Marriage Time

While the Summer Solstice is still a few weeks away, last weekend marked the official start of Social Summer – which corresponds very closely with Wedding Season. I’ve learned a lot about the industrial wedding complex this year, as I prepare to convert my status from betrothed to newly-wed in a few short weeks.  
Whether you are a guest, a participant or a principal in any wedding festivities, beauty is always top of mind. I’ve been prepping my skin for months with a combination of professional peels, oral medications, lymphatic drainage and microcurrent, all designed to make my visage the shiniest, smoothest, calmest and most lifted it has ever been.  

That’s all well and good for one’s face, but we simply cannot forget the body. I’m also avoiding the sun to prevent tan lines in my wedding dress, and lasering off old tattoos that I don’t know why I got in the first place. Thrice-weekly sessions at my local New York Pilates studio are helping me feel my best, which for me means strong and lean. “Shiny”, “strong” and “lean” – it sounds like I’m describing a prize-winning horse, which, if i’m being honest, isn’t too far from my goals.  

If the facialist could become the facialee, (sadly, like Kathy Hilton, I am not an octopus) I would love to give myself The Works. This season’s bridal clients are indulging themselves in this two hour, everything-but-the-kitchen-sink facial. 

The Works starts out with über-relaxing and low-key sculpting Manual Lymphatic Drainage, proceed with slow and meditative deep muscular massage, then comes the Hands-In-Mouth bit. The Trans-Buccal massage is intensely relaxing for all you teeth clenchers and night guard wearers, to the degree that your dentist will comment on how loose your jaw has become. By this time you’ve floated away, so I bring you back to earth with a much more dynamic and fast-paced sculpting and lifting face massage. Now, here comes the technology: we lock in those snatched angles with multiple frequencies of micro current before sending you back to outer space in the AstroDome. The dome provides LED, NIR, pressurized oxygen and negative ions to boost your cellular metabolism six ways from Sunday. 

xx Raquel