Wedding Tip

Its pretty easy to write about the fun stuff and the good stuff and the trendiest trends and hippest new wedding dresses. Its easy to share advice about where to find centerpieces and how to get your bridesmaid dresses to look great together. All that stuff, though it can be a little stressful when youre knee deep in it, is basically fun to do, fun to decide and naturally fun to write about.   But no wedding planning is stress-free. No wedding planning is free from hiccups and obstacles and every bride has the story of the one thing that sent her over the edge.   Heres mine.   I was a tried and true DIY bride. I made my invitations, my thank you cars, the envelopes the cards came in. I was also low-budget. I had my maid-of-honor style my hair and make-up the day of, and I got my wedding shoes on clearance at DSW. The combination of these two things is probably why I chose to dye my hair myself roughly two weeks before my wedding.   Did you just gasp a little? You should have. It was a bad, bad, bad idea. At the time I didnt even try to rationalize it. I had dyed my hair from a boxed dye dozens of times before. Two summers before I had dyed it a nice reddish brown and since the color had faded unevenly I wanted to dye it back to my natural darkish brown. Easy peasy. It wasnt even a question of going to a salon. I had not only successfully dyed my hair multiple times, but I could also read directions and discern what part of my hair was covered in the wet gloppy dye and what part wasnt.   The very lovely lady at the organic salon I ended up at two days later was kind enough to inform me, as I sobbed, that I did a beautiful job at application. The dye job was nice and even. The coloring was good. It was just the wrong color.   For this I still maintain that the color on the box was wrong. Not many people believe me, but I dont think my fiasco involved user error although it did involve poor judgment. Either way my darkish brown was a jet black. It wasnt a bad color, but it didnt look natural on me.   My coworkers oohed and awed at my tresses until I informed them that it was all wrong. And then each and every one of them in the gentlest way possible asked the million-dollar question Why did you dye your hair yourself days before your wedding? I dont know. Is it permanent? Would I be sobbing if it werent?   And thats what I did. I sobbed. First I sobbed as the very lovely lady at the organic salon ran her fingers through my hair and told me to come back the next afternoon to try and fix it. Then I sobbed in the car as my soon-to-be-husband drove me around to get a bottle of head and shoulders as people had recommended. I sobbed when I looked at his thick and lovely wavy chestnut hair that makes me jealous on a normal day. Ill shave my head, he offered to which I sobbed even more. Youd probably have the most incredible bald head that somehow looked even more beautiful.   After about six hours and a lot of dollars later at the salon, the problem was not completely fixed, but the damage had been minimized. I had thought for a few brief days that it was the end of the world until it wasnt. I rebounded because my coworkers were kind and my soon-to-be-husband was patient, and because I have a pretty good sense of humor about myself.     You may face harder challenges as you plan your wedding, but I hope you have good people around you. I hope you have people around you who are kind and patient and remind you of your own sense of humor.   {Lindsey}