The Rio Glow Timing Guide
Your 6-month, 3-month, 30-day and 48-hour plan for looking like yourself on your best day — before a wedding, a reunion, a shoot, a vacation, or a birthday you have decided is going to matter.
The mistake almost everyone makes.
They book the week of.
It is completely understandable. The event gets real, you look in the mirror, and suddenly you want to do something about it. But almost nothing in aesthetics works on that schedule. Neurotoxin needs about two weeks before it has fully done its job. Filler swells before it settles. Laser resurfacing puts you through a rough-textured week on purpose. Collagen treatments are not even trying to work quickly — they are asking your body to build something new, and that takes months.
The rule underneath all of it
Every treatment has a peak and a settle. The peak is when the result is at its best. The settle is how long it takes to look like nothing happened. You want your event to land on the peak — and the only way to do that is to count backwards.
That is the whole point of this guide. The next few pages give you the actual numbers for everything Tathiana does at Rio Glow, so you can pick a date and work backwards from it instead of hoping.
The rest of the guide is free.
Nine pages: the countdown calendar, the per-treatment lead times, the bruising window, the stacking order, and a planner you can fill in for your own date.
Open the guideStart here
Find your concern.
If you already know what is bothering you, this table tells you which room you end up in. If two lines apply to you, that is normal — most people at Rio Glow are doing two or three things over a year, not one.
| If what bothers you is… | What Tathiana would talk to you about |
|---|---|
| Forehead lines, 11s, crow's feet | Neurotoxin — Botox, Xeomin, Daxxify, Dysport or Letybo |
| Thin lips, flattening cheeks, a face that has "deflated" | Dermal filler, or Sculptra if you would rather build than fill |
| Tone, brown patches, sun damage, dullness | NouvaDerm 1927 nm laser — usually in NouvaGlo mode |
| Texture, pores, acne scarring, early laxity | Scarlet RF microneedling, sometimes with SkinPen |
| Jawline and neck softening | PDO lift threads, or Scarlet RF as a series |
| Under-eye hollowing and crepey skin | Cellenis DermaFiller — made from your own blood |
| Sweating through everything you own | Neurotoxin for hyperhidrosis — underarms, hands, feet |
| No energy, foggy, run down, travelling constantly | IV therapy, NAD+, the B12 burner |
| Weight that will not move no matter what you do | Medical weight management, after a medical evaluation |
| Hair thinning at the part or the temples | Hair & scalp support — the same laser preps the scalp |
| Honestly, you are not sure | The free consult. That is what it is for. |
The countdown
Working backwards from your date.
This is the guide in one picture. Find your event on the right, then read left to see what should already be done.
If you want to build, start now.
Sculptra is a series — usually three sessions spaced weeks apart — and it does not show you anything for months, because it is not filling anything. It is asking your skin to make collagen. Same story for a full Scarlet RF package. Start these six months out and you arrive at your event with skin that genuinely changed, not skin that was topped up.
Lasers, threads and the first tox.
A laser series wants space between sessions and a quiet week after each one. PDO lift threads want time to settle so the result reads as "rested" rather than "tight". And if you have never had neurotoxin, this is when you have your first appointment — so there is time to adjust the dose at the two-week check before the dose that matters.
Filler, if you are having it.
Filler looks its best around the four-to-six week mark, once the swelling is gone and it has integrated. Eight weeks gives you room for a touch-up if you want a little more, and room to forget about it entirely if you do not.
The last laser, the last peel, the last needle.
Four weeks is the honest cutoff for anything that resurfaces skin. You want your skin fully through its shedding and back to smooth, not two days off it.
Neurotoxin, and nothing newer than this.
Tox needs roughly fourteen days to reach full effect. Two to three weeks out is the sweet spot: fully worked, still fresh, and if something needs a tiny adjustment there is time to do it.
Stop starting things.
This is the week for a facial, a hydrating drip, and sleep. It is not the week to try a treatment you have never had. Nothing new in the last seven days — that is the single most useful rule in this guide.
Hydration only.
An IV drip two days before is one of the few things that genuinely helps this late — fluids, B vitamins, and for a lot of people a glutathione add-in for brightness. It is the reason the Rio Glow drips get booked before weddings.
Nothing. Go and enjoy it.
Truly. No injections, no needles, no "one quick thing". You already did the work.
The numbers
Lead time, treatment by treatment.
