When Lauren, Alyssa and I have our semi-monthly Skype meetings, sometimes we bring up wedding stuff that scares the bejezus out of Lauren, she-who-is-yet-to-be-wed. One of those things is our casual references to the post-wedding meltdown (which both Alyssa and I most had) which left Lauren looking a tiny bit panicked, and a tiny bit confused. Which brings us to this Ask Team Practical column, perhaps my favorite ever by Alyssa (not to set the bar high, or anything), so enjoy.
Today’s question:
So I’ve been reading APW for many months now and my wedding is fast approaching (in 7 months, but whatever) and I have been seeing here and there about the phenomenon of the after wedding emotional unloading. What exactly is this? And what exactly happens? I’m sure it’s different for everyone, but it’s nothing my mother has ever talked about (because she has a cold and shriveled emotionless heart) and I need to understand! Should I be anticipating it? Is it like an emotional flu? What brings it on? I’m a little excited and a little afraid. Advice! I need it!
Oh, honey. I feel you. And I hate to think that we wedding grads might be scaring the engaged out there, thinking that the moment your wedding is over, you become a nasty emotional wreck. A Wedding Meltdown is like Wedding Zen. It may or may not happen, and there’s really no way of anticipating (or preventing) it. It wouldn’t even be worthy of capital letters except that many brides have experienced it – enough so that it’s something that baby brides might fear. So let’s talk about it, dispel some fears and mention that it’s akin to something you may have already experienced.
But before we do that, I have to make an announcement.
Mom, if you are reading this, I’m gonna need you to stop.
No, seriously. Stop. Cause I’m gonna talk about stuff that I really don’t want you to even think about and even though I’m not going into details and I know it’s not a big deal to you, I’m not mature enough to handle it, so I’m seriously really gonna need you to skip this post, okay, I love you, bye now.
She gone? Good.
Because, honestly, getting married is like losing your virginity.
Yeah, I said it. Now, hear me out.
Both experiences are major milestones in your life, at least by society’s standards. And both are markers for womanhood, also by those standards. If you don’t experience either one, that does not make you any less of a woman. But both are a Big Damn Deal. Or at least they’re supposed to be.
There are two sides to both events, the Expectation and the Reality.
The Expectation is that your wedding/losing your virginity is going to be EPIC. It’s going to be a major change in your life, you’ll be a different person afterward and it is going to be GREAT. Everything’s got be just JUST SO, so that you maximize the event. Even if you go into with a more laid-back approach, there’s still a very high level of anticipation/anxiety that is still attached. Is this going to be everything I want it to be? Will my partner enjoy it too? What if I do something wrong? How’s this going to change our relationship? What if it’s not like I imagined it? Oh GOD, what if it SUCKS??? (Lauren note: That last question was in the 2nd email I ever sent to Alyssa. In real life, you guys.)
And then it happens. However IT happens, it happens. And your wedding/first time turns out to be like you imagined, completely different than you imagined, better AND worse – all at the same time.
But…nothing really changes. And that’s when Reality hits. Oh, some things are different, but they are not different in a way that strangers can tell. You walk away, having passed through the archway into Womanhood, and not a damn person can see it by looking at you. And that’s weird. And occasionally disappointing. You might feel the need to lean over to a stranger on the train and say, “Guess what I did?’ You may even end up in the bathroom, staring in the mirror in a very cliched way going, “I don’t look different. I don’t even really FEEL different. What’s the danged deal??”
And when this Reality hits, it crashes smack dab into your Expectations and then, Bam. Maybe it’s a big BAM, maybe it’s a little bam, but there’s a Bam. And for some of us, when that Bam hits, tears may follow. They could be small silent tears, or big gasping sobs that make you lock yourself in the bathroom. They’re not bad tears, they’re just there. They are the release that may come after X amount of time, build-up and anticipation. They’re an expression of relief that it’s over and sadness that it’s ended. Those tears are the tears of the woman you’ve become, the woman you were and the confusion that there isn’t more fanfare because of it.
That’s the Wedding Night Meltdown, kin to the I Lost My Virginity Meltdown. (Both of which could happen on the same night if you’re under 44 and part of the 3%.)
And just so you don’t think that I’m all hat and no cattle, I had a Wedding Night Meltdown too. A big, gross, snotty meltdown about three hours after our reception ended, as I’m riding in the car in full hair and makeup but dressed in my PJ’s and eating french fries (Long story). It was a relief and it was embarrassing, but it happened. (Meg says she had hers in a hotel room in London, where she kept saying she was glad it was over, but she just didn’t ever want to forget what it felt like. She was also really jet lagged.)
YOU may never have it, but you won’t know till you do. And I’m not going to hope that you don’t, other than to wish that it’ll happen in private with your partner where you can receive hugs and tissues.
Because a Wedding Night Meltdown isn’t something to anticipate or fear. It’s just one more thing that may happen to you in this crazy business of gettin’ hitched. Except this time, you don’t have to worry if you left your panties in the backseat. (WHAT? You expected me to get ALL the way through this and not make one terrible sex joke? Please.)
Alright, wedding grads. Help our engaged ladies out. Do you agree with me? Did you have a Wedding Meltdown? What happened?
