At 21 years old, after realizing that I would have to do braces on my own financially, it was a BIG commitment. It came to the point where I realized that I better do them now rather than later, while I'm still in university. Also my boyfriend now is extremely supportive and the man I want to marry, and I want to SMILE in my wedding photo's someday!
So my problem with my teeth has mainly to do with crowding. The right upper side of my mouth is pretty much perfect (or so the ortho says) and so are my top front teeth. However my left canine on the top came in waaaay to late so there was no room for it, so it sits very high up and leaves a noticeable gap. I have never smiled open mouthed in my whole life because of it...I don't even think I'll be able to find a pre-braces picture to post that would show it!
My bottom teeth kind of have more severe crowding across the board, all the middle teeth are slightly crooked. Again, my right canine on the bottom came in too late so it sits way to low and leaves a gap on that side as well.
About a month ago I had my wisdom teeth out in preparation, which overall went pretty bad, I got all four out at once and ended up with two dry sockets (although I don't smoke and took excellent care of them) which is PAINful!
After that my ortho gave me two options:
1. being about 8000 and taking about three years, he would put appliances on my back molars that would move them far back and then move all my teeth in sequence, taking about 8 months and then putting on braces
2. being about 6000 and taking 1.5 years, he would just shave down small spaces in between my teeth and use regular braces to pull them back to make room for the ones that needed to come up/down
I choose option two, mainly because of the money and the time, but also because I don't need supermodel teeth. I just have wanted straight teeth my whole life, and he said the only difference with option two would be that the my bottom two middle teeth would not align perfectly with the top two middle teeth (the bottom two might be a millimeter off). However, after seeing one of my friends who had 4 years of braces and a middle bottom tooth removed so that the top two DEFINATELY did not line up with the bottom two I was not too worried.
And thank goodness for that! On closer inspection on my last visit he found that there was nothing wrong with the right side of my mouth at all, that in fact on that side everything lined up pretty well. So what he is doing is just shifting everything to the left, shaving down in between my molars on the top and bottom of the left and using that side to create the extra room to maneouver my teeth.
So for now everything is all set up, I got them on today only a few hours ago! I chose the ceramic ones, I just thought they would look better and make not such a huge shock. Lucky for me as well my porcelain ones don't have elastics, so they won't stain and I can eat/drink whatever I want.
The wires run across all my teeth except for two, the problem tooth on the top (canine) and the problem tooth on the bottom. When there is enough room to fit those ones in, in about 3-4 months, I'll get the wire running through those brackets as well.
Kind of disappointing though because those are the ones I want to see move the MOST.
So thats my story..I'm likely still not going to be smiling much with these ones yet! how bad are they going to hurt is what I want to know...and I hope I see changes fast.
I am loving those SL brackets - your teeth look so pretty behind them! And I have to admit, nice wedding photos is part of my motivation too! People are always asking when we are going to get married (we've been together for 3 years) and though we're not engaged yet I've taken to answering, "When the braces are off!" That gives time for a nice long engagement I figure 
