I’m getting married and want a rhinoplasty to fix my nose.

Question:
I am 28 years old and I am getting married in three months. I want to have a rhinoplasty done to fix my nose, but how long will it take for the swelling to go down?

Answer:
Well, I guess you waited till the last minute, but I see this all the time in the office. I even had a patient come in for a facelift three weeks before her daughters wedding! I would say that you have time still, but you better get moving soon. This is because it does take a while for the final result of the rhinoplasty to be visible. Of course, the amount of swelling and the length of recovery is somewhat related to exactly what is done on the nose, so every situation is different. In general though, a lot of the changes are visible the minute the splint comes off one week after surgery. A good bit of swelling is usually gone by about four to six weeks, and the nose is usually looking pretty good by that point. But if you wanted to know how long it takes for all the swelling to go away, that is a complicated question. The vast majority is probably gone by six months. I have seen slide presentations at meetings showing that you can even see changes occurring from six months to one year, from one year to two years, and two years to three years! That does not mean that you have to wait three years to recover. That just means that there are slight changes going on in the nose during that time. In general, you should give yourself a good month after the surgery before any event as an absolute minimum. This is because you can’t even rest something like sunglasses on your nose and have to be very careful up to that point. At six weeks to two months, I would say that you are 90% of the way to your final shape, but there is definitely still some swelling that will continue to improve.

So, you have no time to waste. We need to take a look at the nose and decide whether the improvements that can be achieved in only a month or two are worth it based on the severity of the problem of the current shape of your nose.