Fashion
39 Pretty Wedding Day Updos To Inspire Your Big Day Look
The best 39 of our survey-search for ways you may not have thought to wear your hair on your big day
Classic French braid
Try it with its tail tucked between its legs, schwooped around to one side, or just hanging loose. Skunky highlights optional.
Messy French fishtail
Dutch halo braid with side knot
A quickie request for pretty much any stylist or go ahead and do it yourself.
Cornrows
Contrary to recent whispers from the fashion world, the practice of securing hair in numerous tight, close braids has been around for, literally, millennia, perhaps since as early as 500 BCE. Bonus: it’ll hold up under extreme dancing conditions better than pretty much anything else.
Crown of braids
This one calls for longer hair (or extensions) split into two low pigtails braided to their ends and then wrapped and pinned around the head. Anyone for edelweiss?
Spiral braid
Image: Stilfehler/Wikimedia Commons
Bilateral French braids with pony
Just like you always wanted as a kid. Goes great with a long white dress OR a tux.
Large shell curl bun
Classic chignon
Image: jennadrudi/Instagram
Circumbraided donut bun
Circumbraided or not, it’s timeless and, since the advent of the sock technique, super-easy. (If you haven’t already been riding the sock-bun train, climb aboard immediately. Really. Don’t even wait for your wedding.)
Single fat braid bun
Nota bene: there’s no shame in turning to add-in hairpieces to achieve a single fat braid of this kind of singular fatness.
Half-shell chignon with braided accents
Fishtail bun
No, not a new smug hipster brunch food.
Ponytail with side-swept bangs
Bouffant with wispy curls
Classic bouffant, pinned at the crown
Unclassic ponytail
Bilateral French braid with chignon
French rope braid writ huge
The occipital nest
Probably best to use other language to describe this to your stylist, but is beautiful, no?
Bouffonytail
Get it? It’s a PONYtail, but topped with a most excellent (and fancy!) bouffant.
Finger-waved chignon
Finger waves (whether they culminate in a chignon or not) are manifestly retro but not in that creepy, fetishistic way, and definitely DIY-able, too.
Cascade braid
Image: lovemaegan/Flickr
Old-timey lady traveler
Upswept psuedo-pony
Lace braid
Image: Stilfehler/Wikimedia
Abbreviated bouffant
Topknot
Woven chignon
Gibson roll with a bouffant crown.
Para-triceratops
It’s hard to say in prescriptive terms exactly what’s happening here, but the effect is beautiful and clean and decidedly special-occasion and only a vaguely Jurassic.
Interrobang
Something glam for the shorter-tressed, and yes, I appropriated that name from the punctuationiverse.
Topiary
For brides who’re drawn to ice sculptures but, say, marrying someone who’s averse to ice. Prolly best to enlist a hair professional to undertake something like this on your head, unless you yourself are a hair professional. Or a landscaping professional.
Ballerina bun
Don’t forget this one!
Curly pinup
Curl hair (or just let it dry naturally, if that’s how your DNA rolls), pin it up and/or back and you’re done.
Circumbraided bun
Braided topknot with bangs
