Every bride wants to look good on her big day
and an increasing number are prepared to have a nip and tuck to ensure they do.
In fact, brides now make up 30% of the clients at UK cosmetic clinics.
Their wedding day is their Oscars. They have to look perfect.
They'll go to any lengths to do that.
However, more and more women are walking up the aisle blushing
for all the wrong reasons as they end up botched-up brides.
People perhaps lose sight of the risk in their desire to get something done.
Coming up - the disastrous pre-wedding boob job.
I've been left so disfigured, I just don't feel like a woman any more.
The stinking stomach.
That's the fluid that's been coming out of my stomach wound.
And a wedding in the sun with pus-filled lips.
I have never been in so much pain.
If you pushed onto my lips, they would swell up.
More women than ever are adding cosmetic surgery procedures
to their wedding budget.
The average wedding in the UK costs around £25,000.
Of that, £4,000 is spent on beauty-related products.
Cosmetic surgeons have seen a 13% rise year on year in bookings
for pre-wedding treatments like breast surgery.
For 45-year-old Dawn Roberts,
choosing to have a second breast reduction close to her wedding day
was a decision she would live to regret.
My breasts were quite large, 36FF.
And I didn't like them because I looked so top heavy.
I was size 10 on the bottom and 18 on the top.
Dawn had her breasts reduced to a size 36C
and was initially pleased with the results.
Within weeks, I was like a new woman and I couldn't believe it.
I had this small bust and I had no pain.
However, Dawn's newfound happiness was short-lived.
She started to gain weight and, as her body grew, so did her boobs.
They grew a lot bigger than the rest of me. They grew quite quickly.
Back pain was back, the neck pain was back. I went back to the doctors.
The surgeon suggested that I have a second breast reduction.
With her wedding just three months away,
Dawn was worried that she wouldn't heal in time.
The surgeon said, "Yeah, you'll be fine, you'll be healed."
Obviously, you couldn't sunbathe, so I said I'm not worried about that,
as long as I'll be fine for my wedding and to be able to go on honeymoon.
He said there's plenty of time.
Dawn went back under the knife believing she'd recover in time
and that she would have a petite bust for her wedding. She was wrong.
When she woke up, she'd been left with disfigured, indented,
unsymmetrical breasts and masses of ugly scarring.
One bust is completely higher than the other. They're completely square.
This side, there's a big triangle bulge
and it's complete disfigurement.
When her wedding day eventually arrived,
Dawn wore a rolled-up bandage in her bra
to give the illusion that she had a cleavage.
She then hid her disfigured breasts in her wedding dress and headed down the aisle.
Distressed at the way her breasts now looked,
Dawn took the decision to postpone the honeymoon.
We were married 12 months and we planned to go to Egypt for our honeymoon,
but because of the delay, that door's been left.
She doesn't feel comfortable wearing a bikini or any sort of swimwear
and I said, "It's not a problem. We can actually do that at a later date."
Dawn's disfigured breasts have affected her relationship with her husband.
The intimacy side becomes very difficult.
She doesn't like me sort of touching her because she's so conscious.
Steve's had to take on an awful lot.
It's not fair on him to be burdened with this as soon as we've got married.
Even though he's very patient and he's very supportive,
he has admitted that I'm not the same person that he met.
I've been left so disfigured. I just don't feel like a woman any more.
It really has ruined my life really and...
Sorry.
In the hope of getting married life back on track
and to find out if anything can be done to repair the damage,
so she can finally book her honeymoon,
Dawn is in Chelsea to see plastic surgeon Patrick Mallucci.
Now, that is quite tricky, Dawn.
You know... I mean, there are lots of things...
- Wrong. - Which are...
Yeah. In many ways, I think stage one is to try and rebuild up
a little bit of projection, to get you a little bit of visual symmetry
through trying to re-tailor a lot of these scars.
Including trying to get rid of that excess.
Until I've gone in there, it's difficult to know how it's going to turn out.
