Swedish supermodel Paulina Porizkova reveals the beauty-prep mishap that nearly ruined her wedding manicure

In the days after her July 3rd wedding, model Paulina Porizkova wasn’t quite in a honeymoon state of mind. “We’re actually in the exact place where Jeff asked me to marry him exactly one year ago,” she says while Zooming in from Karlovy Vary in the Czech Republic, on a press tour for her upcoming film Bardotky. “Once we’re finished here, it’s full-on honeymoon.”

Porizkova admits that she was surprised by how into wedding prep she was. “The first time I got married, I was 23 years old,” she says. “I rolled out of bed, put on some makeup, and it was no big deal. Not that it would make a difference to Jeff, but I wanted to feel and look my best. When you’re getting married at 61, you do have to work a little harder to look and feel like that.”

The first change she made was refocusing her gym routine. “Typically, I was lifting weights two times a week, then would maybe do a pilates session, maybe an aerobic session,” she says of her fitness routine. “But I decided to go all-in before the wedding. I lifted weights three times a week, adding in Pilates and aerobics so I was working out six days a week.” She describes her then husband-to-be as “incredibly competitive,” so he joined in on her sessions. “My body really changed, I felt so much stronger.”

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She also began skin prep, trying the non-invasive skin-tightening treatment SofWave twice. “I tried it right before Christmas, then did it four weeks before we departed for Italy.” She was also “being incredibly religious about using my skincare routine.” Porizkova was the face of Estée Lauder from 1988 to 1995, returning as the face of Advanced Night Repair in January of 2025.

In the week before she left for the wedding, things got more granular: manicure and pedicure, getting her hair color touched up. The morning of the wedding, a beauty tragedy struck. After the couple got a massage (which Porizkova says was a “genius idea that forced us to relax”), Porizkova went to shower and made a bit of a mistake. “I washed my hair with purple shampoo, and it turned my nails totally purple! They looked horrible, like I had been digging in the garden or something. We had to search everywhere for nail polish remover.”

Once the crisis was averted, it was time for glam. Porizkova says one of the best decisions she made while planning her wedding was tapping a glam team she could trust. For the day, Romy Soleimani was tapped for makeup and Hos Hounkpatin for hair. “Makeup artists and hairdressers can make you look beautiful, but sometimes you don’t look like yourself. But I’ve worked with both of them for so long that they know how to make me look like the real me. And that’s what I wanted for my wedding.”

The brief for both was simple. “I wanted to look like my very best self,” she says. “But my very best 61-year-old self. Not any other age.” When it was time to look in the mirror, Porizkova says she “had no notes.” Soleimani cites the Doublewear Stay In Place Concealer and Waterproof Mascara as two key products for the day.

Reflecting on it all, Porizkova says the day was exactly how she wanted it to be. “I realized that signing up to get married at this point in life is actually so important,” she says. “Because we were signing up to be there for each other for possibly the hardest bits. And I was able to show up with confidence in the way I’m intended to be.”