GOING TO THE CHAPEL

A picture of my mom and dad when they got married, I love my dad's white suit and I always thought it was cute that my mom was taller than my dad!

So this past Saturday I did some hair for a really, really lovely bride and it inspired me to do a post about bridal hair. Sometimes I think it's hard for brides to envision what they want to do with their hair and I would suggest not googling "bridal hair" because chances are what you will get is a bunch of baby's breath, gelled curls, and tiaras. My bride this past weekend,Lila prebooked about three different blowouts a few months before the wedding so we could try some different styles and also see if I was the right stylist for her, she wanted something down, wavy and soft. The first time we did a more seventies wavy style and she got to test it out because she scheduled her appointment before a party that evening so her appointment doubled as wedding practice and it worked for an event she had that night. The second time she came in she decided to try a different style than the first to see which she liked best. This time she brought in a picture and it was actually one I had in a previous blog post of Lara Stone, here is the picture...

We kind of laughed because our bridal inspiration is Lara Stone in what looks kind of like a bra and underwear but it just goes to show that you can look through magazines and on the internet and they don't have to be JUST bridal stuff... we did a few different versions of this picture in our appointments and we finally decided on a version of this that we liked. Lila let me take her pictures to post in the blog (thanks lady!) So here is what we did to recreate this look..

I shampooed Lila's hair with Kevin Murphy's Angel wash and angel rinse, with a little bit of born again so we could get some good volume and shine. I blow dryed a loooot of Kevin Murphy's Anti Gravity in her hair so her style would last all night and for a few days after! I blow dried until her hair was bone dry and then I sectioned her hair into three sections, the whole back section behind the ears and two sections one on each side in front of the ears and parted just about in the middle. I Blew out the top of the hair on each three sections and clipped the sections up so they had volume, then I curled the hair horizontally and transferred to a kevin murphy roller once the hair was really hot. I used a smaller curling iron on the sections in front of the ear and a larger barrel in the back section so her hair would be a bit longer and

flow-y in the back.

After her curls cooled, I took the hair out of the rollers, combed through them with a wide tooth

come comb, ran some easy rider through the ends and then teased the hair out pretty big with a boar bristle brush and then smoothed the hair with the boar bristle brush.

looks pretty crazy right? If you make sure your set is good when you are doing your rollers, the easy rider will bring the curl right back after you have brushed the hair smooth and you will get a realllly pretty soft wave! Don't worry about brushing the curl out. Also make sure the hair has cooled completely before taking the rollers out this is what actually SETS the curl. We brushed and smoothed and applied a little bit of motion lotion to define the curls. Here is Lila with her final look!

We also did some color a few weeks before the wedding, Lila wasn't sure if she wanted to go darker. I thought she should do some highlights to give her hair some dimension and she had a really pretty base color so I suggested some balyage, a highlighting technique where you paint the highlights on instead of using foils or highlighting papers. This is really soft and natural looking and has a really beautiful grow out with no harsh lines. I told Lila if she ends up feeling like it's too light we can always tweak the color to a different tone before the wedding, we ended up doing a honey/caramel tone which she loved and looks really great on her! She was such an awesome low maintenance bride, and it really helped that she knew what she wanted and was willing to try a few different things in a good amount of time before her actual wedding day. That made her actual appointment on the day such a breeze!

Thanks again to Lila, and congratulations to you and Greg!