Coming up - ghastly band surgery.
When I look down, I see a monster lump
of mashed-up mess.
You may not kiss the bride.
I've never seen anything like it. My lips swelled up like footballs.
And Dawn has her botched bridal boob job repaired.
Stitches are under quite a bit of tension.
They may or may not hold so we'll have to see how that goes over the next few weeks.
The list of things brides will do to look good on their wedding day
is seemingly endless,
but by far the most common goal on a pre-wedding beauty wish list
is to lose weight.
A staggering 96% of women aim to shed pounds,
with the average weight loss for a UK bride being 11 pounds and 3 ounces.
However, an increasing number of women are resorting to extreme measures
to drop several dress sizes in record time to look slim on their big day.
38-year-old Rachael Chew had a gastric bypass to help slim down
in time for her wedding to fiancé Michael.
I wanted to be healthy
so that we would be able to enjoy our lives together
and he said he would support me in whatever it was I wanted to do.
Three years ago, she paid £7,000 for surgery,
convinced it would give her the bridal body she wanted.
Immediately after the operation, she was pleased with the results.
I thought this is the turning point now, this is the start of my new life.
However, her happiness was short-lived
when the following morning she began to feel unwell.
They found that during the first operation,
the surgeon had accidentally cut my bowel.
Following surgery to repair the rip in her bowel,
Rachael returned home but within two weeks she was rushed back into hospital.
Rachael's skin had split open,
resulting in a deep hole in her stomach that was oozing with infection.
Three years down the line and I've had eight operations in total now.
Seven to repair the problems from the initial cuts.
For three years, Rachael has been waiting to walk down the aisle.
Her stomach still hasn't healed
and she is constantly connected to a machine that sucks out the excess fluid
resulting from the infection.
The pipe is attached to a drain,
which goes into my stomach
and the fluid from the wound
is sucked out and goes into the machine.
And that's the fluid that's been coming out of my stomach wound
and is now collecting in this canister.
I have to carry it everywhere with me. I sleep with it.
I shower with it, everything gets done with this machine.
She has now set a date for her wedding.
Infection or not, she'll be walking down the aisle in three months' time.
When I'm getting really low and down, I keep looking at my dress,
thinking this is, you know, hopefully going to be the best,
one of the best days of my life.
But because of the lumps in my stomach and because I'm attached to this machine,
I can't actually get in the dress at the moment.
It's too tight.
The way Rachael now feels about her body has had a real impact
on her physical relationship with her fiancé, Michael.
I don't like him touching my stomach at all,
and it's awful for him because he just wants to give me a hug.
I wish that I could allow him to give me the hugs and the closeness
that I really desperately want but I feel so uncomfortable.
I'm trying to focus on my future with my fiancé
and on our wedding.
Rachael has travelled from the West Midlands to West Sussex
to see plastic surgeon Peter Arnstein.
She wants to find out if anything can be done
to help speed up her recovery
and rid her of the large folds of flab in time for her big day.
Well, it may be that what you need is a two-stage procedure.
I suspect that you probably have still got foreign material in there -
the mesh, non-dissolving stitches and so on.
If they are infected, then it's very difficult to eradicate that infection.
So what I anticipate,
probably one needs to go in, take all that material out, let it settle,
get rid of the infection, then go back in and take away the surplus tummy as well.
But with only three months to go till her wedding,
Peter decides that to carry out major surgery so close to her big day
is too big a risk, so it's decided to postpone treatment.
I think her wedding I'm afraid will have to proceed without her tummy tuck.
There's absolutely no point in rushing this.
We've got to do it sensibly and safely.
It is disappointment, yes, but...
I think the fact that it could be done at all
would be amazing for me and there is light at the end of the tunnel
that hopefully, in the near future, I will have got rid of these scars
and got rid of the infection,
and hopefully be able to start a new life with my husband.
Rachael will walk down the aisle with a botched body
and possibly not in the wedding dress she longed to wear,
not something that featured in her original plans.
