Weddingbee Blog

Much love to one of sweetest people I know, the girl in the photo above. She made a special trip to come visit us since she’s spent the last couple years in Ottawa and won’t be able to make it to our wedding, and made my day by gladly accepting my offer to do her wedding photography when her big day came. So she gets a pretty photo on Weddingbee because I like posting lots of photos and it’s really hard to snap a picture of myself with a 7 pound camera.

Somehow we started talking about how impossible it is to find plain, women’s deodorant that doesn’t contain antiperspirant. My kindred spirit! There are so many men’s deodorants on the market, but it’s definitely slim pickings for us women. Uncomfortable with the idea of preventing my pores from sweating in an area with so many lymph nodes, combined with the thought of my family history of breast cancer, I’ve spent many, many years trying to find women’s deodorant. Besides, deodorant never leaves a white powdery mess on dark clothing.

When I was young I used a Lady’s Speed Stick Teen deodorant gel….it was green. I remember seeing it on pharmacy shelves up until at least a few years ago, but now that I google it, I see it comes in 5 new flavors (strawberry!) but it is now also antiperspirant.

I’ve also tried the J/Â/S/Ö/N products, and Tom’s of Maine, and while they are “natural” and don’t contain the dreaded aluminum chlorohydrate, perhaps they’re a bit too natural for me as I found that they didn’t work entirely well at cutting smell.

When I was a teenager, my mom brought me back an unmarked bag of jagged “alum crystals” from the Philippines, which she made me grind to a powder with a mortar and pestle. It worked the very best at cutting smell but the mortar and pestle bit was a bit tedious and I resorted to using a sporty men’s deodorant for many years since I wasn’t satisfied with Tom’s or the J/Â/S/Ö/N products. When I thought about it - I wondered just how different “alum” was from aluminum chlorohydrate, too. It did, however, allow me to sweat, so it couldn’t have been that bad.

So then a couple years ago, I found an alum crystal product on the market. And it is the best thingI’ve ever found. You just wet it (which I very well could have done with my bag of alum crystals had they not been so jagged), and apply. No smell, and it lets you sweat. Another problem with a lot of the women’s deoderants I’d tried is that they’re gel-y and therefore sticky, perhaps promoting sweat and odor causing bacteria. Not so with the crystal. The crystal is my best friend, and it even comes in a travel size! It is so worth the $6 or so at your local pharmacy.

I’m reeling a little at the thought of my non-strapless wedding gown in the august heat, and I may indulge myself with a watermelon antiperspirant for just a day. Because with what few lady’s deodorants are available on the market, I was always jealous of the 100+ different scents that you could get for antiperspirants.

Anyone else out there have an aversion to antiperspirant, too?