The Essential Wedding Hair-Do Kit

After last post, there was sufficient interest in learning what I consider the Must-Haves in a wedding hair-styling kit for me to bother rounding up my supplies and taking pictures and putting them into a collage. Thanks for that--I wanted to do the post so you gratified my wish. I will now act important and show you the eight items I believe make up the (basic) Essential Wedding Hair-Do Kit:

1. A curling iron: I have a simple, normal clamp-curling iron but I've heard that the curling wands are even better because you have the choice of how thick you want the curl to be! But honestly, a regular old clamp-iron works just as well when you know how to curl hair. Be certain, however, that you do know how to use it so you don't end up with a bunch of crimped ends and wonky ringlets.
2. Wave-clamps: you never know when you'll be working on a headful of hair that does not want to curl. These clamps are helpful in setting the look. Immediately after taking the hair off the curling iron, swirl it up to the head and clamp in place until completely cool. Spray, then take down.
3. Dry shampoo: I use Not Your Mother's "Clean Freak." Spraying this power into clean or day-old hair (which is easier to work with) provides a great base for teasing, poufing, and pinning. ALWAYS add dry shampoo or another texturizing product when working with updos.
4. Hairspray: the Aussie brand is a good way to go. Volumizing spray is also helpful. Spray the HECK out of the bridesmaids' heads, but only after they've approved the look. It's hard to un-spray hair and you don't want anyone to walk around all day wishing they looked different. After spraying, refrain from lighting a match.
5. A teasing comb: these combs have tiny teeth to help you get that va-voom in the styles. Backcomb gently for desired volume, then comb smooth the top of the hair, leaving a pretty little rat's nest beneath.
6. Curved bobbies: though regular bobby pins work well in most hair, I'm a fan of these curved bobbies by Conair because they follow the contour of the scalp and are much more comfortable to wear. When the bride or bridesmaids are wearing fifty+ bobby pins, you want it to be as comfortable as possible!
7. Clear elastics: a complete life-saver, you always want clear elastics to provide the stability of a hair-tie without the chunky color and visibility. You can easily find them in the hair-pin section of most stores. If for some reason you are having difficulty finding them, check the ethnic section. 
8. Hand-held mirror: obviously helpful for letting your "patient" see the back of her head, a hand-held mirror is a delightful and often-forgotten addition to the essential wedding hair-do kit.

And there you have it! Portable, light-weight, and efficient, these eight items will insure your ability to create nearly any style from French twist to chic chignon, from vintage curls to sophisticated buns and up-dos. Of course you can always add items to increase efficiency or create a certain style. At last weekend's wedding, the bridesmaids had all received snowflake-shaped crystal pins meant to be worn in their hair. At another wedding, if a bouffant bun is desired you might bring a foam ring or a sock. There are always additions one can make. My list is intended to be a list of the basics I now know to be necessities for anyone on their way to lend an artistic hand on someone's big day. I hope this helps take the trepidation out of preparing to play beauty-parlor. Remember! "Wedding Season" is right around the corner. ;)

In Which I Am A Wedding Hair-Stylist

One of the fun things about being known as a girl who loves fashion/style/beauty is that my help is sometimes enlisted for formal events! Back in November, I got to do my sister-in-law's bridal hairstyle as well as work on some of the bridesmaids. Yesterday, I had the privilege of attending another friend's wedding and playing hairstylist again for six of the nine girls in the wedding party. The legendary Jill was there. We have a term called Jill-Hair. Basically, it means Pinterest-Perfect Hair. It is a joy to work with.

I got a flat on the way to the hotel and had to wait in a farmer's field to be rescued by Dad. Gorgeous day for it, though! Weddings, while a lot of work, are such fun. I never tire of getting to be around the bride's best friends, sisters, or soon to be sisters-in-law who make up her bridal party. I love the camaraderie, the laughter, the mess leftover from the bachelorette parties the night before. I love making the bridesmaids feel beautiful, creating styles that fit their faces and personalities, and trying new techniques to get the girls picture-perfect. Unfortunately, I was so busy doing hair that I forgot to take pictures of the styles as I finished them. I will say, though, that every bridesmaid was delighted with her style and thought hers the prettiest. The bride had requested that everyone wear updo's, which was a challenge in itself! I didn't want to repeat a style. Some girls had an idea of what they wanted, some had no clue. I worked with different lengths and textures of hair and had a blast. In fact, the day was going so well that I got all six girls done in 2 1/2 hours! I think Pandora's wonderful "Wedding" playlist had something to do with it. ;)

//photo creds: Jake Gunther//

I believe everyone is gifted in some way and weddings around here are where this principle becomes plain as the nose on your face. I helped via hairstyling, the bride's coworker commanded makeup, a good friend took the bride in hand and did her day-of style, a SWARM of friends worked catering, design, and decor...it was beautiful.