Like most women, she has dreamed about her wedding day
since she was knee high and wanted everything to be perfect.
The kiss is seen for many as vital to seal a fairy-tale union.
As a result, more and more brides are looking to boost their pout
with the help of filler.
But in such an unregulated market,
many women have no idea what is being injected into their faces
or how the product will react with the body's tissue in years to come.
Fillers are not regulated so anybody can pick up a syringe full of filler
they've bought on the internet and inject you.
If the filler does become lumpy and infected,
it can cause swelling, pain and discharge,
complications that, far from enhancing the first kiss, will stop it altogether.
Something that never crossed the mind of 47-year-old Deborah Kelly,
when she decided to have her lips plumped for her wedding.
It's fair to say I've always been insecure about my looks.
I do have some problems with my skin which have led to
a great deal of self-confidence issues,
But to get married in your 40s and to the husband of my dreams,
I wanted to look the best I possibly could.
Three months before her wedding,
Deborah decided to have a natural, non-permanent filler in her lips
to give them a fuller effect.
The whole idea was it would only last for three months,
so I would look lovely for my wedding but then I would get back
to the natural look after the wedding.
However, when Deborah had her consultation with the surgeon,
she was sold a very different, much more permanent product.
He was very reassuring, so I decided to have the injections
because I'd you know already made my way there.
I'd already booked my appointment. I said, "OK, I'll go ahead with that."
I put my trust in the surgeon. You know you do, don't you?
You think that they know their job better than you.
But the filler that was injected into Deborah's lips caused a horrific reaction.
What happened was my lips swelled up like footballs.
I've never seen anything like it.
I was told to, you know, to keep freezing them with ice packs.
Eventually when the swelling started to subside,
Deborah noticed that lumps were forming in her lips.
I have never been in so much pain.
If you pushed onto my lips where the lumps were, they would swell up.
The lumps in Deborah's lips caused by the infected filler got worse
and ended up affecting her wedding day in Sri Lanka.
I was slightly dreading the kiss, so it ended up as quite a quick kiss.
By the evening, Deborah's lips had become much more painful.
: We did embrace because it was our wedding night,
but my lips were stinging and they were starting to get a little bit bigger.
I was disappointed, I really feel that, you know, the fairy tale
that I had in my mind wasn't necessarily what I ended up with.
Deborah's infected lips have affected the early years of her marriage.
Years after these injections,
I still have sensitive lumps in my lips.
We were hoping that they would go down,
so we'd be able to, you know, kiss and hug and everything as a normal couple.
With the wedding a distant memory
and Deborah's lumpy lips still causing her discomfort,
she's in London to see cranial facial surgeon Niall Kirkpatrick
to see if anything can be done.
There really are...
quite a few lumps
and they are very hard.
There are one or two down this side here.
But mostly it's this big one in the centre, isn't it?
And there's a fairly big one just here.
Examination over and Niall gives Deborah his verdict.
Sometimes in the early stage when you start to get early lumps forming,
then injections with steroids can be very helpful.
But when you're a few years down the line and you have really solid, hard lumps,
it's very rare that injections alone really settle things down.
My view is that you'd benefit from actually trying to remove them.
- And I think those are your two options. - Right.
Of which I think you're more likely to benefit from the surgical option
than the steroid injection option.
I spend a lot of my practice trying to remove permanent fillers
from patients who've had complications.
It's only patients being injected with complications
that determines whether the product then gets taken off the market
and my personal feeling is that permanent fillers should be banned.
Following the consultation, Deborah is left to consider her options
and decide whether to go ahead with surgery.
I had thought that there would be a suggestion for having
the filler cut out of the lips. I was dreading it, to be perfectly honest,
because of the scars and also I'm a scaredy-cat, to be fair.
Two weeks later, Deborah has decided not to take Niall's advice
to go under the knife and has opted to have steroid injections
to try and shrink the balls of filler.
