Big-day beauty treatments
7 non-invasive cosmetic treatments to look younger on your wedding day
By Dr Cat Stone
Congratulations! You’re planning one of the biggest days of your life, and you want to look your absolute best – glowing skin, perfect dress, feeling incredible. Having everyone think you look a few years younger and more beautiful is always nice too!
Every person is different, so it is important to see an experienced clinician for a personalised consultation to determine which treatments might be right for you. A good clinician will spend time getting to know you the first time they meet you (look for somewhere who will take at least an hour for your initial consultation). They will discuss your options, and then help you determine a tailored plan for your treatments. A good way to tell if your aesthetic is aligned is to look at their before and after pictures on social media and their website, and also their team. If you walk in and everyone has ‘duck lips’, I would gently excuse myself and not proceed with treatment!
Your personalised plan will not only be determined by your facial structure, age, genetics and skin condition, it will also be influenced by how much time you have given yourself to prepare for the wedding – the longer, the better, ideally at least 6-12 months.
Beautiful skin
Achieving beautiful, healthy, glowing skin is a journey, not a one-night, one-hit wonder. The cornerstone to getting your skin looking its best is what you put on it every day – your daily skincare routine. A great medical grade skin care regimen that contains the appropriate type and level of vitamin A, Vitamin C, antioxidants and sunscreen are also a required base level for the advanced skin treatments that will help you look fresher and younger.
1) Regular nutritional peels – light to medium lactic, salicylic or vitamin A peels on a monthly basis are a sure-fire way to get healthy skin and a gorgeous glow! Peels increase your skin turnover and can be helpful for acne, as well as improving the hydration, smoothness and evenness of your skin.
2) Dermafrac® is a non-painful skin needling treatment that infuses treatment serums into the skin to help with brightness, pigmentation, hydration and collagen stimulation. If you have a shorter time frame (six weeks to six months), this is a great option. We usually recommend one treatment a week for six weeks, and then once a month to maintain your results.
3) Microdermaplaning removes the fine downy hair on your face, as well as the dead layer of skin cells that make your face look dull and dry. Your makeup sits smoothly on the skin so that your photos look magnificent – no ‘peach fuzz’ catching the light in your photos. This treatment can be done just a few days before your big day, however, we recommend a trial run at least six weeks beforehand to make sure that it’s the right treatment for you.
4) LED light therapy such as Omnilux® or Healite® helps to provide the skin with the right type of light energy to charge up the ‘batteries’ of your cells, the mitochondria, and really get your skin glowing. LED light therapy is also great to combine with your other skin and injectable treatments, as it helps reduce any redness and bruising while improving your results.
Look fresher and younger
5) Botox® treatments – these wrinkle-relaxing injections help you avoid looking tired and grumpy in your photos. We highly recommend to most brides to have at least a small amount of ‘baby Botox’ (very small doses) in their frown, so that when you squint in the sun while having your photos taken, you don’t look grumpy! This is also one of the key tools for looking fresher and younger too. An experienced injector can lift the brows and mouth corners to help you look less tired and happier, and when it’s done properly, you should still look like you, just fresher and younger.
6) Dermal fillers can be used to replenish the areas you have lost volume in the face that makes you look tired, drawn or hollow, especially if you are losing weight to fit into your gown! When used judiciously, injectable fillers can help to balance your lips, chin and/or cheeks to help you look your absolute best. Again it’s important to go to the right person – make sure they use (reversible) hyaluronic fillers, and check out their other clients to make sure they are not overfilled and puffy.
7) Platelet-rich plasma (PRP) – these injections of your own healing growth factors, isolated from your blood, can help improve your skin’s texture, thickness and glow, and this treatment is especially good for the fine, crepey skin around the eyes, neck, chest and hands. This treatment can also be great for stopping or reversing hair loss too! You will want to have at least six months prep time, as it can take six weeks to six months to see results, and you will most likely need multiple treatments. The ‘Vampire Facial’ is our best treatment for improving skin texture and glow, as it combines PRP with hydrating/collagen stimulating hyaluronan, administered via a needling device that improves pore size, skin texture and glow.
Dr Cat Stone is the founder of NZ’s first medical spa, The Face Place. Practising cosmedicine since 2000, she has just launched her first book Grow Younger and More Beautiful As You Age.