Wedding Skincare Routine ~ Lead up to the wedding

 Hello again!

Welcome to the second post in my wedding series! I recently—finally—got married and I wanted to document everything I did beauty wise (and also planning wise if people are interested) on the day of, and also leading up to it. This post is all about what I've been doing as skincare for the lead up to my wedding. Since it's pretty much the most important time in my life to be serious about skincare and care about how it looks, I thought I'd share my routine.

I have fairly normal to combination skin (sometimes a slightly oily t-zone and a few notorious dry patches around my face). I do have cystic hormonal acne that is on my face for three weeks out of every period cycle and unfortunately this included the week of my wedding. I actually had one huge cystic zit on my forehead and three on my chin. 

We all know there's no possible way to get rid of cystic acne overnight and it requires a lot of hard work (sometimes antibiotics). Unfortunately, I never got onto medication in time so I've been trying to manage it as best as possible without any prescriptions. I didn't care much about it existing as long as it mind if it wasn't super enflamed or noticeable under makeup so the pictures will still look nice, but of course I'd much rather not having it at all.

Nighttime Skincare routine:

Every single night in the few weeks leading up to the wedding I was using the first four products. The order in which I used those four is actually the same way they're laid out. 

The Ordinary's "Buffet" serum has lots of great ingredients and while most of the reviews I saw about this mentioned anti-aging (I even bought it for my mother-in-law a few years back), I did find a few claiming it helped with acne. I'm pretty much 25 now, so while that's young, my skin definitely doesn't look like it did on my past Seventeen-year-old self so the anti-aging benefits are a plus for me. 

The Dermalogica "Barrier Defense Booster" and "Calm Water gel" are a pair made in heaven. The oil isn't too light or too heavy and definitely makes my skin feel more plump and the moisturizer is pretty light on its own, but paired with the oil it's perfect. They are very expensive to me and I probably wouldn't have purchased them for the wedding if I didn't already own them since I have tried more affordable skincare since that's similar enough (not quite as good), but the price tag makes those products more worth it. If I didn't own skincare that had similar results I would've for sure bought these for the wedding.

The Ordinary "Salicylic Acid 2% Solution" was my spot treatment of choice, and it was used pretty much every single night since I started this routine.

The last product in my nighttime skincare routine started being incorporated about a week before the wedding. Because of my skin changing based on what part of my cycle I'm at, my skin became very dry next to my nose, closer to the cheeks. It was to the point where the oil and moisturizer weren't enough and it'd feel dry to the touch. This is a sample of the Skinfix Barrier+ Lipid-Peptide Creme that I got as a free sample from Sephora. I've tried a peptide creme before and LOVED it so when I found this in my sample area I instantly knew that it would solve my problems and boy did it ever! I started applying this on the dry patches next to my nose and all around my eyes, focusing underneath them and the crevice near the inner corner. Within two days the dry patches disappeared, so I kept it up because makeup applies way better when my skin is moisturized.

Cleansing Products:

These are my very basic washing/cleansing products! If you've read my past skincare posts, you'll know I love the Cetaphil Cleanser for Oily Skin and the Foreo Luna Mini has been amazing for my skin. This may seem random to post after my actually skincare routine, but I put this between because I was actually using this every night and every morning leading up to the wedding.

Daytime Routine:

My daytime skincare routine is going to seem boring and that's because it is. I didn't use any unique products from my nighttime skincare routine at all. The only difference is that I was only using The Ordinary's "Buffet" followed by the Dermalogica "Calm Water Gel." Yup, that's it. I told you it'd be boring.

I've actually reviewed several of these products before on this blog so I'll leave a link here for you to look through my skincare reviews. 

This was my face before doing my makeup on the wedding day! You can see all the fun cystic friends that joined me in my nuptials.

Tips and Tricks for better looking skin:

While I never stopped using the skincare routine for even a day, I did sometimes do something different to help out. When my four giant cystic acne spots decided to invade my face, I quickly ripped off a piece of aloe from my plant and started applying it to my skin at night. This worked especially well for the huge eczema flare up I experienced on my right hand (yay allergies).

On the morning of the wedding the acne was still very visible, so I packed a sandwich bag with three ice-cubes and held them on all of my spots the entire way to the wedding venue (a bit over an hour). Ice helps a lot with the swelling of the acne, so while it won't get rid of it, it makes it look much smaller. This helped significantly and it now looks like I just had small little breakouts instead of the massive ones they truly were.

I have allergies all year round and they get really bad between August and November. Right when my wedding was happening. It's to the point where i have a prescription for what's essentially Reactin (same drug, just not brand name) that I can take every single day. I made sure to take it every day leading up to the wedding, as well as on the wedding day to make my eczema less itchy, my nose less runny and my eyes less watery. I also took an ibuprofen the morning of the wedding because that can also help with inflammation, which was great for my eczema and acne.

Here's a picture of me on my wedding day from my Instagram page (go follow me!).

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Amy Sousa (@beautybyamysousa) on Sep 7, 2020 at 12:27pm PDT

That's all I have for you regarding what I did skincare wise leading up to and on my wedding day! I hope some of it was helpful or at least interesting to read. I'll be posting more wedding-related posts when I have all of the pictures back so you can actually see my makeup, dress, hair tools etc. For now I'll leave you here.

See you soon!

Disclaimer: Affiliate links were used in this post. I barely make any money from them and primarily use Magic Links to make linking easier. Seriously. I've made 20 cents in the last 4+ years of blogging and doing YouTube.