Let me be clear. I am not a hairdresser. I’m fairly certain my exchange daughter knew this fact. Yet when homecoming rolled around, she asked me to do her hair. We had gone to a couple of weddings and I executed a couple simple updos quite well, so I figured I could give it a go. Mistake number 1: False Sense of Confidence.
Mistake Number 2: No practice round. In the days of Pinterest, of course, she had shown me a photo of what she’d like. It looked pretty simple. In fact, it could best be described as an elegant ponytail. A PONYTAIL y’all. This fact, combined with mistake number 1, and we have a less than stellar situation brewing.
Now, in hindsight, my biggest mistake was not calling for backup. While laughing at myself at the situation, my best friend says, “You should have called me! Her hair is JUST like mine”. This would be the best friend that happens to live only 5 minutes from me, was free that afternoon, AND did her own hair for her own wedding. But, as we know, I didn’t call her. So here’s how it went down.
Mel’s hair is naturally curly. This particular updo required her to first straighten her hair. My game plan was to straighten, loosely curl, pull back and secure, voila. The straightening portion went decently well, although I did not anticipate that her hair would not be as smooth as the girl in the picture. Now, if I were a trained hairdresser, I would have been able to warn Mel that her hair, while thick, is not NEARLY as long as the girl in the photo. So while I can pull it back, the overall length would be MUCH shorter. Truth be told, it doesn’t really take a hairdresser to figure this out, but I certainly didn’t think of it at the time. The loose curls weren’t a disaster either. No, the true shortcomings weren’t really evident until I started the “up” portion of the updo. I mean seriously, how hard can it be to put someone’s hair into a ponytail, really?
Have you ever seen the movie “27 Dresses”? There’s a scene where the sidekick best friend of Katherine Heigl’s character shows up as a fellow bridesmaid with her hair in a less than stellar “updo”. After receiving a disapproving look, she states something along the lines of, “the b*tch said up, it’s up!”. Yeah… picture that.
Let’s just say I found myself googling “easy messy ponytail updo” and trying to replicate the picture of Selena Gomez that surfaced. Thankfully, Mel was not facing a mirror as I took her hair down not once, but twice, before settling on something that sort of resembled an updo. She assured me it was great, although admittedly not exactly what she had in mind. Yeah, me either girlfriend, me either. The car trip to her friend’s house for pictures consisted of me apologizing profusely, her promising it was great, and a mutual agreement that come time for prom, we’re calling the hairdresser. Or at the very least, the best friend. AMEN.
