On location at Durham's multi-venue contemporary art museum and hotel, this gold and glam wedding inspiration brought together some of the best creative artists in the area, and the results exceeded the imagination! Inspired by calligrapher Jessica Yee, a calligrapher in the Raleigh area, talented photographer Chris Nieto took her vision and gave it life.
Chris and I have worked together several times, not only because of his talent and ability to inspire, but also for how easy going he is. Chris really pushes me to be more creative and takes me outside the box. Bottom line, I work with Chris every chance I get! I was beyond excited when I knew I was going to be involved in this project.
It all began when Chris sent me a hair inspiration photo, and I was super excited because of the artistic elements involved. When one of our models, Amy, came for her trial sporting her long straight hair, it was like looking at a blank canvas. I thought, "how on earth am I going to do this?" Well, first I knew I had to create matting for height and volume, not to mention hiding all of those building elements, like pins, etc. It reminded me of my days working in the theater trying to create big sustainable hair. Lots of trial and error of course, making it look exactly how I envisioned, while also portraying what Chris had in mind. It took lots of freeze spray, and I made matting with synthetic hair I found at Sally's Beauty Supply for the height and volume.
The trial was fun but on the day of the shoot, after I finished Amy and Mary's hair I couldn't help but love the result even more! To top it all off, We had bounced a few ideas around about adding flowers to the model's hair but on the day of the shoot, Amy Wurster of Knots 'N Such sealed the deal by bringing me a bunch of flowers to use. Adding them to the hair really made the perfect final touch to my masterpiece.
Watch the process in the video below!
Working in such a cool and unique environment surrounded by creative minds and seeing such art come out of it all, went above and beyond my expectation and I couldn't be more happy with the results.
By the end of the shoot I stuck around to make sure everything stayed in place, but her hair was truly a "work of art," a sculpture if you will! That hair wasn't going anywhere!!! To this day I'm wondering how many bobby pins we ended up using. As a hairstylist working in this industry for over 36 years, I took so much from this project and it will remain one of my favorites that I've been involved in.
I'm so excited to share with all of you, that this project was just published to ISO | ALT, a wedding blog which features unique wedding inspirations from around the world. See more
Vendors Involved:
Photography: Nieto Photography
Concept & Calligrapher: The Oblique Pen
Venue: 21c Hotel
Cake: Cakes by Chloe
Flowers: Knots ‘N Such Event Planning & Design
Hair: Wedding Hair by Liz
Makeup: Wink Hair & Makeup
Submitted via Two Bright Lights