Wedding Hair

When I was nine or ten my dad's youngest sister got married. We all flew out to Arizona for the wedding, about which I actually remember very little. I was in charge of handing out bubbles to all of the guests, so I didn't really pay attention to the ceremony. But one thing stuck out clear in my mind. My aunt wore her hair in this absolutely gorgeous, twisty up-do.

After the wedding, I remember my dad complaining that she should have worn her hair down. She never wore her hair up, he argued, and she ended up not looking like herself. I didn't care about that; I loved what she'd done with her hair. But hearing my dad's reaction was one of those moments that had a huge impact on my life. Far more than it should have.

That's when I decided to start growing my hair long. It's when I taught myself to braid my own hair and began experimenting with clips and elastics. I looked forward to the Renaissance Festival every year, where I could get my hair professionally braided, and I would typically maintain the braids for 3 or more days. I knew I wanted a fantastic up-do at my wedding, and I also knew that I didn't want to disappoint my dad by doing something abnormal for me. So I made elaborate up-dos the norm.

My experimentation has faded some in the past years. I usually don't want to spend a lot of time on my hair in the morning, which is strange because I never minded in high school. But I do have a handful of styles that are easy for me to put together in the five minutes it takes the kettle to boil every morning. I wear my hair up far more often than I wear it down these days, so I seem to have achieved the goal I set for myself all those years ago.

All this is to say that I'm already thinking about how I'm going to wear my hair for my wedding. I'm looking forward to having some awesome, elaborate braids straight out of a medieval fantasy. Something like Daenerys Targaryen's hair in Game of Thrones. It's one of the things I'm most excited about in this whole process.