hair down, you'll need to place the veil over all of your hair...

Then the big day itself!

First of all, prepare yourself wisely! I'd say to bring an emergency kit to the location. In the kit you you'll need some bobbypins, some extra hairties and some hairproducts like dryshampoo and hairspray. The dryshampoo can help you if you've been sweating during the day. You can give your hairstyle a fresh touch up.

My personal tip is that after shooting or when I can attend the wedding myself, I like to give the style a touch up after a couple of hours. I can fix flyaways and I can make sure that the style is tight together at last.

If I can’t attend the wedding, make sure to get your own kit of emergency like I told you before.

Then about the flower arrangements. Here are some tips for those of you who would like to have flowers in their hair.

First of all make sure to hydrate the flowers before the big day and keep the flowers as clean and cold as possible right before putting it into your hair. During the day, you can refreshen the flowers in your hair by just spraying a bit of water over them. Don't overdo this ofcourse.

Ask your stylist to use more bobbypins instead of hairspray. Hairspray will ruin your flowers. I always make sure to finish the style off with hairspray, before I get onto the flowers. I try to fix the flowers in the hair by just using hairpins.

It's also a good tip to go for a flower-comb instead of using the flowers separately. The flowers attached to a comb, will hold a lot longer than flowers with just bobbypins. But if you don't like a flowerpiece and you would like to have flowers separatly in your hair, then just go for it!

I think that these were all the tips that I learned over the couple of years that I've been styling brides. My first bride was three years ago. I learned a lot ever since!

I just love styling brides. Being a part of their big day is so much fun. And when I can give the brides more confidence about themselves, my work is done!

So, were these tips helpful to you?

Which tips didn't you know before?

Please contact me if you want me to style your hair! I style hair every day of the year when I'm not traveling! I accept bookings 24/7!

X Steph