Best Hair Care Tips For Before & After Your Wedding Day

Your wedding day is when you want to have your best hair day ever but that all starts with hair care. Whether you're the bride, groom, or just trying to outshine your cousin in the wedding party, your hair will be captured from all angles, so you want it to look its best. Your hair care routine should be reflective of your hair goals. Whether you want to achieve thicker hair, longer hair or just overall healthier hair, your routine and treatments should suit this goal and is something you should start months before the wedding. In this article, we’re spilling the best hair care tips, tricks, and treatments for men and women to get your hair healthy, shiny, and wedding-worthy. Embrace your inner Rapunzel and let’s get into it… 

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The best hair care tips and treatments for before and after your wedding day 

How to improve your hair health 

Hair health is actually all entirely dependent on your scalp health and that all comes from within. However, if you wish to improve your hair texture, there are a few things you can be doing to help with this. 

Wash your hair regularly

This one actually causes a lot of debate but what’s important to remember is our point above that hair health starts with scalp health. Having a build up of skin cells, oil, product and other debris isn’t good or healthy for your hair. So, yes, while it’s good to go a few days without washing your hair to let those natural oils do their thing at nourishing the hair follicle, keeping your scalp clean is also important. Using a clarifying shampoo every once in a while to really help break down any product build-up and detox your hair is a good way of doing this. 
 

Use chemical-free shampoo/conditioner

Avoid using shampoos and conditioners with harsh chemicals that may feel good short term but actually cause long term damage. These shampoos and conditioners with sulphates or silicones in feel great at the time because they fill in all those shafts that occur naturally in each hair strand but they can strip moisture and dehydrate your hair, causing product build up and can actually trap in oil, dirt, and dead skin cells rather than washing them away! 
 

Be gentle 

Prevent excess breakage and damage to your hair by being gentle when detangling and brushing your hair. If you are brushing your hair when wet make sure you’re using the correct type of brush and don’t go heavy handed as tempting as it is to just yank those knots free. 

Use heat protectants 

It goes without saying that heat damage is one of the worst things for hair health. Whether drying or styling, it’s hard to say you’re going to cut out heat completely from your hair routine. The important thing to do is just to use a heat protectant. No, they’re not a scam, they do actually work and you shouldn’t neglect using one. 
 

Scalp massages 

Using your fingers or a silicone scalp massager, it’s good to give your scalp a massage to increase blood flow to it. This in turn can provide more oxygen and nutrients to your hair follicle, which encourages growth and improves hair health. 
 

Hair masks or professional treatments 

Again depending on your hair type, texture and overall hair goals will mean that different treatments will work better for you than others. Some of the most popular treatments to get before your wedding day include a keratin treatment (the protein in this treatment will help strengthen your hair and prevent breakage), glossing treatment, deep conditioning, scalp or hot oil treatment. 

Hair supplements 

If you’ve noticed that the above external hair care tips aren’t working perhaps visiting your GP may be a step in the right direction. It could be that you’re low on a few vitamins and minerals that help with hair growth and scalp. Hair supplements that include biotin, iron, vitamins C and E, silica and zinc are what you should look out for but there are many other great ingredients that contribute to hair health. 

Balanced diet

Focusing more on what you can be doing internally to help the health of your hair includes your diet. Foods that are high in protein, vitamins B6, B12, and folic acid, Omega-3 fatty acids, antioxidants and biotin are all nutrients you should try to consume to help improve not only having a balanced diet, which has a whole host of other health benefits but also your hair. 

Stress management 

Reducing stress will have a knock-on effect in helping you balance your hormones. Cortisol is one of the biggest disruptors of your regular hormone cycle and this can throw lots of things out of their regularly scheduled programming but it can really increase hair shedding and fallout. Easier said than done when in the midst of wedding planning, but try to find hobbies or activities that help you alleviate stress symptoms. 

How to grow your hair for your wedding day

If you want to grow your hair for your wedding day to achieve a certain hairstyle, for the wedding pictures, because it would look better with your wedding dress or any other reason, you can use all the points above about improving your hair health, which will in turn increase your hair growth, hair retention and thereby hair thickness. 

Wedding hair extensions 

If you want volume, then consider hair extensions. Although we recommend still following all the tips above for improving your overall hair health, if you know your hair doesn’t grow very quickly or you naturally have fine hair, perhaps hair extensions are on your radar. With a variety of options from tapes, bonds, and clip-in extensions these are by no means a permanent choice, you can always change your mind! To find out more, head to our wedding hair extensions article. 

Best pre-wedding hair treatments

Best Hair Growth Serums

Best Shampoo and Conditioner Sets

Best Heat Protection Sprays

Best Shine Spray/Hair Gloss

Best Curl Creams

Post-wedding hair care tips 

After the wedding (especially if it was a weekend wedding or you had multiple hairstyles in one day), your hair will have been through it. These are the steps you should follow after your wedding day to get your hair back to feeling like it’s gorgeous self. 

1. Remove hair accessories

Gently remove any hair pins, clips, or clip-in extensions without getting into any tangles or pulling your hair out. Start from the bottom of your head and work your way up to the top. 

2. Wash your hair

Use a clarifying shampoo to help you get rid of all that excess product. You may want to wash your hair twice, once with the clarifying shampoo and once more after that with your normal shampoo just to make sure that the scalp is super clean. 

3. Brush and style with care

Remove any tangles perhaps with a comb rather than a brush to avoid pulling on those delicate strands. When drying and styling, avoid heat where possible or use for minimal time and with heat protection sprays. 

4. Hair oiling and/or masks

All the above is in reference to immediately after the wedding, but once you’re back home get into a routine of hair oiling once a week and gradually work up to twice a week if you can. Use rosemary, jojoba, argan, or tea tree oil depending on your hair needs. If oiling isn’t for you, then at least apply a hydrating hair mask to your hair also once or twice a week. 

Best post-wedding hair treatments

Best Hair Oil

Best Hair Masks

Best Clarifying Shampoo

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Best hair care tips and products for men’s hair 

The same advice above applies to men’s hair too! Men will need to start their wedding hair care journey at the same time and can use all the tips above to achieve healthy hair before the big day. Regular grooming and deciding on a hairstyle that matches your face shape is important for grooms. To improve this, grooms may want to consider a density shampoo to help hair growth and thickness and hair fibres if their hairline is something they wish to change. 

Achieve your dream hair with these top tips and incredible products recommended by Rock My Wedding  

As much as wedding hair care starts months before the big day, so do lots of other beauty treatments. Head to our pre-wedding beauty schedule and timeline for all the advice on what to book and when. You’ve got the healthy locks but now you need some inspiration. For 80+ wedding hair updos and the best wedding hair accessories, we’ve got you covered.