As that sort of settles over the next few hours,
she may feel that there's no real change
but slowly if the steroid is going to have any effect...
we'll see it starting to have an effect as a few weeks go by.
So this is a little bit swollen but probably not as much as it feels.
Yeah, that's fine.
I'm really keeping my fingers crossed that this is going to work.
I've been trying to encourage my husband to have a renewal of our vows
and it would be so perfect to be able to have that experience without swollen lips.
There's a small chance that the steroids will work,
but Deborah's fear of going under the knife will more than likely mean
that her lumpy infected lips will continue to come between husband and wife
for some time.
It's not just cosmetic surgery that's on the rise for brides-to-be.
Cosmetic dentistry is also big business.
We want everything to be perfect for that one day. We're spending a lot of money.
In 20, 30 years when we're looking back on our pictures, we want that perfection.
In pursuit of the brighter, whiter Hollywood smile, more and more women
are adding a dental makeover to their wedding budgets.
But when 30-year-old Gemma Stowers
decided to have cosmetic dentistry to give her a perfect smile,
it ended up affecting her big day.
When my wisdom teeth came through,
I ended up getting quite a few problems with my teeth because of the overcrowding.
My front teeth seemed to be more prominent than the rest
and the bottom were just all overlapping.
I didn't really smile as much as I probably would have done.
I was a bit conscious about how I was smiling.
Gemma decided to have braces to help straighten out her wonky teeth,
and sensibly researched into her options long before her wedding.
I always knew that I'd like to have straight teeth for my wedding pictures,
so that was always a goal.
I came across an orthodontist who was offering a free consultation
to discuss what my options were. I thought I had nothing to lose.
Gemma went ahead with the procedure.
She had five teeth extracted and had braces put on her top and bottom teeth.
After about a year of the top braces being on, it was ready to have them off
and I was pretty happy with the results.
But the dentist never removed her bottom braces
and it wasn't until a routine check-up at an NHS dentist three years later
that Gemma started to get concerned.
He thought, you know, as I did, that they should have been off after 16 months.
From extended pressure put on them, my bottom teeth were quite wobbly
and I'd had five teeth taken out when I should have only have had four.
I was pretty shocked and upset.
The clinic where Gemma had the braces fitted charged her £2,000
to try and rectify the problems.
It was a temporary fix to get her ready for her wedding,
which was now just months away.
It was a month before the wedding that I finally got
the bottom train tracks off,
but because my teeth were still so wobbly,
they had to glue in a bonded retainer at the back
to try and secure them so they didn't move.
When her wedding day arrived, not only were Gemma's teeth unstable,
held in place by a hidden brace, she still had a large visible gap when she smiled,
hardly ideal for the numerous wedding photos.
At the end, I was happy with every element of the wedding
apart from the fact that I had a big gap.
And I did end up being conscious
and, sort of, probably restricting my smile as I did before.
I know that if I don't get it fixed, then the damage is only going to get worse.
Gemma is in London at the United Smile Centre
to find out if anything can be done to fix her mouth.
She's under the care of Dr Carl Manhem.
Here we have four, missing the five and the six.
What normally happens when you lose a tooth, the bone starts to shrink,
both in the width and the height,
and that is what's happened here.
We can definitely do something for you but maybe not a straightforward case.
Okay.
Gemma has a CT scan to find out whether she'll need a bone graft
to enable the implant to be fitted securely.
We need to increase the bone volume
and it can be a little bit tricky because in lower jaw,
you also have a nerve, the sensation of the lower lip,
so we are limited with the length of the implant we can place there.
Carl will need to review Gemma's scans
before deciding what course of action to take.
Next time Gemma is in the dentist's chair,
she'll be having her botched dental work repaired.
Coming up - a plucking disaster.
Most people don't know what all the plucking can do
and they will never grow back.
And butchered breasts are repaired.
You know, in terms of the scarring there, I mean, that just looks beautiful, Dawn.
