This has been 1 year in the making and I have finally had my first hair piece attached last night. It took me many months of reading this forum and studying what to do, what products other people use, maintenance tips, etc. I originally was planning on trying to do everything myself, but was starting to get overwhelmed with all the unknowns and things that could go wrong. As I'm currently living in London, I discovered some other commenters here mentioning they had used Joanna at Forever Hair in London. After getting in touch with her and setting up a consultation, she quickly took all of my worries away. She is a fantastic stylist who knows her stuff and has had a ton of experience dealing with fitting and styling hair pieces. I'm certainly glad that I was working with her because she helped to identify what the exact color of my hair is (I'm a 3Ash which I never would have known) and also to help with coloring the hair piece when I got it because TopLace doesn't have the 3Ash color. The closest they have is 4Ash so she was able to darken it slightly. I would recommend her to anyone in the London area, she was a lifesaver for me!

And also a big thanks to John at TopLace for helping me with shipping and quickly answering all of my questions.

I went with a French lace base this time as I didn't want anything too delicate for my first piece. They're a little thicker than others but it's hardly noticeable and I'm not exposing the hair line so it's not a big deal. I may go with a SFS in the future especially if I decide to style it back. I'm also using tape over glue right now as my intention was to be removing it fairly frequently. I planned to not sleep in it every night to add a little life to the base, and I also workout frequently including swimming and decided that it would just be easier for me to remove the piece and wear a hat/bandana/swim cap when I'm doing that.