Of course, you want to feel and look beautiful on your wedding day, and part of that is getting your skin in its best condition: healthy and glowing. But rather than binge-buying every product in sight, take some time to evaluate what exactly you want. Setting specific goals for yourself—whether that’s reducing acne, increasing collagen or elastin, or simply hydrating the skin—will allow you to create a personalised wedding skincare routine and set an attainable plan for your big day.
Keeping track of the wedding skincare timeline leading up to your big day is also a crucial aspect of creating a pre-wedding skincare plan. You want the benefits of all your products and treatments while ensuring none of the possible negative side effects affect your skin on the big day.
Why a Wedding Skincare Timeline Matters
Having a structured wedding skincare timeline is key to achieving your skin goals and avoiding last-minute surprises. Starting early allows enough time for treatments and products to show results, while ensuring your skin has time to recover from any potential reactions. Whether you’re addressing hyperpigmentation, dullness, or acne, a step-by-step approach ensures your skin is photo-ready when it matters most.
Your Ultimate Wedding Skincare Timeline
6-12 Months Before The Wedding: Give Injectables A Go!
If you’re hoping to try out injectables like Botox or dermal filler, the best thing to do is meet with an aesthetics doctor as early as you can, 6-12 months ahead of your wedding if possible. Some injectables such as Polynucleotides require a course of treatments over many weeks to give the best results. Giving yourself the maximum amount of time allows your aesthetics doctor to work with you and create a bespoke treatment and skin plan to meet your goals. You can explore a greater range of products and treatments, as well as allocate the necessary funds. You will also learn how your skin reacts to injectables in terms of swelling and bruising.
Six Months Before: Start Using A Retinoid And Schedule Your Advanced Facials
If you suffer with acne or breakouts, now is the time to start treating the root cause of your congested skin with a retinoid – a vitamin A derivative – that when used topically, increases cell turnover and makes way for fresh, new cells to reach the surface of your skin.
Retinoids aren’t just for oily, acne-prone skin types, they have the ability to increase skin’s production of collagen, which helps smooth out wrinkles and fine lines, making them an excellent option for drier and more mature skin types as well, perfect for mothers-of-the-bride too!
Despite their reputation as one of the most efficacious skin-care ingredients on the market, retinoids are not without caveats. They are a marathon, not a sprint, and you shouldn’t expect to see great results immediately. As your skin adjusts to the treatment and undergoes what’s called its “retinization period”; it is normal to experience sensitive, red, flaky, dry skin, and purging during the first month or so of retinoids. But rest assured, this improves, and reveals healthy new skin underneath.
If you suffer with pigmentation concerns, either from sun damage, acne scarring, age spots, freckles, or melasma, now is also the time to start addressing this. Using a prescription-only cream, Hydroquinone, can drastically improve the pigmentation of your skin by limiting your production of melanin, the hormone that darkens your skin.
If regular facials are something you are planning to integrate into your pre-wedding skincare routine, you should start looking for a reputable beauty salon about six months in advance.
The term ‘facial’ encompasses:
Hydrafacial – to cleanse, extract impurities, and hydrate the skin,
Radiofrequency microneedling – to give smoother, firmer skin with an even tone and glowing complexion,
LED therapy– to reduce inflammation and stimulate collagen production, and
Laser energy treatment – for non-surgical skin tightening and fat reduction.
Depending on your budget and the severity of skin concerns, you can then work together to create a facial schedule in advance, as part of your wedding skincare routine.
Four Months Before The Wedding: Try Out Laser Treatments
If your primary concern is eradicating sun spots or hyperpigmentation as part of your wedding skincare routine, speak with your aesthetician about laser treatments. Lasers work by sending pulses of highly concentrated light to the affected area where they heat up and destroy the hyperpigmentation. This results in the pigmented spot turning into a scab, flaking off, and revealing brighter and more even-toned skin underneath.
Intense Pulsed Light (IPL) therapy is a safe and effective treatment to improve the appearance of many skin irregularities. This advanced light treatment can help to treat rosacea, thread veins, spider veins, uneven pigmentation, and sun spots.
Twelve Weeks To Go: Start AHAs and BHAs
Acids such as AHAs and BHAs are generally not as effective at increasing collagen in the skin as retinoids are, but they can give fantastic results when it comes to hyperpigmentation, dullness, acne, or textural issues. Not all acids are created equal – their strengths differ, especially when it comes to buying over-the-counter vs medical-grade, and they can come in many different cosmetic formulas (cleansers, toners, serums, exfoliating pads, etc).
In order to integrate an acid into your wedding skincare routine while also ensuring that the percentage is right for your skin, it is recommended to start with low- to medium-strength products (around 1 to 10% in AHAs and 0.5-1% BHAs) and then increasing only if necessary. If you experience any kind of irritation, redness, or flakiness after you begin using the product, it’s likely that the formula is too strong for your skin and you should stop using it. Three months before your wedding date is an ideal window of time for you to begin using a new acid-based product and assess how your skin responds, without fear of irritation on your big day.
Just One Month Left: Schedule Your Final Injectables Appointment and Don’t Start Anything New!
Your final pre-wedding Botox and dermal filler treatments should be done about a month before your wedding day. That way, Botox will be working at its strongest, giving your smooth, wrinkle-free skin, dermal filler will have settled into your skin, with any swelling or bruising subsided, and a boost of injected polynucleotides will give your skin a flawless glow!
During the final weeks of your wedding skincare timeline, you should avoid trying any new products or treatments in order to avoid any irritation or flare-ups.
Additional Tips For Your Wedding Skincare Routine
- Daily SPF: Protect your skin from UV damage throughout the year.
- Hydration and Sleep: Drink plenty of water and prioritise restful sleep to support healthy skin.
- Balanced Diet: Incorporate antioxidant-rich foods, omega-3s, and collagen boosters for glowing skin from within.
We understand that your wedding is one of the most important days of your life, and you want to look and feel your absolute best. If you need expert advice, book a consultation with Dr. Charlotte to create a customised wedding skincare routine tailored to your unique wedding skincare timeline.
