You’ve paid for them, and finally your silver wedding hair accessories have arrived through the post.

You’re ecstatic, they’re everything you’d hope they’d be and more.  Even the silver printed black gift box is of an impressive quality.  You can’t help but take your hair accessories out of the box, and look at the from every angle, you love watching how they catch the light, inspecting the workmanship and knowing that it’s all the more special because it’s been made just for you.

But stop – did you know that the oil on your hands is going to speed up the tarnishing processes, the more you hand it the quicker the surface with dull.  Does that mean it’s poor quality metal?  No even sterling silver goes through this process, its natural, but the good news is that it can be prevented and if need be reversed with a simple little trick.  I’ve share that with you later.

What is tarnish on silver wedding hair accessories?

All types of silver whether it’s fine silver, sterling silver or silver plate will tarnish (fine silver will tarnish the slowest due to it’s lack of copper). This is a natural reaction between the metal and our atmosphere. It one of the reasons silver is less expensive then gold; gold is one of the least reactive metals available hence it’s 10 times the cost.

Keeping silver wedding hair accessories looking pristine

To keep your silver wedding hair accessories looking pristine it’s best to keep them in a sealed package or an air-tight container to limit their exposure to the atmosphere as much as possible until your wedding day.

Also a thorough polish with a silver polishing cloth which are available from supermarkets and online will leave a coating on top of the silver providing a barrier between the metal and the atmosphere helping to slow down the tarnishing process.

What if my wedding hair accessories are tarnish?

If my advice above comes a little too late and you’ve left your hair accessories out so you can keep admiring them, then my next piece of advice should be helpful. Most heavily tarnished wedding accessories can be cleaned with silver cleaning chemicals or my preferred method of hot water, bicarbonate of soda and aluminium foil. I’ll show you how this works in a video below.

Ok so there’s no video, it’s been recorded and it’s sat on my hard drive waiting to be made to look pretty. But it will be coming soon and when it does I’ll replace this little paragraph of text that makes me look a little lazy

Back to the main programme

However care must be taken with hair accessories that contain natural stones such as pearls and other semi precious stones. If diamantes have been glued into place the hot water may weaken the bond between the glue and the stone allowing them to become loose and fall out.

It’s easier to keep your silver wedding hair accessories tarnish free, then to clean them up so once you’ve received them, pop them into a plastic food container or a thick plastic bag and store them somewhere dark. That way on your wedding day they will look like they’ve just been created and still have the shine they were designed with.

I hope this is helpful – feel free to ask me any questions.