Braces as an adult

  It's been about 18 months and today I finally got my braces off.  It was not the easy choice, but it was the right choice and now I have the smile I've always wanted.

  I had SO many people think I was crazy for getting braces as an adult.  I never had them as a child and as I aged my teeth continued to move, crowd each other, and in general look worse.  People would always say, I never noticed and then I'd send them this picture.  There are a couple of obvious teeth, but the two bottom front were turning in toward each other and it was getting worse.

  Of course, I documented my journey.  This is kind of personal, but much clearer evidence of how bad they were! 

 This was a couple of months after I had them on and the first braces picture I took for documenting.  Hard to look at, but now you see what I was trying to convince you!  They are so bad.

Side note:  The close-ups also revealed serious facial hair which finally had me investing in a wax kit.  In case you wanted to know.  LOL!  (Also, thank you to my sister for moral support and answering my million questions.  No, I did not know the life skill of waxing.)

 Two bottom teeth almost straight!

 Two bottom teeth straightened out and then he finally got to work on that wonky tooth.

 This was in the last couple of months of having them on.

  This was at the end of April when I took a car selfie right before I was supposed to get them off.  And then he didn't take them off!!  And it was sad, but like I said before, I wanted to do this right.  So he fixed my overbite that was happening as well as shaved down my top two rabbit teeth.

  Then I had to take another car selfie to show the final result!!  This is from today!

  I am super happy I did it, but it was not easy that's for sure.  Most adults would not do this, but I just had to keep in mind the long term.  1.5 years for hopefully many, many years of the perfect smile.  I also have a handful of friends that are now talking about doing it.  Why not Invisalign you ask?  I heard countless stories of it not working.  From not wearing your retainers consistently to a machine doing the retainers for you, their teeth were mostly straightened, but a stray tooth was set too far back, and their bites not right.  There is nothing like an orthodontist manipulating your teeth to the correct bite and aesthetics.  I am very happy I chose this route.

  That was way more of my mouth than you ever wanted, but thought it would be fun to see the progression.

Happy tuesday!