With the pressure to conform to society's ideal of the beautiful bride,
women are deciding to have permanent filler to look younger
and suffering devastating side effects.
Filler is seen as a sort of walk-in, walk-out procedure.
It's seen as a trivial procedure.
And I think perhaps people go into it
maybe a little bit less cautiously than they might.
So are non-permanent options a better choice for brides
looking to rejuvenate their faces before they walk down the aisle?
42-year-old Mary Catchpole discovered that they are not.
She chose to have temporary filler just two weeks before her wedding.
I sort of wanted to just feel a bit more youthful
and I thought there was nothing wrong could come from it.
Having researched into the product and spoken to the clinic,
Mary booked in to have dermal fillers just 14 days before her wedding.
I went in the afternoon, spoke to the dermatologist.
He explained what he would be doing.
He said I would be fine for my wedding day, there would be no sort of
severe bruising, any redness or any lumps.
Happy with the procedure, Mary left the clinic
and continued with her wedding preparations.
It wasn't until half past four the next morning
when I sort of woke up with severe, severe burning
and this feeling that there was poison running through my body
that I started to sort of get worried.
I couldn't eat. I just felt like I wanted to basically vomit.
It was a few days after that I started to have dizziness, headache, disorientation.
With just seven days to go until her wedding,
Mary developed a rash that covered her entire body.
Woke up one day and my vision was blurred.
Everything sort of looked dim. I went to an emergency eye hospital.
They thought I had some kind of infection,
but they couldn't basically determine what kind of infection.
It's such an uncontrolled market
that there are too many fillers that are not tested,
that don't have a track history, for which there are no clinical studies.
Effectively, you're experimenting on humans.
Despite all the medication she had been prescribed,
when her wedding day arrived, Mary was still extremely ill.
Every kind of movement that I made it was like I was,
you know, going to collapse and faint.
The whole time during the meal I kept saying to my husband,
"I can't see properly. My vision's really, really bad."
It should have been the happiest day of my life but it wasn't
and it was all just due to a few injections of a dermal filler
that just ruined everything.
Following the wedding, Mary's symptoms did not get any better.
She had to give up work and it affected her relationship with her husband.
He was worried about me, he was worried about the effects on our family.
We... we almost divorced.
From then, it was just a continuous round of going to different hospitals,
having different kinds of tests, eye tests.
All the while, I was getting progressively worse.
With nowhere left to turn and with the clinic where she had the filler
refusing to take any responsibility, Mary paid to see a private neurologist.
She was referred to the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery in London,
where she spent three and a half weeks having tests.
Their conclusion was that this filler had damaged some nerves in the facial area,
got into areas that it shouldn't have
and it wasn't something they could say could get better in time.
It's possible it's permanent. They don't know,
because they've never dealt with something like this before,
and that's how I've been sort of left.
Mary has learnt a difficult and painful lesson from the experience.
I'd definitely say these dermal fillers have wrecked my life
and they've basically taken away the best married years
that I should have had happily with my husband.
Gemma's early married life has also been affected by sub-standard cosmetic work.
A tooth that was removed in error has left a huge gap in her lower jaw.
If the gap were to be left unfilled, her lower teeth would spread out of shape.
Today, she starts on the journey to have the damage repaired
by dental surgeon Carl Manhem.
Gemma's case is not straightforward because she has been without these teeth
for several years, which means that the bone volume has shrunken in the area.
The bone will need to be replaced before a permanent implant is inserted.
Carl takes some of Gemma's blood that will be used to create plasma
rich in growth factors, or PRGF.
The PRGF technique isolates the blood plasma proteins responsible
for wound healing and tissue regeneration.
It will help to stimulate bone growth in Gemma's jaw.
The team spin the plasma out of the blood and then add calcium.
In about five minutes, this will turn into a jelly,
so it will be something then we can graft back in the patient.
While the gel forms, Carl prepares Gemma's mouth by giving her a local anaesthetic.
