As the summer hits its peak, wedding season is once again in full swing. If you’ve recently become engaged and are preparing for up and coming nuptials, Dr. Catharine is here to give you and your bride tribe her top tips for wedding day skin prep:
Firstly, congratulations! This is the most special time in your life to make sure you enjoy the love and laughter in the lead up to your wedding. My first piece of advice in preparing your skin for your big day is to give yourself more prep time than you think. You ideally want to trial your wedding skin before the big day and some treatments have down time or take a while to reveal their full effects.
- Skin care routine – The best to way to get wedding ready is to get your daily skin care as tight as possible as far in advice as you can. Your skin cycle is around 6 weeks so to see best effects of any changes in your routine, it can take up to 3 skin cycles (4-5 months). I always recommend a full skin analysis with a skin specialist so they can advise you of what products would best suit your skin, everyone is unique and therefore so should their skin care be. Double cleanse at night to ensure you remove all of the daily stresses and makeup and avoid clogged pores, make sure you include a standalone physical SPF (>20) everyday, make sure niacinamide vitamin c and a retinol feature in your skin care routine in the months leading up to your wedding. Not only is this good everyday anti aging practice but it will mean your skin is as plumped and radiant as possible.
- Skin peels and microneedling – If you want to ‘sparkle like Markle’, a course of skin peels and/or microneedling is a great way to exfoliate the surface layers and plump and rejuvenate the deep layers of the skin to give you a smooth, even, skin texture as well as helping reduce fine lines giving radiant. These treatments can help with a variety of skin problems from aging skin, acne, scarring and uneven pigmentation. I would recommend a course of 4-6 peels roughly 4 weeks apart. So planning your treatment course with this in mind, might mean that you begin treatment 6 months before the big day. Depending on what type of peel your skin needs, will determine the amount of downtime you may experience, this can vary from no downtime to a 1 week of light skin peeling.
- Anti wrinkle injections are a great way to smooth out skin as well as help prevent further wrinkles forming. This consists of a series of small, painless injections that work by softening muscle movement causing the skin overlying to look bright and refreshed. It’s a common concern that having botox means having a frozen face. I recommend starting with low doses to ensure a natural, more subtle result and reviewing after 2-3 weeks and adding more if needed. Botox takes 2-3 weeks to show its full effect and typically lasts 3-4 months. I recommend having a trial of anti-wrinkle treatment 6 months before the big day as this will give you time to have one course (work out what doses work for you) and then give time for a second treatment to take full effect. Anti-wrinkle treatment can also be used to prevent underarm sweating which is ideal to stay fuss free on a summer wedding day.
- Soft Tissue Filler – Soft tissue fillers are increasingly popular part of wedmin beauty prep. Im seeing more and more brides wanting to diminish under eye circles as well as contour their cheekbones or enhance their pout using soft tissue filler. Mothers come in wanting to to look refreshed and ‘look good for their age’, I more often than not, recommend replacing midface volume and rejuvenate around the mouth using subtle soft tissue fillers. Occasionally this type of treatment can cause some bruising which can last a few days (a week at worst)
- Lifestyle – in the weeks leading up to your wedding, I recommend fine tuning your daily lifestyle to include regular exercise (minimum of 3 days a week), cut sugar out of your diet, eat foods rich in omega oils, vitamins B,C, D and E as well as drink plenty of water (ideally 2 litres a day) to get the most out of your skin health.
