Pride Month

For the first time ever, Toronto decided to make their pride celebration last not only a week, but the entire month of June. That’s right: more rainbows, more sparkle, and a full month filled with love and support for one another.

We’re always looking for new ways to bring more colour to our lives, so the updated schedule gave us that much more reason to make pride-related magic. To welcome the final week of festivities (which includes most of the parties and the famous parade), we decided to throw our own little Pride kickoff party with all of our friends in a borrowed yard. We called it the #RAOPrainnbowparty!

A lot of different factors went into making this particular styled event a success. First off, we needed colour- lots of it! To brighten up the space we decided to build a balloon wall. Consider yourself warned- balloon wall building is not a relaxing weekend activity. The end result (shown in these photos) took two days of planning, about 15 packs of balloons (10x what we has estimated), and 7 volunteers blowing up balloons nonstop for hours in the sun to create!

After the amount of work we put into the balloon wall, we wanted to make sure that our drink selection matched the theme. We had a chance to try out Raspberry Starfruit Iced Tea and Frozen Strawberry Pineapple Pouches (YUM!) from Palm Bay. We also had a super cute cooler, pastel Turkish blankets, a record player for tunes, cookie dough ice cream, “Palm Bae” sweatshirts by Shop Nopal, and so many different kinds of sprinkles!!!
Palm Bay was an amazing complement to our pre-pride party. It was a total success, and the ultimate way to kick off the fun coming this week!

Hope to see you at Pride this year!

Photos by Josh Mitchinson and Johanna Martin
Styling and Direction by Alyssa Garrison
Assistance from Mikayla Kuehn
Cotton Candy via Fancy Pufs
Party Plates and extra decor via Confetti and Bows
XOXO Balloons via Northstar Balloons
Jewels via Cherry Pick
Hottiewood

A special thanks to all our magical rainbow models (aka our friends) too!

This post was sponsored by Palm Bay, but all opinions are my own. To inquire about sponsored posts, please email jess@shineinfluencers.com

And just like that, it’s one of my favourite times of the year again: Toronto Pride is around the corner! In all honestly things feel a bit different this year for all sorts of reasons- I’m dating a cisgender man for the first time in a long long time, my best friend Sarah is coming to spend with weekend with me from Vancouver, and most importantly, I’m still reeling from the mass shooting in Orlando. The more I read about this horrible tragedy, and the more I think of how easily it could’ve been so many of my nearest and dearest in that club… it’s almost unfathomable, but it’s reality for those victims and their families.

With that in mind, the common consensus in the community and beyond is that we need to band together, become stronger than ever before, and most importantly, spread love over spreading hate. Pride has always been a celebration of love, friendship, community, and strength for me, and I think this year more than ever it remains important to sparkle on in full capacity. Rumour has it you might even catch a glimpse of my rainbow hair in this year’s parade if you look closely enough…

Anyway, on to the hair!

I almost always have some sort of unicorn-type thing happening on my head for Pride, and there’s no one better at swirling blended rainbow hair goodness then Amanda Quarshie at Blyss salon. I was introduced to the Blyss team through my PR contact at Davines (aka my go-to hair brand), and we’ve been pretty much unstoppable when it comes to amazing colour creations ever since. This year she used 6 different colours on my locks (including peach and lavender) to get the dreamiest pastel mane possible, all blended at different strengths so certain shades showed up more obviously.

Using Davines “A New Colour” in a warm beige blonde to create a base, and Davines Pure Colour for the actual rainbow, the end result was a subtle yet beautiful opalescent masterpiece, and I’d be lying if I said I haven’t been terrified to wash my hair and lose the effect!

Stay tuned for more glimpses of my rainbow hair at the #RAOPrainbowparty post, coming early next week!