Going to give you a little bit here first.
He removes the gum from around the bone
to expose the area where he will insert a dental screw.
I'm going to start doing a little bit of drilling now.
Now you're going to feel a bit of vibration.
A guide screw will allow Carl to check that he has drilled the correct size hole.
Bear with me, see if the guide is coming out right in the middle
of the temporary tooth,
which means that it's ideally positioned where it is now.
After 30 minutes, the hole is the correct size
and the screw to hold the new tooth in place is fitted in.
Carl places Gemma's new tooth onto the screw to make sure it fits.
Now we can see when we try with the temporary tooth here,
it's coming straight over the seal in the way we want it,
so that's just positioned perfect here.
Once the shape of the tooth is refined, it's ready to be fitted.
Carl surrounds the area with the PRGF gel made from Gemma's blood.
The gel will stimulate bone growth.
Once the new bone has developed, it will hold the implant securely in place.
Take a little bit of the membrane as well.
And put on top of that. it will act like protection.
With the membrane in position to protect the gel,
Carl stitches it to Gemma's gum to hold it in place.
Carl then fills the screw cavity with tape.
If we don't do this, we get bacteria,
microcosms from the mouth coming in here
and that means that there is a risk you get an infection in here.
- We are finished and everything is stable. - Great, thank you.
After just a couple of hours, Gemma's new tooth is ready for inspection.
That looks fantastic. Thank you.
- Nice to have something back in there. - Yep.
- Great, thank you. - Perfect, thanks.
The operation has been a success.
Once the gel has grafted to her jaw,
Gemma will return to have a permanent tooth fitted.
In the past, I've been a bit wary of how I smiled
so once the real tooth is on,
I guess I'll be grinning from ear to ear.
When it comes to weddings, there's no getting away from the fact
that all eyes are on the bride.
It's your big red carpet moment and you just want to look perfect,
and you'll go to any length to do it.
From French manicures to fake tans, from bleaching to Botox,
if it can enhance the beauty of the bride it is considered.
In the hunt for bridal perfection, some problems are self-inflicted,
as women try beauty treatments at home, sometimes with unexpected results.
Rita Khorramrooz spent years plucking and shaving her full eyebrows.
She wanted to return to a more natural look for her wedding,
but to her horror discovered that the hairs would not grow back.
I started plucking my eyebrows
when I was a teenage girl, at the age of 13, 14.
My aim was to look like my role models,
celebrities Jennifer Lopez or Nicole Kidman.
After five years of plucking, when I was at the age of 19,
I just wanted the higher arch so I started even shaving my eyebrow
and I thought it's even nicer to draw them in and draw the tail.
After years of plucking and shaving her once-bushy brows,
Rita wanted to grow them back in time to walk down the aisle,
but she soon discovered that she couldn't.
That was horrifying because I would just have one eyebrow hair here,
the other one here, just... they would never grow back.
I tried many different things like almond oil, olive oil.
I would take every recommendation
to have them grow back again but they wouldn't.
Then I started to put eyebrow pencil on,
because it was too embarrassing for me to go out without having eyebrow pencil on.
I stopped going swimming because of having this concern
that it would all wash off or even I would be reluctant to open the house door.
I drew them in every single day and it's frustrating.
Most people don't know what over-plucking can do.
Even when you are a teenage girl at a young age,
you don't recognise what damage you are doing to your eyebrows
and they will never grow back.
Since being engaged to the man of her dreams,
Rita has been worried about how her eyebrows will look on her big day.
My fiancé has never seen me without having eyebrow pencil on, not at all.
It's quite scary to think that I will have this kind of look on my wedding day.
Looking like a princess was always my dream,
so I don't think that's the kind of look that a princess has.
It is important for me to have natural-looking eyebrow,
not having to put eyebrow pencil on for my wedding day.
I actually want to feel relaxed on my wedding day
and not being too much worried about having a mirror with me
to check if it's gone.
