Midlands Natural Hair Meetup

Daphne (@ThatgirlDapSC) and I decided about a month ago to host a natural hair meetup for the ladies of Columbia, SC. We went into this having no idea what kind of response we may get but we were wholly committed to it nonetheless. I began reaching out to companies for sponsorships. Thanks to twitter I have a really good relationship with some amazingly talented ladies who are creators/ceo's of their product lines who gladly agreed to sponsor our event.

WeRockRoots, Wonder Curl, Created by Nature, Mei Fashion and GloryRest. Additionally, Daphne and I donated pieces from our accessory lines; IMadeYouLookSC and Arym's Creations < Currently under maintenance!

We had about 19 ladies RSVP via facebook that they would attend and amazingly, 16 showed up! It was a great time of just talking natural hair, eating some great food (Thank you Red Bowl Asian Bistro! Shoutout to our awesome waiter Sam!!), and having a Q&A with my natural hair stylist, Nora

Onto the contest!
We came up with various giveaways for the ladies to win prizes from our sponsors:

Deshanda won our Wonder Curl prize of the Get Set Hair Jelly and Butter Than Love Whipped because she's been natural the longest. An amazing 10 years!:


Chelsea was our youngest member and won our Wonder Curl sample pack which consisted of Get Slick Hair Smoothie and Get Set Hair Jelly. She transitioned the longest. 8 months (sorry for the fuzziness):


Our MEI Fashion sponsored giveaway was a beautiful handcrafted bag. The question to answer was "What is the natural way to both color and condition the hair?" The answer was henna. Kionna was our winner:


The following winners shared with group what the following acronyms meant (in order their pictures are listed); PJ, PS, Pre-Poo, EVOO. These ladies won accessories from IMYLSC and Arym's Creations:

Crystal knew that PJ= Product Junkie



Chelsea (she KNEW! her natural hair trivia lol) knew that PS= Protective Styling



Kisha knew that Pre-Poo = Using an oil as a pre-treatment before shampooing the hair



Kryshinda knew that EVOO= Extra Virgin Olive Oil


We then did a "What's In Your Purse?" game. The ladies who had bobby pins and headband won prizes also from IMYLSC & Arym's Creations:

Johnessa had bobby pins on hers, Owww!:



Chelsea (once again, this girl KNOWS natural hair!) had headbands with her:


Mixed Chicks was gracious enough to send two 1 liter bottles of their deep conditioner. We gave one away by randomly selecting business cards from a pile.

Kisha was our business card winner:


For the second liter, a participant had to tell us one ingredient to avoid, one styling tool to avoid, and one treatment to avoid.

Kionna correctly named to stay away from mineral oil, hard bristle brushes, and Brazilian keratin treatments (sorry for the fuzziness):


Huge THANK YOU!! To all our sponsors. Every attendee was able to walk away with a great goodie bag full of products to further their natural hair journey:


Special thank you to our jr. host, CiCi! She took great pictures!