Natural curls on the day? Start with the right curl cream

There's a long-standing assumption that curls get straightened for a wedding. Plenty of brides still go that way and look wonderful doing it, but a lot more are now keeping their natural texture and stylists have got considerably better at working with it rather than flattening it into submission. If you've spent years learning what your hair likes, the day you've planned for 18 months seems an odd moment to hand it over to a pair of straighteners.

The catch is that curls are honest. They show every bit of dryness, every skipped step and every degree of humidity in the room, and a northern summer will happily throw all three at you between the ceremony and the first dance. Getting them to behave from morning prep through to the end of the night is less about the styling on the day and more about what you've been doing in the eight weeks before it. A good curl cream sits right at the centre of that.

Start your trials earlier than you think

Book the first hair trial at least three months out and treat it as a conversation rather than a rehearsal. Bring photographs of your own hair on a good day, not somebody else's curls on theirs. Curl patterns vary enormously, and a style that holds beautifully on a loose wave can frizz badly on a tighter coil.

Use the weeks between trials to sort out condition. Hair in decent shape takes styling far better, and no product will paper over eight months of neglect in a single morning.

What a curl cream actually does

A curl cream does two jobs at once. It holds water in the hair shaft, which is what keeps a curl springy rather than straw-like, and it groups individual strands into defined clumps instead of letting them separate into frizz.

Apply it to soaking wet hair, not damp hair. That's the step most people get wrong. Rake it through, scrunch upwards, then leave the hair completely alone while it dries, because every touch breaks the clumps apart. Notino stocks most of the well-known curl ranges if your usual one has been discontinued, which happens more often than it should.

Where oil comes in

Cream and oil do different things, and using one instead of the other is why some brides end up with hair that's either crunchy or limp. Oil goes on the mid-lengths and ends, sparingly, either before washing as a treatment or afterwards to seal. The best hair oil for fine curls is a light one, applied to a fraction of the hair you'd think.

Skip the roots entirely. Weighted-down curls at the crown are hard to rescue once your stylist has moved on to the bridesmaids.

Plan for the weather your venue actually has

A converted barn in the Dales in August, a coastal hotel in Northumberland, a Scottish castle in October: three different humidity problems. Ask about the getting-ready room in particular, since a hot, crowded space with a hair dryer running does more damage to curl definition than the walk to the ceremony ever will.

Whatever else goes in the emergency kit, put a small bottle of water and a diffuser attachment in it. Curls that have dropped by the evening will often revive with a light mist and a scrunch, which is more than can be said for a set that's been pinned within an inch of its life.