Where We Started
Long hours & a business built on care
Before Gilded Vows
Kim and Nessa ran a hair extension salon for clients with medical hair loss — long, careful days spent making people feel like themselves again. Nessa handled the experience; Kim handled the technical work.
After the rising costs of 2020 hit close to home. Things began to take an unexpected turn.
The years of long hours finally caught up with them physically, too, as symptoms of chronic illness became harder for them to ignore.
They were faced with two decisions…
Continue working in the salon with the potential of their health getting worse. Or close the salon to prioritize their health.
They chose to finally close the salon in the summer of 2024.
For a while, neither of them knew what came next — only that they hoped, someday, to find a way to make a difference, again.
One Late Night…
Kim was researching other careers that called for the same kind of precision as hair extensions.
She came across the stories of hair stylists leaving the industry, for good.
But one individual, a lash technician who’d tried her hand at permanent jewelry — and something about it stuck.
The more she compared welders and researched the craft,the clearer it became-
Here was a way to keep doing what we’d always done best.
Taking care of the people we love, and creating moments that stay with them.
Long after the day itself had passed.
But The Story Doesn’t End There…
Back in 2020, during the quiet of the pandemic, Nessa was working towards her bachelor’s in psychology.
But it wasn’t her major that brought her there — it was her art minor.
Those classes cracked something open, forcing her to sit with questions about identity and belief she’d spent years not asking.
An untangling of her identity, sexuality, and religious beliefs began to take a new form.
She found herself feeling grounded in queerness as a lesbian while in tandem feeling separated from the belief system she’d been raised upon.
As this unfolding continued, she began to understand the harm from christian-claiming individuals to members of the LGBTQIA+ community- HER COMMUNITY, and the harm she had blindly taken part of.
Around the same time, she was working her way up through her sister’s salon — starting as the janitor, eventually becoming its organizational and educational director.
It Taught Her –
How to run a business, and more importantly, what she wanted hers to stand for:
1. Equal pay and real living wages for everyone on the team, regardless of title;
2. Realistic parental leave for expecting parents of any gender;
3. And genuine equal treatment for people of color and other minorities. Standards that aren’t always the norm in Texas.
Her Love Story Is Still Unfolding
Nessa hasn’t found herself in a queer relationship yet – that part of her story is still to be written.
But it’s part of why Gilded Vows exists.
She saw how few spaces in the south were built with LGBTQIA+ individuals or couples in mind. Let alone built to celebrate them.
This Is Her Answer
To That Gap
A business rooted in the values she found on her own path, open to every kind of love.
Meet
The Team
Co-Founder & Education Leader
Kim
The Brain behind every weld. After years of technical work behind the chair, she transferred her skills to crafting handmade permanent jewelry. She’s steady, precise, and unbothered by nerves (yours or hers).
Co-Founder & CEO | Nessa
A psychology degree with a minor in art – and a career path that took her from custodian, to salon assistant, to in-house chef, to running social media and environment at our old studio. She leads client experience, from the first inquiry to the last toast of the night.
