What’s the best way for brides-to-be to find ideas? By exploring their options, of course. The always lovely Dataceptionist has requested that I find ya’ll some good sites to peruse wedding hairstyles. Now I know there are some informative hairstyle how-to’s out there, but frankly there are also a lot of people out there (like me) who can’t even manage to braid someone’s hair. I’m of the opinion that unless a bride has long, flowing gorgeous hair that simply dazzles when unstyled, the doing of hair is best left to the pros.
But brides can still walk into the salon armed with a picture of what they want. And while it’s important to be realistic, I’m convinced that good stylists are magicians in disguise. To illustrate, long ago, when prom time came around, my hair was long on top but shaved near to bald underneath – hey, it was the 90s, cut me some slack. My mom’s stylist gave me an updo that made it look like I had a full head of hair. Furthermore, he crafted a six-petaled flower on my head…out of hair. It was amazing.
Anyway, to find examples of the hottest in wedding hair, I first did a Google image search for wedding hairstyles. That netted me 3,360 of bridal heads of all descriptions. Change that to wedding hair or bridal hair and the image count goes up to 26,700. While not all of the images are inspirational and some are just plain silly (dogs in tiaras?!), there are a wide range of bridal styles displayed in the results.
A site called simply Beautiful Hairstyles includes a wedding style gallery divided into categories such as updos and retro hairdos. While the site itself is sort of goofy, the images were for the most part culled from actual weddings. So you can see how certain hair styles look on real people rather than models.
Hairfinder, the “International Hair Directory” (whatever that means), allows you to upload a photo of yourself and virtually try on different wedding styles. There is a free demo, but in order to access Hairfinder’s database of 3,500 hairstyles, you need to pay a small fee.
There is, of course, always WeddingHair, which sells styling kits for do-it-yourselfers. If you are a bride who has absolutely no idea how she wants her hair done on her wedding day, this can be a good starting off point since the dos tend to be fairly basic. And if you want a laugh, have a look at the teen hair category – those sure don’t look like any teens I know!
While there is software such as The Perfect Wedding Series: The Beautiful Bride – HAIR out there, in the end, I say Google it. There are too many sites with three grainy pics calling themselves wedding hair resources. You may as well go right to a giant image bank that’s going to grant you the variety you need to come up with a hairstyle that meets your demands.
By the way, the fabulous Kristin sent me a link to an article that proves that spontaneity doesn’t always equal romance. Yesterday, a stark naked would-be groom jumped out of his apartment window in an effort to convince his girlfriend that taking risks (risks like getting married) is an important part of life. He ended up running from a vigilante gunman! I smell a metaphor in there somewhere…
Good links. I had a hard hard time coming up with hair that didn’t look like I was going to prom.
Thanks heaps NtB!! Very helpful!
The google links are pretty good I must say. I’ve found a few ideas from there now! Sometimes the solution is so simple we must pare back the complexities!
I hear ya, Riona. Too much piled hair with wispies flying everywhere, if you ask me. I favor the simpler, classical looks, like the do in the pic. Um, sans the big bundle of flowers. I’d prefer something understated. With pearls. Lots of gleaming, perfect pearls.
You’re welcome, Dataceptionist! I’m so glad I could help!
Oooh, NtB: the “gleaming, perfect pearls” reminds me of Kiera Knightley’s fancy dance-do from “Pride & Prejudice.” I kept trying to figure out how someone in early 19th-century England would have fastened those babies to her hair. Would you sew them in? (I’m assuming that bobby pins are post-1830’s.)
And I read that news flash (*tee-hee!*…pardon the pun) about the streaking groom. Talk about embarrassing: the gunman didn’t even hurt him, did he? It sounded like he hurt himself while he was running away. I mean, at least being shot at holds some dignity, whereas running away naked and falling holds minus-none.
My hair was a real source of stress, as I am so wrapped up in ‘the hair’ on a daily basis. I went to my hubby’s stylist (yes, he goes to a fancy salon) and showed him several pics. I ended up w/the most horrible hair… I hated it. Then I went and talked to him again and we tried again, found something I loved (which was my everyday hair, just curled and fancy). On my wedding day, it was humid and horrible… my hair kept falling but I was determined to keep it ‘down’. At the hall, he’s trying over and over to keep my hair out of my face and I finally said, ‘pin the sides back’. It was perfect… what I was comfortable with, what he wanted, what worked. You can see pics if you go to my site and click on the Flickr link.
You’re very right. Be realistic. You want it to last the whole day/evening, but you also want to be comfortable and have it be ‘you’. GOOD LUCK!
NTB, I’m having pearls! I made up strands of various random sizes of beads and pearls, and they’re kind of draped … hard to describe. But in just over a week I might have pictures! Jenny, I bet they’d have sewn them in.
It looked great, Chaeriste! Very natural. And P.S. your husband is totally cute! Woo!
I am considering either wearing my hair down with the ends curled and sides pinned back, or a hairstyle that I had for my first high school dance, which was the only time I ever had a hairstylist do my hair. It was really lovely–the stylist parted my hair in the middle and pulled it back fairly tightly and smoothly (it didn’t look severe because I have bangs), then took a small section from the right and twisted it across the back of my head, joining it with a small section from the left and going back the other way, until I had a mass of wavy twisty-ness across the back of my head. It’s a bit hard to imagine, but it was really beautiful and sophisticated-looking, and I’ve never seen anyone else with that look. My hair looked pretty neat when I took all the pins out at the end of the night, too.
(Maybe imagine this with the twists horizontal and all pinned in place.)
My daughter’s prom is coming and she want to be prepared.She found some really nice hairstyles from which she will choose.
Thank you for all those links:)