Do you need six months of beauty prep?

Photo by Ollie Crafoord

As someone who LOVES bridal magazines, I will devour each new edition of, say, Snooty Bride Magazine, from cover to cover, hungrily reading each article, ad, and sidebar, hunting for information that I don’t even know I need. Bridal magazines are glitzy, fun, and full of inspiration.

But let’s face it, they are also designed to sell us stuff.

And that’s OK – heck, this blog promotes local vendors, so I’m not complaining about the businesses of weddings.

I will admit, however, that sometimes I come across some wedding advice that I find either ludicrous, or at least unnecessary. For instance, as I was recently snacking on a lighter-weight bridal publication, and found a multi-page spread devoted to outlining the 6-9 months of beauty preparation that the bride should undergo to look “perfect” for the “big day.” Photos accompanying the article showed airbrushed celebs, advised pricey creams, and contained a little countdown calendar that was meant to help a bride schedule her facials, mani-pedis, and cosmetic surgery so as to attain the perfect complexion by the wedding day.

Now, I’m not above cosmetic work. I love expensive creams, I love facials, and I’ve had Botox and lip injections before (LOVE them; just can’t afford to keep them up). I could care less about mani-pedis, but I can certainly see why brides get them done for their wedding days.

However, something about charting the course for attaining cosmetic perfection for ONE DAY really bugged me. Unless you are getting married in India, your wedding is probably only going to last one day, and yes, everything that you are spending your money on is simply for a one-day event, and sometimes that will strike you as wasteful. Expensive beauty treatments leading up to the wedding day really aren’t any different, in terms of expenditures, than bridesmaids shoes or boutiniers or monogrammed cocktail napkins. Except, of course, that beauty involves your face, your body.

This isn’t to say that brides shouldn’t want to look their best; weddings are a performance, and being stage-ready is absolutely logical. And if there are some non-surgical cosmetic changes that you have been looking for an excuse to undergo, I suppose a wedding is as good an excuse as anything (I say non-surgical because I really think that things like nose and boob jobs should be considered for many years and never performed under the auspices of looking good for a single day – these are BIG decisions that will affect your entire appearance permanently).

Like, if that wrinkle between your eyebrows really bugs you, sure, go ahead and get it filled in or paralyzed with toxins a few months before your wedding day to see if the effects are to your liking. If they’re not, they’re going to wear off anyway (usually). If you love your smooth new forehead, fabulous! Continue treatments!

Likewise, if facials are something you don’t get to indulge in regularly, but you can justify the expense because it’s for the wedding, hey, go to it. Especially if you love getting skin treatments; if they relax you, make you feel pampered and special, make your skin glow… by all means, use the wedding as your reason.

But if these things DON’T make you happy: if you break out from facials, if the expense stresses you out, if the idea of scheduling beauty treatments and maintaining the perfect nails for months at a time makes you want to cry, then you have zero reason to participate. Ignore the advice. Use an un-manicured nail to flip off the well-meaning people who are always pushing you toward the salon door.

Don’t feel pressured into undergoing treatments that you don’t normally want to feel that you need. If your wedding is going to feature YOU at YOUR best, then there is really no reason to try to look like someone else. So only pay someone else to slather creams on you if that’s what makes you feel your best.