Before you fall in lovewith one kind of hairstyle for your wedding day, keep this in mind: The shape of your face and the size of your neck will affect your hairstyle decision more so than what all the fashion magazines are showing for hairstyles.

Here are  suggestions for matching a hairstyle with your face shape:

• An oblong face needs to look less long. You can accomplish this by creating
width with your hair on the sides of your head. So even if 1980s big hair
comes back in style by the time of your wedding, do not add volume to the
top of your head. That will make an oblong face look even longer. So will
straight-down long hair—it will accentuate the face’s length. Instead, you
need to create width on the sides of your face with volume, such as with curls
or layers.

• With a wider, more round face, you want to have a little height on the top
and have pieces of hair hitting the face to frame it. You do not want to make
the face seem even wider, such as by pulling the hair back tightly. You need
long vertical hair to diffuse the roundness of the face.

• The inverted triangle face has a bigger forehead and a pointy chin. The worst
kind of style you can wear with this shape face is straight-across bangs—it
will accentuate the shape of the triangle. What helps to reduce the appear-
ance of the forehead is soft waves on the side of the face. It contours nicely.
Also, you want to choose a hairstyle that fills in the gap between the ears
and the collarbone, to help reduce the size of the chin, but don’t go for really
long hair—it will drag the chin down. If you want to wear your hair up, get
tendrils to come down but remember: tendrils don’t always need to be curly
they can be wispy, too.

• A bride who has a long slender neck and is self-conscious about it should
wear her hairdown. Hair up or short hair will only make her neck look
longer.

• If a woman has a thick, short neck and wants to mask it a bit, she should
speak to her hairstylist about choosing a hairstyle that frames and contours
her neck.

A good place to research various hairstyles is right at your local hair salon. Most salons have books in their waiting rooms that showcase various short, medium, and long hairstyles. So take a few minutes before you next hair appointment and see if you can find any wedding-day hair ideas in those books. Also if you visit your local bookseller, you’re likely to find magazines devoted entirely to hairstyles. These can be a good resource as well. Finally, good old wedding magazines are a great place to look for hairstyle ideas. Check out the online ver sion of such magazines as In Style Weddings for the up-to-date wedding-day hair options.