Reddit mentions of CUTICLE TRIMMER

Do you bite your nails? I ask because I used to bite mine really badly until about four years ago when I was finally able to quit for good and mine looked a lot like yours do now.

So the good news is that there are a few things that you can do to make them look better but the bad news is that it takes a really long time and you probably won't see much difference by the time you go to the wedding. For the short term, maybe consider press-ons? They've come a very long way since we were little and there are many out there that at first glance, look completely natural, even on less than perfect nails. Look for the ImPress brand (usually like $7-8 or so) and get ones that look pretty simple and natural like a french tip and unless someone is really staring at your fingers, I doubt they will notice!

For the long term, what I've done that's helped is to get into a nail care routine. Cuticle oil, nail file, orange sticks, and a cuticle trimmer or liquid remover are the tools you'll want. Two to three times a week (at least in the beginning, you can do it less frequently once they start to look like you want them to) take an orange stick and use the flat side to gently push back the skin around your nail. Some people oil them first to help soften them, I just usually do it after a shower while they're softer anyway. Then use the trimmer or liquid remover to get rid of the dead skin that's pushed back. I personally like this kind of trimmer but you have to be really careful that you don't accidentally cut the live skin. You're really just shaving away the dead skin with it. There's also this kind of nipper some people prefer and then there's the liquid stuff like this that dissolves the dead skin with no trimming required at all. It's all really just what you're comfortable with. Then oil them up when you're done, and if possible, oil them as many times a day as you can remember to. I try to do it at least once in the morning and once before I go to bed.

Then with regard to filing, let them grow out a bit more and like someone else suggested, file the sides down where they flare out, but only at the free edges. You should try to avoid cutting altogether. For rounder nail beds, a round shape tends to look better IMO.

So, forgive my awful MS paint skills but I drew on your pic a bit to help illustrate what I'm talking about. On your pointer finger, the spot that I circled is the area you're wanting to try to grow out and reattach to the nail bed. On the middle finger, I tried (I know, terribly lol) to illustrate how it would look after your cuticle line is pushed back over time and the nail bed reattaches along the sidewalls and then of course the white part is grown out and filed in a round shape. It all comes down to permanently pushing your cuticles back to expose more of the nail bed and allowing the sidewalls to reattach at the tips. Also, when you clean under your nails, be super gentle and don't push back the skin underneath - you want that to reattach to give you longer nail beds.

A lot of it just genetics and mine still don't look like nail blogger nails, but doing this has made a huge difference. I started really noticing results in about six months and now, you'd never know that they used to be super short. I still have some flaring on the sides, but I just file it away. I know this is like novel length, but mine used to look almost exactly like yours (except I had no white edge because I bit it all off lol) so I can totally relate to how you feel! I'd quit biting for a couple of months and then get so discouraged when they didn't look any better and just give up and bite again and it wasn't until I started really putting in the routine and effort that I was able to make it look better. I hope this helps! :)