My friend Jen (avocadojen to you insta-friends!) got married last weekend. I’d love to post some more pics with her hair and beautiful flower crown, but today I’ll just post a few of my hair and crown! All the women in the wedding wore a little braid detail and a little flower (or not so little) detail. In my head I kept saying this wedding was “urban hippie”, which felt right. The wedding party was put up in an incredible loft in Williamsburg, and the wedding was held at a cool outdoor pizza place in Bushwick.

Here are some photos! The hair was fun, the gowns were fun, the wedding was real fun.

I made myself a little Caesar style flower crown, that only went around the back, because I decided the bride should be the only one with flowers in the front..since she’s clearly the special one.

The other bridesmaid, Kylie, and I wore these beautiful green ACNE gowns that we got from Barney’s NY. I’m so lucky to have a very close friend who works there and treats me to an occasional discount. I’ll wear this beaut’ many more times. Kylie and I didn’t have plans to match, but we both loved this color and shape so much that it just worked out that way! Tara, the redheaded cutie, was a groom’s-lady and I’m really hoping someone got a good picture of her hair, because the back was a braided creation!

Some of my friends walked by Roberta’s that night and remembered I was at a wedding there that night, so they peeked in the tents to see if they could spot me. They said they’d never seen a sillier wedding dancer in their lives. Which wasn’t hard for me to believe, because I cannot tear myself away from the dance floor at a wedding.

More to come! And it’s time I did some more tutorials!

Photos by Laurie Sales

Let’s talk about my instagram friend, Katrina. She posted a random photo from her wedding (which I believe was about two-ish years ago) and I choked on a jelly bean at the first sight of it. After asking to see more, she sent me a few images and allowed me to show them off to you! There are beautiful weddings all over the blogs, and it seems like every week I see something inspiring or interesting…but to me, Katrina and Guy’s wedding was to me the most beautiful wedding of all time. They live in a small town in New Zealand, which might explain the amazingly dramatic scenery, and even though the tone seemed romantic, beautiful and breath taking…their playful personalities shined through the most in these photos. Is there such a thing as a couple crush? I want them to move to America and become our couple friends.

It’s hard to see exactly how she wore her hair, but I love that Katrina changed it for the party. A very good idea that I support!

Man, I’ve wanted to go to New Zealand my whole life. I can’t believe it’s a real place.

Photography by Camilla Stoddart

I did 12 heads of hair the day of Maggie’s wedding. In the weeks approaching the wedding, Maggie asked me a few times if I wanted her to find someone to help me with the hair. I knew I didn’t need one (plus, what if our work clashed?), because we had decided the look for the maids, would be braids.

Maggie gave me a few rules:
No Peasants or Pinheads (meaning, they need volume and don’t make them look like milkmaids!)
All updos, no tails.

Braids were a genius idea, because they are quick and you can do them on any hair type….and I worked with every hair type that day. Fine, processed, thick, silky smooth, curly, virgin hair…etc. Also, because I was doing 12 people, I could only allow about 30 minutes per girl. I started at 6:30 and finished around 2:30. The major time saver, was that I didn’t have to blow dry anyone. I brought lots of products, my kit and my cutting tools anyway, and just did touch ups when needed. (and two bang trims!)

Here are just a few pictures of some of the girls. (who are all my friends. it was so fun!)

And last but not least, an image of the maid of honor fishing the bouquet out of the chandelier. Have you ever seen the bouquet toss end up in the chandelier? It was glorious.

Braids were a beautiful way to have a theme, but avoid being too uniform. You can get so creative with braids. Once you get them down, they can take you anywhere. Just like Reading Rainbow!

Click here to see more about braids!

A few weeks ago I was at Target and I saw this shiny beaded headband in the hair accessories for $2.99. I thought about how it matched the shiny beads on the dress I got for my friend’s wedding and dreamt of some cool 1920s updos I could do with it that day.

Having been honored to be the on sight hairstylist for the entire wedding party, I was pretty busy. After putting the veil on the bride and kissing her and crying, I looked at my watch (also known as a phone) and realized I only had about 20 minutes to get ready for the ceremony. I ran to my room, showered my body, dry shampood my hair, threw on the headband and grabbed pinned grabbed pinned grabbed pinned and repeated. I ended up with this variation of the low messy side bun with a 1920s twist. The headband and the messy bun having a wider span and being less “low” helped with the 20s look the most. The red lipstick helped fake that I had lots of make up on, when really if you looked closely you’d see that there were giant patches of half smeared in foundation! haha. World’s greatest faker!

I was completely 100% ready for the wedding in less than 15 minutes. Showered, haired and make-uped. I can scarcely believe it myself.

When we walked into the chapel, I sat down next to my friend Bobby and he turned to me and said “You look like you’re straight out of Boardwalk Empire!”. And I screamed (in my head because I was in a church) with delight. My vision of a 1920s ‘do back in the hair department at my local Target in the Bronx had somehow been successful with only a 3 minute time slot.

I was able to cry and hug friends and dance like crazy at the reception with no worries.

I should write a book called “the art of fake-spending a lot of time on stuff”.

I feel like I’ve been talking about Sarah’s wedding for an eternity! Probably because it was definitely the highlight of my summer, and possibly even my year. It was an honor to be a part of Sarah and Matt’s day, and everything turned out perfect.

I wanted to show you all a few pictures of the day, because as in all weddings, hair was of major importance! Because I was Maid of Honor, I felt that I had to look awesome. The bride suggested that because our dresses were one shoulder, it would look nice to have our hair to the side in some way. This gave me a million options…you know how I love those low messy side buns! I decided to stick to the semi-Grecian theme of our gowns, and do some sort of goddess-y coil curls into a chignon. It was easy and stayed through the outside heat during the ceremony and the dancing. We all know I’m an animal on the dance floor, so that says a lot.

Just call me Haira. Get it? Like the Greek goddess Hera?

One of the best parts of the day, was spending the morning with Sarah getting ready. I did her hair Victoria’s secret style and we laughed and chatted with her mom. I think half the fun of a wedding is taking so much time to get all dressed up. I don’t think anyone can say that Sarah didn’t look perfect. There was never a more beautiful bride. Get me some tissues. (I just realized I need someone around that I can say things like “get me some tissues” to.)

Me, Sarah and Gigi. We all assisted together back in the day. If you’ve ever assisted at a big upscale salon you know what we went through together! Definitely a bond we share!

In case you were wondering, I cried like a little child. Being the Maid (Matron) of honor was one of the most special times of my life. Knowing someone like Sarah considers me her best friend means I have pretty much nothing in the world to complain about!