To chop or not to chop? The wedding haircut I’m glad I had
Posted on
We all want the perfect wedding day.
For people around my age, we want to take the best parts from those old traditions – the white dress adorned right before we walk down the aisle to be handed off to our fiancé – but with a character that would never have been allowed just a few short decades ago.
This might mean being given away by our mums and dads, rather than just being handed from one man to another.
Or it might mean ditching rules like a ban on the colour black – usually reserved for mourning – in place of a stylish monochrome event.
For me, it meant something even more dramatic.
I wanted it all on my wedding day.
I wanted to honour traditions to the point of wearing my mum’s wedding dress and writing incredibly heartfelt vows, but also lean into the fact the whole day really is just a party.
I felt torn between the two types of bride I wanted to be: the soft, graceful one in the dress passed down to me, or the wild one that flips the bird to the way things “ought to be” done.
In the end, I felt inspired by a saying many of us 90s babies know all too well: Porque no los dos?
What if I did it all? What if I wore that 35-year-old wedding dress accompanied with vintage jewelry and the perfect hair and makeup before ditching all that for something totally different.
Pre hair-cut.
For a while, I wasn’t sure what exactly what “totally different” vibe I would go with.
But then I found a dress for the reception that inspired me. It was a beautiful, floor-length number that invoked the flapper dresses of the 1920s with its fringes.
And then it hit me. You know what would go with a 1920s-style dress? A 1920s style haircut.
Once that idea was in my brain it could not get dislodged.
Not even by my hairdresser Rebecca Young, who went a bit slack-jawed when I told her my idea: a haircut on the day of my wedding.
It was perfect. In the afternoon, I’d be the beautiful bride I’d always dreamt of as a little girl and by night I’d be, well, me.
Looking back on it now, Bec – who’s the face behind the mobile hairdressing service Home Hair Canberra – admits the whole thing was nerve-wracking.
“It was already such an emotionally charged day for you and I didn’t want to add any extra stress,” she says.
“I’d never done anything like that before despite being a hairdresser for just over 20 years.”
Sarah during the hair-cut.
I was also a touch nervous my guests – particularly some very traditional Swiss uncles – would freak out.
But who doesn’t love a magic trick? And that’s what it felt like.
After getting to the reception at Albert Hall, Bec took me to a back room, cut my hair, and washed out all the product before blow-drying it into the perfect bob in less than 45 minutes.
Post hair-cut.
It was little wonder some guests thought I had put on a wig as they looked up at a woman very much changed from the one they’d seen walking down the aisle just hours earlier.
The transformation was one of the best parts of my day. It reminded me that, looking back at life one day when I’m 80, I’ll never regret embracing my wild weirdness, not even on my wedding day.
