Seeing as my wedding day is 50 days away today I thought I’d mark the occasion with a blog post on my disaster wedding hair trials. Another thing planning this wedding has taught me, and advice I’d give to any bride is not to skip the trial, because if you don’t have trials when it gets to the big day and the wedding photographers Charlottesville agency shows up ready to start taking pictures, you’re going to wish your hair was looking better than it is! Hair trials are far too important and are called a trial for a reason, I’d much rather experience these things on a trial rather than my actual wedding day and you’ll find out exactly why in a moment!
So grab a drink and get comfortable because this is a long one! Here’s what went wrong.
Disaster Wedding Hair Trial Number #1
Hair stylist 1 arrived at my parents home and didn’t so much as smile, ask who the bride was or act in the slightest bit enthusiastic, now that I think about it, this should have been a red flag but at the time I just thought she was flustered.
I explained both of the styles I was hoping to achieve and hair stylist 1 got to work on one of the bridesmaids. The end result didn’t look too bad, but hair stylist 1 did say that, had my bridesmaid straightened her hair before the trial, it wouldn’t have looked as kinky. However, she hadn’t actually told us to straighten our hair so we had assumed she would do this??
I’m not sure at what point I realised, but said hair stylist also kept putting hot hair straighteners on my parents wooden dining room table, no damage was caused but I did have to ask her to stop!
When it came to my trial, I wasn’t best pleased with the end result, it looked far messier than I had hoped (again apparently because I hadn’t straightened my hair!) and although I had asked for tight curls, they were fairly loose..
My biggest issue was that there were a few things I wanted to see hair stylist 1 trial, but all she said was make a note and we’ll get it right on the day.. she didn’t seem at all concerned by the fact that I wasn’t happy with how it looked.
Aside from the fact that all our hair dropped out within a few hours of the trial, the BIGGEST issue was that hair stylist 1 had FAILED TO MENTION that she was pregnant and due to have her baby just a couple of weeks after my wedding at the time of booking the trial. What if said baby arrived early? What if at almost full term, she wasn’t up to doing the hair of a bride and four bridesmaids?
Considering hair stylist 1 was a recommendation, I was really disappointed with how it went, but as this hair trial was booked quite far in advance of the wedding there was plenty of time to find an alternative wedding hair stylist. Phew!
Disaster Wedding Hair Trial Number #2
For the second hair trial I decided that we’d just do the one trial rather than bridesmaids too, mainly because we now knew we liked the style we had planned and because it only takes one trial to see if the hair stylist is actually good.
We visited hair stylist 2 at her beauty room and upon initially meeting her she was really friendly and well presented and she seemed to understand what I wanted to achieve.
Having had my hair curled with straighteners at the first trial and seeing how loose the curls were, I said that I’d prefer hair tongs instead (that’s how I curl my hair myself, and I know it holds well).. however hair stylist 2 still chose use hair straighteners.
And oh my it was so so painful! I was literally sitting there almost in tears because of how hard she was pulling at my hair while curling them with the straighteners!
By this point I was not enjoying my hair trial experience and I also really didn’t like how my hair looked at the front, I had asked that my ears were covered but they were completely on show and ultimately she hadn’t actually listened to what I had asked for or checked whether I liked what she was doing as she was styling my hair.
Almost as an afterthought, once she finished my hair, she proceeded to jab my headband (FYI not the one pictured) into my hair, again without any consideration of how painful it might be!
I told her I wasn’t happy with how it looked, especially from the front and that I’d appreciate it if she could try it slightly differently. However hair stylist 2 had a doctors appointment to go to, so in a rush, she took my hair out and HELD IT IN PLACE to show me how it would look before we’d taken any photographs! I also said that the curls were too loose and she said she couldn’t recurl my hair because she’d put too much hair spray in it..
As I was so unhappy with how the trial had gone we refused to pay the full amount and we calmly explained the reasons why, but mostly it was because she wasn’t willing to trial until we found something I was happy with. Hair stylist 2 got very defensive saying you can’t do that, an hour and a half of my time is worth X amount and the best bit? She threatened to lock us in while she got her boyfriend!! Not exactly how you should treat a customer when you get most of your business via word of mouth!
Reading back through what I’ve written, it sounds like a dodgy sitcom, but trust me these things actually happened and I’ve just been really unlucky with the two hair stylists I was recommended.
You’ll be pleased to know that I have now found an amazingly talented hair stylist with the nicest personality, she consulted me throughout my trial, was extremely friendly, styled my hair with tongs and was willing to try different options – which I didn’t need to do as she got it right first time!
I’m so relieved to have found someone capable and I was beginning to think that it must be me, but no, it wasn’t, they were just really bad experiences and it’s just an unfortunate coincidence that I had not one, but TWO disaster hair trials. I can just laugh about it now as I know I’ll be in safe hands on the big day!
What do you think of my wedding hair trial stories? Have you ever experienced anything like it?
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