We got to dance at this wedding, and the one fellow I know who knows how to swing dance happened to be in attendance and I happened to be wearing a dress perfect for swing-dancing in, and it happened to work out that they played "Be My Forever" (one of my favorite songs), and he happened to be in a mood conducive to asking someone to dance and I happened to get to dance with the one person who knows how to swing besides my cousin, the photographer. We also did the Cupid-Shuffle and the bride made everyone cry by dancing with each of her brothers and then this crazy-skilled Asian fellow broke down into electric/robot dancing and absolutely killed it. So I ended the night quite happy, though jealous of my friend Linda's amazing freestyle-dance abilities.

As for the hair, I wish now that I'd gotten photos of individual styles as I went, but maybe they will start coming out of Facebook over the next few days. For now, who would be interested in a run-down of the Vital Pieces of a Wedding Day Hairstyling Kit? If there's interest, I'd be glad to put together a post and perhaps a tutorial or two. If you're good at hairstyling, I would definitely keep practicing, learning, and sharing your talent.You never know when you'll have the opportunity to save someone a ton of money/time/stress by lending your skills. Plus, who doesn't love to be up close and personal with the wedding party? It's kind of like a mini VIP meet-and-greet. ;)

In Defense of True Love

With three friends getting engaged just this weekend, I decided to write an open letter to all the couples I know ... in defense of true love. 

Photo Credit: Daniel Tate

I saw the ring.

I saw the hope, brighter than your diamond, flash out at him; at the world; at me. No, it was something deeper than hope.

Love.
True love.

People don't believe in true love anymore and I lose my patience--what little patience I had to begin with--for these so-called realists. Those people--the embittered, jaded souls that they are--don't believe in true love because I guess they've never learned all of its pieces.

I've never known what it is to share that connection with another person, to let my soul entwine ivy-wise with theirs till the slightest tug hurts like fractured bone. I've never known what it is to live in dread of dread ... to lie awake at night worrying that the one my soul loves will be worrying: a mutual incapacity to think of anything apart from what that person might think of the thing in question.

I've never known it but I have seen it. Seen it in people like you. So I believe in true love because you've taught me. And those who don't believe in it? Can't believe in it? They just don't realize that true love hides under the nettle-leaf of a thousand courtesies.

To see a cup of water in the night, given by a clumsy, sleep-drugged hand, they call kindness.

They see you give up your own identity, that name which had been yours since birth, and bind yourself with a round silver promise to another human. You take his name and his heart and they call it a ceremony.
He fixes the brakes on your car and they call it a "to-do list".
They see the cup of coffee he made just perfectly and they wonder aloud why it wasn't a dozen red roses instead.
They see you lose a heated argument and let him have the last word and cry tears of hot release by yourself as you drive to the grocery store and they call it proof that the charm of your chemistry has faded; they don't realize that love, like any living thing, needs buffeting to set down roots.
In a moment of breathless, faithless crisis--a moment when he doesn't show a sliver of the infatuation he lavishes now, a moment when life has become like Sinai's forty years-those realists will draw close and whisper poison-wise,
"See? His love wasn't true love. Go on and leave and look for it elsewhere."
They don't see that the greatest material of which true love is knit is commitment and tenacity.
Your everyday choice to do his laundry, his bills, to share his interests, his people, his bed ... they name it "routine" and scorn it as they scorn the goodbye hug and "I'm headed home" calls.
They dub your patience "being used to him" and his quick out-the-door kisses "absentminded."
And those times he makes you laugh till your sides hurt and mascara inks your tears they'll call "good days" as if all the days between had ignoble titles.

They mean well, I guess, in their worldly-wise, weary-boned way ... but they can't know it is true love. They don't see that the service, the ceremony, the coffee and car-repairs and arguments and desert-treks, the routines and familiarity and absentminded kisses and "good days" ... these are the truth in the thing we call true love.

