There was some advice column somewhere that extolled the value of leaving your hair the fuck alone if you had something big to do like, oh, say, being in a wedding. Did I listen? Did I heed the sage wisdom of the style writers in Seventeen magazine? Of course not. “I want to wear my hair DOWN at the wedding”, I thought. “Clearly I need a haircut to wear my hair DOWN at the wedding”.

To be honest, I did need a haircut. Badly. For the better part of a year I’ve been cutting my hair with the same scissors I use to clip cupons and my guitar strings, so the ends were shot and it was high time for a professional styling.

And this is always what happens to me.

I go in, with my hair pulled back in a ponytail. I take out the elastic and let loose my untouched, matted down, raggy looking hair and the stylist stares in horror.

“my hair is actually really curly”, I tell them. “oh yes, I can see that” they say. “I don’t even use a hairbrush,” I tell them. “Wash and go.” To push my laissez-faire attitude into stark relief, I demonstrate for the stylist how I previously tied my hair back with an inch-thick rubber band and cut it all off with kitchen shears. “Do you have a curling iron?” she asks me.

So she’s cutting. And she’s cutting. And I’m kind of like, wow, this isn’t really coming out how I imagined it might. But it looks cool, and I enjoy the thrill of the unknown, so I keep my mouth shut, eager to see what happens. “Do you have a flat iron?” she asks me. I laugh, and tell her that honestly, I don’t even have a hairdryer. And yet she persists with the cutting. “If you want a flat-iron, we can order you one through the salon. We have great flat-irons”.

So she dries the hair. It’s looking pretty cool. Not what I expected, but pretty cool.

Then she starts cutting more and I am like woah, it’s getting real 80s in here all of a sudden. And she’s talking about “thinning it out in the front layers” and using “pomade” to “piece it out” and then, two and a half hours after she started, I am done, and I have…

a modified Rachel.

which, on a curly-head like myself, requires daily maintenance with a hairdryer, flat iron, and curler. And, probably, a motherfucking hairbrush.

Have I mentioned that I’m in a WEDDING on SATURDAY? Because I am. In a wedding. On Saturday.

Oh seventeen magazine, your words are wise. I’ll never doubt you again.