Glow-in-the-dark teeth

I like my teeth. A lot. They've provided me with 27+ years of cavity-free existence. They're reasonably straight and reasonably white, and they don't complain too much when I eat ice cream.

In short, my teeth are perfectly sufficient as-is for my day-to-day life, but my wedding is coming up, so I felt the need to super-size my teeth (metaphorically speaking) in some way. There isn't enough time for Invisalign, so teeth whitening seemed like the best option.

Conveniently, I had a coupon for a free teeth whitening kit, including trays and bleaching gel, if I joined a nearby dentist. It was a great deal, and I decided to go for it.

I asked the dentist about the 1-hour whitening compared to the whitening using trays and gels, which takes an hour a day for a couple weeks (a serious time commitment). She said that the insta-whitening can cause extreme tooth sensitivity, whereas the trays generally cause only minor tooth sensitivity that goes away when you stop using them. Though the inconvenience factor is high, you can't discount the "free" factor, so I decided to give it a try.

This isn't my first foray into tooth whitening. I tried the Crest White Strips in college, and had relatively good success, considering I quit after a week or so because I found the strips to be annoying and I wasn't sufficiently motivated to continue wearing them. I hope the impending nuptials will be the driving force in this situation.

I wore the trays for the first time yesterday evening, and the inconvenience factor is higher than I expected, much more so than the White Strips. First of all, I haven't figured out how to speak with the trays in (I could explain what happens when I do try to speak, but I suspect it falls into the "Too much information" category). I found myself counting the minutes until 30 had passed, but then had to rinse the trays and put them back in for another 30 minutes. (You are supposed to wear them for 30 minutes in the morning and 30 minutes in the evening, but my mornings are chaotic enough without introducing trying to fill a tray with a precise amount of whitening gel.)

The whole experience has thus far been inconvenient and unpleasant, and it's only been a day, but to adopt a glass-half-full attitude, let's just say that I am already 1/14 of the way there. Unfortunately, the only results I see aren't promising--the too-white spot on one of my front teeth now stands out more than ever (part of the motivation for the whitening was to make the white spot no longer noticeable). Let's hope the rest of the tooth whitens enough over the next month to make up for the overachieving spot.

The booklet that came with the trays says that after I finish treatment, my teeth will be especially white for about 2 weeks, and then they will assume their "final" color. You know what that means--my teeth will be glowing in the dark for 2 weeks. I haven't decided if I want that look for the wedding--it might look fine in pictures, or it might look like I have fluorescent lighting in my mouth.