True love as I see it, as you've shown it, is a breaking yourself in half and giving that piece over, a breaking of one into two, a fitting of two into one: two lives, two souls, two personalities and wills and throbbing hearts. To make this love work, one must be malleable and able to fold in a thousand pieces, to build pieces on a thousand pieces to become whole again. A constant breaking, a constant healing, a constant no-longer-me-and-you but 'us'.

A thing without a name--those thousand pieces--are soon forgotten, disbanded, dissolved. The realists stole the name and cast it to the four winds and they can no longer see. So bind yourself under one name with a promise, call what you have by its name: true love. Defy the realists and better yet, teach them to see the beauty of your threads as you weave them day by day by live-long day.

I saw the ring.

I saw the defiance.

It made me smile and hope.

Surprise, Surprise! (I haven't died)

Life has been sparkier than a bundle of Independence Day firecrackers SO I thought I'd give you the low-down in a concise list of highlights:

Sarah is interning with Generation Joshua for the summer. We miss her.

I am nannying 3-4 days a week and stuffing family life and my writing in the cracks.

Daniel and Abigail Taylor are engaged after two years as an "official couple". <3333333

I am working the iGovern camps with Generation Joshua again this summer! So excited.

My Cinderella-retelling, The Windy Side of Care was just published in the Five Glass Slippers anthology by Rooglewood Press! Interested in reading it? Check out the book's Goodreads page and add it to your "To Be Read" list.

It might have been an age since I wrote a fashion post for this blog, but I've guest-posted about how to achieve a Cinderella-inspired makeup look on Clara Diane Thompson's blog!

I am super busy rewriting my mystery, Anon, Sir, Anon, due out this fall! If you like classic English murder mysteries, you'll want to keep an eye out for this one!

And last but not least, I'm attempting to post a vlog on The Inkpen Authoress so if you'd like a verbal catch-up, try heading that direction!

Wedded Bliss

Last weekend I had the immense privilege to help my Aunt Christy with the flowers for the wedding of my sweet friend, Maryanna Strautmann nee Thompson.

We have done the flowers for weddings and graduations before, and I always forget how much I enjoy it until I'm back in the thick! We always joke around that we should start a business, she and I, since we do it as a ministry and have never made money ...maybe we should....at any rate, I so much enjoyed myself, even with the crazy-long days, and I don't think I've ever seen a prettier wedding when all is said and done. Along with the wedding flowers themselves, we were in charge of assembling a team and prepping the reception: cake tables, food tables, guest tables, and head tables. I don't have many pictures of that part yet, but my cousin Matthew took some stunners of the flower-work! We used all fresh flowers except for a couple blossoms at the tippy-top of the arch. I despise fake flowers with a passion so I was excited that the bride and her family had a budget for fresh blooms! :) I'm rather pleased with how everything turned out:

Hey look! That's me holding the bouquet!

I love weddings, and being able to help make them beautiful is such a privilege! After all - is there such a thing as too many flowers? I am inclined to say nay. My favorite part of my responsibilities? Pinning the boutonnieres on the groomsmen...I get to see them all up close. ;) Actually, I loved teaching the bridesmaids how to hold their bouquets nearly as much. That, and chasing the ring-bearer every few minutes to fix his flower.  That child... :D

A beautiful wedding for a beautiful couple! L'Chaim!

Candid: Photo-booth love

Well...they're hitched! And they set up a ripping-good photo-booth to document the event!

(And no--of course we don't go overboard on the chance to get free family photos. And we are not hams in front of the camera! What do you take us for? ;)

Anna, Sarah, and Leah.

I love Levi's expression and the way he just threw his hand over the frame. It is [arguably] my favorite of the whole set. :)

♫"We're two of a kind--the happiest pair now!"♫

Mysterious? Oh yes.

Priceless. Matthew & I. (Must I explain? Okay. He's my cousin, peoples. :)

And last but not least? The Importance of Being Earnest. Honestly. I totally see Jack and Algie here, don't you? :) They've totally got the dilettante style going.

It was a beautiful and blessed wedding with a deal of drop-dead-amazing cake and a new-born love of photo-booths. Oh yes. A lovely weekend in all respects.