Top Tips on Wedding & Bridal Hairstyles

Hello Beautiful Bride-2B,

I would like to take this opportunity to give you some pointers from my years of experience doing wedding hair, from being a bride myself, and from hearing many brides stories of what they would do if they did it allover again..and they dont say your hair is your crowning glory for nothing..

Getting your wedding hair right is Sooo Important..it is just as important as picking your makeup artist, wedding dress, and your flowers. If you have “a lot of hair and a lot of time”, you have “a lot of options” for your wedding hair. Invest time in “your overall look”, you will be very glad you did.

Look at wedding photographers galleries who have done weddings all over Ireland, you will see lots of recent bridal hair looks and check out the website Pinterest, it has very up-to-date styles. I know from my own experience simply googling upstyles can bring you to galleries of very dated wedding hair pics!

Multiple wedding hair trials can be expensive so initially play about with your hair in front of the mirror. Try pinning it high at the front? Does it suit your face to have height at the front? Next try pinning it high at crown of your head, then low at the nape of your neck. Look at “every angle” of your head in the mirror. Sadly for most of us our head shapes, faces, profiles etc are not symmetrical and just because you like the way you look from one side, may not mean you like the way you look from the other! This is so important because on your wedding day the photographer will be capturing you from “all angles” and he doesn’t know your best side! But, if how you look in photos worries you, ask him to try take you from your best side (sounds vain I know but you will be glad when you see the photos).  We know its not practical to get you from your best side every time so this is why getting your hairstyle right is so important – if you don’t like your head shape, upstyle profile from any one side you will only end up not liking yourself in your wedding photos and eliminating them from your wedding album, when they may have been great photos if you had picked your wedding hairstyle better!

So, for every wedding, christening, hen party you are going to between now and your wedding day, when getting your hair done – try a different style you are thinking for your wedding day and take photos of it from every angle. Bring photos to your hairdresser. But remember, photos in magazines often look great from the front for the camera but you have no idea what the photo looks like in reality from the back as it is a studio shot!

Hairstyles all depend on the head shape, face shape, length, texture and natural volume of hair of the model. The same hairstyle can look very different on every single person. I had 7 hair trials to find the right one. See if you can negotiate a deal with your mobile hairdresser. We charge €60 per 75 minutes of hair trial. So if you want to try multiple trials in any one session you can.

A word of caution on straight hair for your wedding. It tends to look great once you leave the house, but humidity, damp, rainy Irish weather conditions (that we can’t control) can play havoc on our tresses and can end up looking like rats tails, wavy or frizzy. Unless you have fine, flyaway dead straight hair, it would be best to go for a curly blowdry if you want to leave your hair down for your wedding day.

Curly blow drys only work on those with naturally curly or wavy

hair. The look is very bouncy and flattering but it won’t work on straight hair with no volume. You will need to go for ghd curls or waves if your hair is naturally straight or very flat. It can be very flattering if you are an older bride. Lots of volume, gentle curls. If you are overweight, they are a great choice. The bigger your hair, the smaller your silhouette looks. In fact curly blowdrys looks great on everyone.

Vintage Waves are very on trend right now for bridal hair, but they tend to only suit certain faces, very good looking ones, they are a very glamorous, oldy worldy look but can be aging as it is a rigid hair style and it is pulled back from your face so there is no hair to hide behind if you want to cover dodgy jaw lines, ears etc. A softer look would just be boho messy waves also very on trend for 2020 bridal hair looks. You can decide how much hair is around your face, and how much volume you want.

Firm, sleek, Structured, tight hair is very timeless and it won’t budge but it also is more severe. Do you have the face for it? The little hair accessory volumiser rolls from Penneys are brilliant for adding height, volume to chignon rolls or wedding buns once they are covered properly. We use them regularly when doing weddings. And tendrils of curly hair hanging down at the front can flatter your face but they completely cover your features when photos are taken from the side. So I would avoid bits of hair around your face unless you want to hide behind your hair!

If you want loose, romantic, messy hair updos, REMEMBER loose means loose so they may come down during the course of the wedding day/evening. Every loose updo hairstyle I have seen at every wedding I have been to as a guest has come down during the evening once dancing starts!

Regards,

Fiona Brady,

Owner & Wedding Hair & Makeup artist @ Polished Hair & Beauty www.polished.ie