The moment of tooth

About six months ago, I noticed that I had a gap forming between my two front teeth. As time went on, the gap got wider, to the point where you could actually see the permanent retainer that I had behind the teeth! It wasn't until I got back from Disney in December and looked at all the pictures that I realized just how bad it was. So I made an appointment with the orthodontist and he removed the permanent retainer because it "certainly wasn't helping matters" and asked to see me in a month so he could have a baseline. Fast forward one month... I had my appointment today.

Basically he said that since my bottom jaw is larger than my top jaw (which is how I ended up with braces in the first place), the bottom teeth were forcing the top teeth out. But because I had a permanent retainer behind my top front teeth, the eye tooth on the right (which was jutted way out pre-braces @ 5 years ago) stayed put, but my top front teeth spread out. Also, to add to my teeth problems, the teeth next to my front teeth are abnormally small, so they don't keep the front teeth in line, if you know what I mean.

Okay, so knowing all of that he gave me four options...
1) do nothing, but my teeth would continue to spread, leading to more problems in the future.
2) Conservative approach: retainer for six months, re-evaluate and if all is well, have the dentist build up my abnormally small side teeth with porcelain veneers. I'd most likely just have the dentist do all six of my top front teeth in that case. The porcelain veneers would permanently solve the problem.
3) Inexpensive approach: no retainer, have the dentist bond my two front teeth together so that they can't move. He actually discouraged me from this approach, because he said that the bonding can discolor over time and will probably need to be replaced every so often.
4) Quick approach: braces, which would close the gap and straighten my teeth... but he wouldn't necessarily recommend because he said that eventually I'd be back in the office again with the same issues I have now, because of the large bottom jaw and small side teeth. As an off-shoot of that, he said if the gap really bothered me that much, we could do braces AND veneers, but then we'd be talking thousands of dollars.

So knowing all of that, I decided on the conservative approach... the retainer for six months followed by the porcelain veneers to permanently fix the issue. I pick up my retainer on Wednesday.