The Real Housewives of New Jersey are hardly known for their subtlety. And that’s especially true of the franchise’s biggest star, Teresa Giudice; as someone who famously flipped a table in her very first season, the reality star and New York Times best-selling cookbook author knows how to get an audience’s attention. But at her August 2022 wedding to husband Luis “Louie” Ruelas, Giudice shocked even longtime Bravo fans (this writer included) with the dramatic high-swept, crown-adorned hairstyle she wore down the aisle.
Suffice it to say the look was polarizing. “Marge Simpson is now a brunette,” one commenter wrote on Giudice's Instagram, while another added that the “beehive is way over the top!” But it had a swell of support too. “I want to hate your hair but…it’s growing on me! Seriously I kinda love it,” wrote one fan. Even Bethenny Frankel—perhaps the most outspoken of all current or former Housewives—weighed in. “I am here for it, I want more,” she said on her podcast, Just B With Bethenny Frankel.
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The hairstyle was the work of Giudice’s longtime stylist, Lucia Casazza, who co-owns the Great Cazoo Boutique and Beauty Bar in Wayne, New Jersey. The two have worked together for 14 years, as long as Teresa has been a Housewife, and Casazza says they became fast friends nearly as soon as they met. “I was working at MAC [Cosmetics],” she recalls. “I met Teresa in the mall. She came in, and we just clicked.” Fast-forward, and the two collaborated on perhaps the most iconic hairstyle in Housewives history. (Sorry, Lisa Rinna. We had some good times!)
Ahead of Teresa Gets Married, which airs Tuesday, May 23, at 8 p.m. ET on (where else?) Bravo, Glamour got the full details on how Giudice's wedding hair came to be, straight from the bride and her stylist.
Due to Giudice’s filming schedule, there wasn’t time for a hair trial, so everything came together the day of the event. And we have Giudice’s daughter Gia to thank for one of the most integral parts of the look: the crown.
Lucia Casazza: We never even did a trial run. You would think she would want to do 10, 12 trials. No, she had that much confidence in me and that much faith. She was like, “Let's make this hair look epic.” And we did.
Teresa Giudice: We just never had the time to do it. I kept saying to her, “I want to do a trial. I want to do a trial.” And I guess with my filming schedule, I didn't have the time.
Lucia: There was this picture of hair that I sent her that was a bride cutting a cake. The cake was probably 30 feet tall, and her hair was cascading through the center of a large crown. And I said, “Oh my God, that's so her and Louie.” I was like, “This is going to look so good because I know she's going to have an elaborate cake.”
Teresa: At first I told her I wanted the Hollywood wave that everybody does now. She's like, “You're not doing your hair like that. Every single bride does their hair like that. You're not like every single bride.” I had the crown, and I wanted my hair away from my face, so then that's why I decided half up, half down.
Lucia: Me, her, and Gia, we went to pick out the headpiece. We tried on—when I tell you everything in this whole entire store—everything. And I was playing with her hair within all the different pieces and the different styles. She's like, “I don't know if I want to wear a crown.” And I'm like, “I feel like you should.” When we put it on her head, Gia looked at her and said, “Mom, it's beautiful.”
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Then came the wedding day. After hours in the chair, a planned second hairstyle—intended to go with Giudice's reception dress—was scrapped.
Lucia: It took about three and a half hours. It was very tedious. But we prepped her the day before. I have my own extensions line, Lucia hair extensions. So I ended up doing her install the day, or two days, prior. And then the day of, we added clip-ins to a custom mesh form that I created inside the crown.
Teresa: The first thing I asked Louie—because he just said, “Wow,” when he saw me—I said, “Babe, do you like my hair?” And then he goes, “Yeah, you look absolutely beautiful.”
Lucia: She actually ended up doing another headpiece because she had two dresses. But there was so much going on and we were all having so much fun, that it was like, “Why stop all the fun to stop and do hair?” She loves getting her hair done, but on a day like that, we just decided, let's leave the hair. She never ended up even wearing the second headpiece.
Teresa: I wanted to switch my hair, but that was not happening. I changed my dress for the reception, but it was still a full wedding dress. My first dress was Mark Zunino, my second dress was Galia Lahav. The hair went great with the second dress also.
After the wedding, numbers began circulating about the cost of the hairstyle—upwards of $10,000. But that wasn’t the only big number.
Lucia: If you add up the cost of the extension service, then the hair and the bridal styling fee—which for something like that would be around $2,500—then the headpiece, everything was around $9,500, $10,000. But there's a price point for everyone. We try to accommodate everyone because we want every bride to look and feel her best on her wedding day.
Teresa: It took 45 minutes to take out. My makeup artist, Priscilla [DiStasio], took it out. We were sitting out on my balcony in the hotel and she was helping me. It was fun.
Lucia: It looked like so much, but really it was her hair mixed with some clips, and then the mesh form was what was in the center creating all of the height. So it's basically a big optical illusion and everything's pinned to it. You know when you go to a baby shower and you play how many jelly beans are in the bottle? It was like, let's just take a guess. How many pins are going to go in your head right now? And one pound was, I think, 500 pins. We ended up using three boxes. So she had about 1,500 bobbies within her head.
Teresa: It felt heavy in the beginning because I was nervous before I walked out of the chapel. Then after that, it all went away. I was just working myself up. I started feeling hot because of my nerves. I had anxiety. And then after I walked out those doors, it all went away.
Lucia: Her head had to have weighed at least six, seven pounds all on its own. But only a queen can keep that crown in place. You know that.
As soon as the wedding photos made their way to social media, the reaction was swift—and polarizing. But you don’t make Housewives history without getting people talking, and sure enough, the look was immortalized with a life-size cutout at BravoCon 2022.**
Teresa: I have to say, my first text was from Andy Cohen and he's like, “I love the hair.” I was just like, “Aw.” I loved that he loved my hair. And then afterward, that's when it started all happening.
Lucia: I did not expect that. There was all this crazy entertainment at the wedding. There were fire blowers! I literally had to put my phone down on Sunday morning because my heart was pumping through my chest. I thought my career was over, seeing memes and stuff all over Instagram. I'm like, What the hell did I do? Do people not like it? But then it was 50-50 and a lot of people liked it. People were fighting over it. There were videos going viral.
Teresa: They were like, “Your hair broke the internet.” I was like, “Oh my God.” I remember seeing Chrissy Teigen, she took a picture in it because she was at BravoCon. Andy, he took a picture in it. I feel so honored that they did that at BravoCon.
Lucia: Teresa was sending me screenshots like, “Andy loved my hair. He's texting me.” And then she goes, “Andy wants your phone number.” I was like, For what? It was like seven in the morning and she's laughing and I'm like, “Are you fucking with me right now?” He wanted me to be his guest, his cohost on his radio show. I'm like, “Quit breaking my balls this morning.” Two hours later, he had me on his radio show on XM.
Teresa's like my sister. She's one of my best friends. I really wanted to just make her beautiful, like a princess on her wedding day. That was my only goal. So everything else that happened from it, I was in pure shock.
Teresa: You know how sometimes you're like, “Is there anything you regret?” No, I absolutely loved it. Like I said, I didn't want to just look like every other bride. My background is in fashion. I like to stand out and be different. So I guess I succeeded. I definitely wanted it to be unforgettable, and it is.
Teresa Gets Married airs Tuesday, May 23, at 8 p.m. ET on Bravo.
