Photo: Phylicia Duncombe @pdphotography
Kadeja Jackson’s hair stylist suggested she cover her gray before her wedding day. But the bride-to-be refused.
“I didn’t want to look in the mirror on my wedding day and see a stranger,“Jackson, 38, who lives in Miramar, Fla., tells PEOPLE. “I just wanted to look like me.”
And her look has since inspired many thanks to social media. Her wedding photos showing her old-school Hollywood glam have gone viral, encouraging women around the world to embrace their natural beauty.
Jackson tells PEOPLE she “cannot believe the feedback.”
Jackson’s hair started going gray when she was 16. Embarrassed and ashamed, she spent 15 years going to the salon for weekly touch ups. “I would dye it and dye it,” she tells PEOPLE.
Seven years ago, she stopped coloring her hair — and ever since strangers stop her multiple times a day to ask who her colorist is and what the name of her silverly hair color is so they can get it too.
“I started to embrace it,” Jackson, the regional Manager for the Housing Department in Hollywood, Fla., shares. “I felt more beautiful than I did before. I got tons of compliments.”
Tia Condrington
When her wedding-day hairstylist suggested she cover the gray — she said she might need to get another stylist. Her groom objected too.
“Derrick was totally against it,” Jackson says. “He loves me with that look.”
Jackson metDerrick Baker, a 39-year-old football coach and behavior specialist at Somerset Academy, when they were in 9th grade.
PHOTO: Phylicia Duncombe @pdphotographyPHOTO: Phylicia Duncombe @pdphotography
They were best friends all through high school and attended Florida State together. “When we met,” she says, “We were an instant connection.”
Halfway through their freshman year of college he told her he wanted to be more than friends, she remembers.
“He’s like, ‘I want to be with you,'” she remembers. “I was like, ‘I cannot do life without you.'”
She loves that he’s a driven, patient, mild-tempered man. “He’s very accepting of who I am, he loves who I am,” she says. “He’s a wonderful father, an exceptional father. Just a strong man.”
Phylicia Duncombe @pdphotography
“I wanted my hair to be what stands out,” she says. “It added that extra glamour.”
Jackson says she also designed her husband’s custom made white tux with a floral print, and pink velvet lapels — he paired it with sparkly pink, gold, and silver loafers. She carried an enormous spray of white, Phalaenopsis orchids.
She wanted her wedding to be “dreamy,” and “I would be part of that dream.”
On their June 26 wedding day, make-up artistTia Codrington, loved the bride’s hair and posted to social media with the comment: “I love the girls that stick to their roots.”
“I was just like, ‘Oh my God, her hair is amazing,'“Tia Codrington, a 35-year-old destination make-up artist based in Miami, told PEOPLE.
Her Instagram post is up to 5.9 million viewsandon Tik Tok 1.4 million views.
“Everybody’s dying over it,” Codrington says. “She wasn’t ashamed of it. She didn’t try to hide it. …She was herself and I just hope that it inspires people to be themselves. And it’s okay, you can still be beautiful even if your hair is gray.”
Jackson says she sent additional photos to herhair stylist, with better lighting, who agreed she should rock her natural hair color.
Both Jackson and Codrington says the hair stylist agreed it would have been a mistake to color Jackson’s locks. “I spoke to the hairstylist,” Codrington tells PEOPLE. “I told her, I said, “I’m so happy that you let her just be her,” Codrington tells PEOPLE.
“She looked like a portrait from back in the day,” Codrington adds. “I couldn’t even imagine her with any other hair color, to be honest. It wouldn’t be the same. It wouldn’t be her.”
Jackson says she’s gotten thousands of DM’s from women around the world that her confidence and courage has inspired and encouraged them to embrace themselves too.
“If I can encourage anyone, I’m happy,” she tells PEOPLE. “I’ve been getting a lot of messages about people embracing themselves — just off of my confidence that they see. They’re now willing to embrace things that they didn’t quite embrace at first. I got a few stories in my Instagram, people sending me voice messages. Just to know that you can inspire so many people off being yourself, it makes me smile. It makes me happy.”
source: people.com