Book no later than the middle column. The right-hand column is why.
| Treatment | Book by | Because |
|---|---|---|
| Neurotoxin (Botox, Xeomin, Daxxify, Dysport, Letybo) | 2–3 weeks | Onset starts around day 3 and reaches full effect around day 14. Book any closer and your event lands mid-transition. |
| Tox for sweating | 4 weeks | Larger treated area, more injection points, and it is worth having settled before you are in a dress you care about. |
| Lip filler | 4–6 weeks | Lips swell more than anywhere else on the face. Day two does not look like week four. |
| Cheek & jaw filler | 6–8 weeks | Deeper placement, more integration time, and bruising here is harder to cover. |
| Cellenis DermaFiller | 6–8 weeks | Made from your own blood, so the result builds gradually rather than appearing at once. |
| PDO smooth threads | 6 weeks | The collagen response is the point, and it takes weeks. |
| PDO lift threads | 8–12 weeks | There is a settling period where things can feel tight or slightly uneven. Give it room. |
| Sculptra | 4–6 months | A series, and the collagen it triggers is still arriving three months after the last session. |
| NouvaDerm / NouvaGlo laser | 4–6 weeks per session | A week of texture and flaking is normal and expected. You do not want that week to be event week. |
| Scarlet RF microneedling | 4 weeks for one, 4 months for a series | Redness for a day or two, then remodelling that keeps improving for about three months. |
| SkinPen microneedling | 3–4 weeks | Shorter downtime than the others, but still a flushed 24–48 hours. |
| Medical weight management | 4–6 months | The dose ladder is deliberately slow. Rushing it is how people end up nauseated and quitting. |
| IV therapy | 1–3 days | The one thing on this list that works fast. Great the week of. |
| B12 / burner injection | Any time | A quick injection, nothing to plan around. |
If you only remember one line
Two weeks for tox. Four weeks for anything that resurfaces. Six weeks for filler. Six months for collagen. Two days for a drip.
Bruising
The window nobody warns you about.
Most of the "I look terrible" texts after an injectable appointment are about bruising, and most bruising is avoidable. Not all — faces have blood vessels and sometimes a needle finds one, which is nobody's fault. But the odds move a lot depending on what you did in the days before.
Pause for 5–7 days
- Fish oil and omega-3
- Vitamin E in high doses
- Ginkgo, ginseng, garlic supplements
- Turmeric and curcumin supplements
Pause for 24–48 hours
- Alcohol — the big one, and the one people skip
- Ibuprofen, naproxen, aspirin taken casually for a headache
- Hard workouts, hot yoga, saunas
Do not stop these on your own
If you take a blood thinner, a daily aspirin, or anything else because a physician told you to, keep taking it and tell Tathiana at your consult. She will plan around it. Coming off a prescribed medication to avoid a bruise is a bad trade every single time.
Afterwards: arnica helps some people, ice in the first day helps most, and sleeping propped up on an extra pillow the first night reduces morning puffiness more than anything you can buy.
Stacking
What order to do things in.
The most common expensive mistake is not doing the wrong treatment — it is doing two right treatments in the wrong order, or too close together, so one undoes the other.
- Tox before filler, not after. Relaxing the muscle first changes how the face moves, and that changes where filler is actually needed. Doing it the other way round has you paying for filler in a spot that would not have needed it.
- Leave two weeks between neurotoxin and any laser or microneedling. Heat and manipulation over freshly placed toxin is not where you want to find out whether it migrates.
- Do not laser over fresh filler. Give filler at least two weeks to integrate before you put energy through that tissue.
- Threads and lasers are not friends in the same month. Threads are doing controlled work under the skin; give them their settling period before you add heat on top.
- Sculptra is the exception that starts everything. Because it works on a months-long clock, it usually runs underneath your other treatments rather than competing with them — but Tathiana will still space the sessions off your laser weeks.
- Drips go with anything. There is no interaction to plan around, and a lot of people book one the same day as an injectable appointment because they are already in the chair.
Your turn
The planner.
Write your date at the top and count backwards. Take a photo of it and bring it to your consult — it makes the conversation about five minutes long instead of thirty.
My event is on: ______________________
| Count back | That date is | What I am booking |
|---|---|---|
| 6 months | ____________ | ____________________ |
| 3 months | ____________ | ____________________ |
| 8 weeks | ____________ | ____________________ |
| 4 weeks | ____________ | ____________________ |
| 2 weeks | ____________ | ____________________ |
| 48 hours | ____________ | ____________________ |
Want it as a PDF?
Ask for a copy at your consultation.
Bring your date. We will build the plan.
Tell Tathiana what the occasion is and she will map it out backwards with you — including the parts where the answer is "you do not need that".
Your glow up starts with a conversation
New clients start with a free 45-minute consultation with Tathiana.
