Teeth Whitening for Weddings: Home vs. Professional

There are literally hundreds of products and services out there designed to get your teeth white for important and well-photographed times in your life. Figuring out which one is the best depends a lot on what you expect from your teeth whitening. For weddings, you want the best possible results, because you never know when someone is going to snap an extreme close-up of your face, and you don't want any flaws in your smile.

The Problems with Home Teeth Whitening
For wedding parties—and especially the bride and groom—it's an absolute necessity that you be as photogenic as possible at the wedding and at the reception. While you could certainly trust your smile to some form of gel-based or strip-based home teeth whitening system, it's not a good idea.

Strips leave significant gaps along the inward-curving surfaces of your teeth that don't get white, and it shows up clear as day in professional close-ups. The whitening substance just doesn't get where the strip doesn't go, and that includes every single surface between any two teeth.

Gels contain humectants like propylene glycol and many also have harsh bleaching agents so that they work quickly. The problem here is that these ingredients can severely irritate the gums, leaving them red and raw—which will show up in the pictures you have taken.

Gums, Toothpastes, and Home Remedies like "mix charcoal dust with peanut butter and brush your teeth with it" all have the same basic problem — they don't do crap. They might whiten your teeth a shade or two if you use them regularly for a few months, but they won't ever work as proper teeth whitening for weddings. You need WHITE teeth, not merely "not yellow" teeth.

The Answer is Professional Teeth Whitening
For weddings, there is simply no substitute for professional teeth whitening. Talk to your dentist and schedule your appointment for at least 30 days before the rehearsal dinner. That will give you as few chances as possible to stain your teeth in the interim, but also enough time to make sure, if there's a problem, that you have time to fix it before the critical moment. There's no good reason to use any other methods of teeth whitening for wedding pictures.