A consultation usually runs 20 to 30 minutes. Within that time you get a diagnosis and discuss the surgical method and the cost.
Walk in unprepared and most of it goes to listening to explanations. You may be left with only a few minutes to talk about what you actually want.
Here are three things worth settling in advance. All of them can be checked with a single photo of your own face, and every example below was made from one photo of one person.
1. Your intensity ceiling: "this far is fine, beyond this is too much"
The first thing to settle is your upper limit on intensity. Even in the same direction, how far you go changes how the result feels.
Original
Original — Before any procedure.
Medium — Up to here, most people say it "doesn't show."
Strong — This is where opinions split, and where to draw your ceiling.
Put the three images side by side and decide "up to about here," and the vague word "natural" becomes something much more concrete at the consultation.
- Is it okay if it shows without makeup?
- Is your reference the front view or the profile?
- Are you okay moving away from your current impression?
2. Angle: does what you picked from the front still work from the side?
Decide from a frontal photo alone and you miss things. The nose in particular looks different depending on the angle.
We applied the same nose procedure to the same person's profile photo.
Original
Original — Before. An angle that shows the bridge line and the jawline.
After the nose — What showed only as shadow from the front now shows as a line.
From the front the nose reads mostly as shadow; in profile it reads as a line. A bridge height that looked fine from the front can feel like too much from the side, and the reverse happens too.
Eyes are the opposite: the difference shows clearly from the front and barely registers in profile.
So the practical approach is to judge by the angle you are seen at most often. ID photos, selfies and video calls each show a different angle.
3. Order: all at once, or one at a time?
If two or more features are on your mind, the order is worth thinking through in advance as well.
We added changes to the same person one at a time: eyes, then nose, then jaw.
Original
Original — Before.
Eyes — With just one change.
+ Nose — With two combined.
+ Jaw — With all three at once.
The more features you add, the further you move from the original. Change several places at once and, if you end up unhappy with the result, it becomes hard to tell which part is responsible.
- Start with the one that bothers you most
- Recover, get used to that face, then judge
- By that point, some items may no longer feel necessary
Turning these into consultation questions
Settle the three things and your questions turn into these.
- "With my lid thickness, is this intensity pushing it?"
- "I chose based on the front view. How will it look in profile?"
- "If I did only one of these first, which would you recommend?"
All of them need an in-person exam to answer. Sorting them out in advance makes it far easier to get them asked within a short consultation.