Every bride wants to be beautiful on her wedding day. The search for perfection often leads to unhealthy extremes, including wacky diets and bad-for-you tanning beds. According to Newsweek magazine, today’s brides have a lot to live up to. Elaborate celebrity weddings are splashed across TV and magazines. There are more than 13-hundred wedding books, countless bridal magazines, wedding workout videos and reality shows, like Bridezilla and Buff Brides. Today’s standard is to look “red-carpet-ready”.  Which creates unrealistic expectations, unnecessary stress, and promotes unhealthy behaviors.

For example, a lot of brides order a dress two sizes smaller, because they’re determined to be thinner on the Big Day. Unfortunately, they often try to lose too much weight too close to the actual wedding. In fact, a study at Cornell University found that 1 in 5 brides use extreme weight-loss methods to reach their goal, like fasting, taking laxatives, going on liquid diets, extreme exercise, smoking, and throwing up after meals – which is now called bride-bullemia.

Many brides-to-be also go for skin treatments, like Botox, wrinkle fillers, and laser treatments. The procedures are safe if done by a dermatologist, but many spas and salons offer similar services from technicians with little or no training. Which result in severe burning and scarring. In fact, we just read an article at ABC.com, about two brides who were disfigured by phony collagen injections right before their weddings. Unscrupulous technicians have even used research-grade botulinum toxin instead of Botox because it’s cheaper. Causing full-blown cases of botulism poisoning, which required months of treatment in the hospital on a ventilator.

There’s also the tanning bed. A tan is often seen as the perfect complement to yards of white fabric. Dermatologists say that the energy from a tanning bed penetrates 6 times deeper than natural sunlight. Which means, 15 minutes in a tanning bed is like 3 hours on the beach.
What’s the take-away from this? Remember, a wedding is one day and it’s not worth risking your long-term health for a few pictures and memories.