Determined to get her eyebrows back for her wedding in just six months' time,
Rita has decided to look into having an eyebrow transplant.
I never really liked something like tattoo
and I always wanted my own natural hair back.
Today, she's in West London at the Vinci Hair Clinic
to find out if an eyebrow transplant could restore her overplucked brows
to their former glory in time for her wedding.
She has an appointment with tricologist Dr Nikolaos Zakynthinakis.
An eyebrow transplant works in the exact same way
as a normal hair transplant.
In a procedure that takes around four hours,
follicles are harvested from the scalp and implanted in the brow.
It then takes three months for the hairs to start to grow.
In this area you have a very good density, OK?
- But you can see now that... - Yeah.
- ..the density changes here, OK? - Yeah.
It's getting less.
You don't have anything, no hair here.
Nikolaos then checks the density of Rita's donor hair
to find out if a transplant will be possible.
- You have very good density. - So you're happy with that?
Definitely, yes. So we will be able with a very small piece of skin
from the back of your head to take a very good number of grafts
to fill your eyebrows.
So it will be an easy job for us. I think you will have a very good result.
Coming up - Dawn's butchered breasts are repaired.
It's really nice to be able to come and buy some swimwear for my honeymoon.
And Rita has her eyebrow transplant.
Your eyebrows will start growing month by month.
It will become thicker and thicker and thicker.
25-year-old bride-to-be Rita is in West London
preparing to have surgery on her overplucked brows.
Dr Nikolaos Zakynthinakis will be performing an eyebrow transplant.
He starts by shaving a small area on the back of Rita's head
so the donor hair follicles can be harvested.
As Rita will be awake throughout the procedure,
Nikolaos injects anaesthetic into her
scalp along with adrenalin to prevent excess bleeding.
You will feel only the first injection.
After this you will not be able to feel anything, OK?
He then marks up the area before making his first incision.
Rita, we're taking the strip out now. Let me know if you are feeling anything, OK?
Two hours into the operation and Nikolaos cuts away a strip of flesh
from the back of Rita's head containing the donor hair follicles.
- Are you OK? - Yes, I am.
While Nikolaos stitches up, the hairs are safely collected
and placed in a saline solution ready to plant in Rita's eyebrows.
We've just finished. I'm very happy with the result. The hard part done.
Now starts the artistic and the aesthetic part of the procedure.
Rita draws in her desired eyebrow shape
which will act as a template when the hairs are implanted.
This is the shape I've always wanted,
high arch and then long across the tail here,
so if I can get this, that would be wonderful.
- OK, better? - Better.
After injecting the area with anaesthetic,
Nikolaos begins to make the incision in which each new hair will sit.
I am doing the incisions with the normal flow,
the normal direction of the brows.
If you are going to do all the incisions for the hair to grow up like this,
you know, it will start growing up, up.
OK, so we need the direction of the normal eyebrow.
Once all the incisions are made,
Nikolaos hands over to his team who implant each individual graft.
So we're placing the first row one-hair grafts.
Then we are creating the density in the next row with two-hair grafts,
and we are placing as well two-hair grafts in the base of the eyebrow.
Four hours into the procedure and all the hair grafts have been implanted.
After seven years of having bald brows,
it's finally time for Rita to see the results.
How are you feeling?
My God!
- Like it? - Yeah, I love it!
I am more than happy. I don't know how to thank you.
Rita was very excited with the result.
The only thing is that she has to be patient for one year
to see the final result.
Her eyebrows will start growing up after three to four months
like very thin, thin hair and, month by month,
it will become thicker and thicker and thicker.
I can't believe that seven years of overplucking and having no eyebrow at all
is over and I'm looking forward to planning my wedding with bushy eyebrows,
new look, natural look.
For Rita, her surgery is behind her,
but at the Weymouth hospital, 45-year-old Dawn Roberts' procedure is about to begin.
She was left with misshapen, disfigured boobs
after having breast reduction surgery prior to her wedding.
