My Quest for Perfect Teeth Part 1

My quest is to have a perfect smile for my wedding day… I haven’t got hideous teeth but at the same time I don’t have perfectly straight teeth either. I know the exact angle/tilt of my head required to make my teeth look reasonably good. Sadly nobody else seems to know it… so I spend a lot of my time deleting photos that others have taken and smiling with my mouth shut (which makes me look like I’m grimacing). When I started thinking about my wedding, my teeth created a conundrum: Do I hope that the photographer/other guests will be able to capture some photos with my teeth at the right angle or do I finally give in and get braces? I decided on the latter, and when I realised that the nightmare of hideous train tracks; which had haunted me when I was thirteen (I was already facing the nightmare of being called ‘four eyes’ back then), was a thing of the past… I practically skipped to the dentist to start my Invisalign treatment.

So anyway… I’ve just put my fourth Invisalign brace set in (out of eighteen) and I thought I’d reflect on what I’ve learnt over the first few weeks:

The first set HURTS. I felt like such a drama queen the first ten days… phrases like ‘nobody told me it would hurt this much’, ‘now I know how a baby feels when they’re teething’ and even more shockingly ‘I can’t even face to eat that’ were tumbling out of my mouth.

For the first three days of every set, ibuprofen has been my life saviour… so long toothache!

My nails are rubbish. My nails are that weak I can’t even get the sets off without breaking one. No joke. After a rather emotional first day, I resorted to using orange sticks as a wrench to get them off!

And… when you finally find a knack to get them off quickly, you feel like you’re the smartest kid on the block.

I’ve realised how many hot drinks I have a day now that I can’t drink them all the time (for those who don’t know – you can’t drink a hot drink with a set in). I’m saving money by not having multiple Starbucks in a week but the caffeine withdrawal the first week was no laughing matter!

Now that I have reduced my tea and coffee intake… guess what? The whitening toothpaste that I’ve been using for years is finally working… its magic… my teeth are looking whiter than they have in years!

I’ve become lazy in a good way. How? You may wonder. Even with my knack, I still can’t be bothered to take the set out and to go about brushing my teeth before I put them back in… so I’ve stopped snacking. I’ve even turned down chocolate from a colleague on multiple occasions! Who knew lazy could sometimes be good?!

And finally… I’ve become obsessed with looking at other people’s teeth whether it’s someone in real life or on the tv, I now can’t help but stare and judge whether or not I think they need braces! It’s rather embarrassing really… with another 150 days worth of braces, I’m hardly the one to talk!

Has anyone else got some fond/embarrassing/hilarious memories of braces?

Until next time, Chloé x