Unless you are a wedding planner, most women have no idea how much goes into preparing for a wedding until the ring is on their finger. Sure, the stress is expected, and maybe you have pinned over 300 ideas on a Pinterest wedding board since college. However, beyond the colors, cakes, venue and guest list, every bride wants to look her absolute best on her wedding day. While getting in shape to fit in the gown of your dreams is important, having a model’s smile will truly resonate through the photos and represent the sheer joy you feel internally.

Avoid Teeth-Staining Food and Drinks

A couple months before the day, try to cut out some foods in your diet that will stain your pearly whites. A common rule of thumb cosmetic dentists recommend to patients is to refrain from foods that would leave a stain on a white tablecloth. Recommended stay-away foods and drinks include:

• Wine, particularly red
• Sodas
• Berries
• Coffee
• Tomato sauce/Ketchup

Cutting out everything that has an impact on discoloration is a huge challenge, so picking even just a few and taking them out for a few months will help your teeth tremendously.

Schedule a Teeth-Whitening Appointment

Brighter teeth means a brighter smile, and a brighter smile means amazings photographs to hang over your fireplace as a newlywed couple. About a month before your wedding, consult with an experienced cosmetic dentist about the best options for getting your teeth polished. You can generally expect to pay between $200-$800, and can maintain the radiance by investing in home whitening kits, such as Crest whitening strips. Paying a dentist to whiten your teeth for you has immediate results, while using home kits will take weeks or months before you notice any changes.

Keep Lips Lipstick-Friendly

Lipstick seems to always look best when we initially put it on. Unfortunately, wedding photographs don’t happen in our dressing room, so brides should prepare their lips to keep the lipstick on all day without worrying about reapplying. The best way to keep your lips “lipstick-friendly” is to exfoliate using a lip scrub and apply lip primer before lipstick. Exfoliating will allow your lips to stay smooth, preventing dry flaky lips developing throughout the night, and applying primer will keep that stunning color on your lips all night.

Choose the Right Lipstick

Lipstick can make all the difference in a smile, depending on the color you decide to use. To make sure you love the color beforehand, shop around for which makeup artist demonstrates the best makeup trial. You can decide which color will give you the brightest smile while also matching your skin tone and complexion. If you don’t even know where to start with lipstick color, we recommend steering clear of oranges, salmon, peach, brown and corals as they tend to give teeth a more yellow hue.

Audrey Hepburn once said that happiest girls are the prettiest girls. Let this rule take precedent on your special day and have a smile that will resonate through your photos for a lifetime!