It's really knocked my confidence
and I actually feel like I'm half the person I used to be.
You know, I'm newly married and Steve's had to take on an awful lot really.
Well, I just...
I just don't feel like a woman any more.
She is under the care of plastic surgeon Patrick Mallucci.
As we said last time, there's a very, very complex situation.
-I know. - And what I don't want you to have
is unrealistic expectations about what you're going to come out with.
OK.
I'm so excited. It's amazing that I'm here
and I'm absolutely made up but, yeah, I am a little bit nervous.
Before going under the knife,
Dawn's disfigured breasts are covered with an antiseptic solution.
There's so much irregularity, so much disparity between the two sides,
that it's very difficult to understand how she got to that point.
After injecting Dawn's breasts with adrenalin to prevent excess bleeding,
Patrick scores along the markings he made earlier.
What I've tried to do is just as symmetrically as possible
plan my incisions to cut around these existing scars,
just to try and regain a bit of symmetry and breast shape.
We're going to just try and concentrate some of this breast tissue
to try and create...
some separation or cleavage between the breasts, which she's largely lost.
If you can see, just even by moving the glandular tissue like this,
and then I'm going to bring this skin up into here to try and create a cleft.
In hope of giving Dawn defined separation between both breasts,
Patrick stitches the breast gland down to the chest wall.
Part of the problem was that she'd developed these two rather flat,
featureless breasts, so that's the purpose of these deeper stitches.
Happy with the right breast, Patrick moves onto the left.
What you can see is that the white tissue is scar tissue.
We're just going through an area of previous scarring.
That's where you see that indentation.
As you can see on this side, I've tried to make this breast a bit more compact.
We've worked on this separation here
and, once again, I'm going to try and tuck some of this breast tissue underneath
to make that more compact also.
There seems to be plenty of breast tissue
and I'm hoping that by making sense and order out of it,
that it will improve the shape sufficiently.
With the left breast tissue stitched in place,
Patrick begins work on Dawn's cleavage.
I want to try and put a stitch to try and anchor down her cleavage
to really try and emphasise the separation between the breasts.
So you can see how that stitch starts to cause separation between the two breasts.
Twenty minutes into the operation
and Patrick begins to close the wounds,
recontouring the shape of the breasts using precise stitching.
That sort of rather unsightly central indentation has now gone.
We've excised the scar over it
and I've tucked the breast tissue underneath itself,
so it's effectively sort of bulked out that defect.
Once Patrick is happy with the shape of the breasts,
he begins work to remove the lump of tissue which he calls a "dog ear".
I think it's really important to get rid of this bit
because, you know, it did look so odd.
There we go, that's all cut out.
Patrick stitches up before assessing his work.
Very pleased with the result on table.
I am hoping that it will heal that way.
She's not quite out of the woods because, of course,
all of this is held down by stitches
the stitches are under quite a bit of tension.
They may or may not hold so we'll have to see how that goes over the next few weeks.
Four weeks after surgery, and Dawn is back in London to see her surgeon, Patrick.
I'm really pleased with that, Dawn.
You know, in terms of the scarring there, I mean, that just looks beautiful, Dawn.
By reshaping her breast tissue and cutting away her old scars,
Patrick has given Dawn new pert breasts and her cleavage back.
It's fantastic. Far exceeded my expectations
and I'm completely made up.
Already I feel more confident in myself and as time goes on,
I know it will make a dramatic difference to my life.
Back home, and overjoyed with her new boobs,
just a month after surgery, Dawn is already planning her dream honeymoon.
It's really nice to be able to come and buy some swimwear for my honeymoon,
and the fact that I've got two busts now is just wonderful.
A wedding day should be a day of celebration, not regret and recovery
following botched cosmetic surgery.
To avoid heart-breaking complications,
make sure you say, "I don't want surgery," before saying, "I do."
There is no such thing as risk-free surgery.
If you're not prepared to take any risks, don't have surgery.