I hope yours doesn’t happen in the Lisbon airport. Like, all over the security men.
Our honeymoon was a whole month after the wedding, and I really thought I had passed it. Apparently I just had a honeymoon meltdown (which was really a wedding meltdown) instead. It was not pretty.
And there was meltdown aftermath too. There still is. I was ready for the meltdown but not the aftermath, I think.
February 18, 2011 4:47 am
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Aftermath from others, or aftermath in some other way?
I got married almost 3 months ago (woot!) but I haven’t had a meltdown yet. We’ll see if it’s delayed or just not going to happen for me.
February 18, 2011 4:55 am
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Internally – like the meltdown felt like a sharp expression of it all being over, and a sharp sadness – but the aftermath feels like a dull acknowledgement that my family and friends will never be together like that again (and it will be years before I see many of them).
February 18, 2011 5:52 am
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I anticipate that feeling.
February 19, 2011 11:06 am
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I didn’t have a wedding meltdown. We had a large-ish (100 guests) wedding that spanned a whole weekend. I expected to be emotionally and physically exhausted after after reading what some of the wedding grad posts and comments here. I wasn’t. I was energized, blissed out and ridiculously happy leaving our venue sunday night (after a saturday wedding and Fri night dinner). I didn’t feel physically tired until a 5 days into sunrise-to-sunset sightseeing on the honeymoon but I never felt emotionally drained. I also didn’t feel the mountains move when we got married. We’d been together 8 years so it has been a slow and gradual shift over the course of months since the october wedding. And it’s ok. It’s better than ok. I love the subtlety of married life.
February 18, 2011 4:47 am
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For the record I was totally blissed out too, and not physically tired at all after the wedding, and didn’t cry for five days. Even then I’m not sure I was emotionally wiped out, I’d just been through something big is all. and I was VERY jet lagged and tired after sunrise to sunset siteseeing.
So I don’t think it’s always black and white.
February 18, 2011 8:00 am
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I was the same. But then I guess when your wedding ceremony starts by talking about how you feel that the wedding is a conformation of a state you both feel has existed between you for a long time and you just want to share that with your community then it is kind of to be expected. I feel like we got married really slowly over 8 years until it was finished at our wedding. Is that odd?
Anyway back to the question – no melt down for me, but that was probably because my head was already there!
February 18, 2011 9:22 pm
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This is a great post, Alyssa.
I’m not sure I would have classified it as a meltdown (but I guess it was), but I spent the plane journey to our honeymoon feeling constantly on the verge of tears, and experiencing this strange sense of loss. Don’t get me wrong, I was incredibly happy to be married to my husband, and I’d had a wonderful day (the day before), but I felt so so sad about leaving everyone behind – it felt weirdly symbolic in a way I hadn’t anticipated. The thing I was saddest about was the fact that we had everyone we love in one room on our wedding day, and that was amazing, and unlikely ever to happen again. And as much as I was so excited about going on honeymoon (it was one of the things I’d most been looking forward to, after all), I (and I speak for my husband here too) kind of wanted to still be in London with everyone, talking over what had happened the day before, processing it, and still feeling that empowering feeling of being surrounded by people you love and who love you. In the last few weeks of wedding prep I was so looking forward to just being married and having the wedding behind me that I was completely taken by surprised to actually feel like this.
February 18, 2011 4:54 am
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Yes. I did not so much have a meltdown as a day of sniffly sadness (mixed with the highs and happiness I was still feeling) after the wedding. But it wasn’t about getting married, the milestone, do-I-feel-like-a-married-woman-now thing, it was just a rather jarring shock to have everyone important to me together for less than 48 hours, and then they were all gone. Part of it was that I didn’t get what I emotionally needed out of my mother during the wedding, and I wanted an emotional do-over (which I finally got months later when I worked up the nerve to talk to her about it). Anyway, I would say that the post-wedding emotions can definitely be surprising, and not necessarily related to the milestone.
Excellent post, Alyssa!
February 18, 2011 6:03 am
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Exactly exactly exactly, my meltdown(s?) had nothing to do with the getting married part and everything to do with my family and what I was expecting and didn’t get.
February 18, 2011 11:27 am
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Definitely. If I think back to parties from college, my favorite moments are mostly from the next day…sitting around on the front porch drinking coffee and telling stories (“Did you see__? And what about when___ did___?”). It was definitely hard to not get much of this the day after the wedding, and to go from everyone-you-love-in-one-place to they’re-all-gone.
February 18, 2011 10:01 am
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my day-after-the-wedding meltdown was characterized by a lot of the same feelings Emma mentioned: a sense of loss and sadness to be leaving family behind (symbolically and actually). i was not on the verge of tears, though: i had a full-blown crying fit in our hotel room right before we checked out and i think i even yelled a bit. i didn’t realize at the time that i was crying over such big, strange, common feelings. i thought i was angry at my family for not showing up on time to help us clear our things out of the venue and at the world for not giving me enough time or space to pack for our flight. really, though, i was absorbing the fact that my relationship with family would never be quite the same again because i was now part of a new family all my own.
February 18, 2011 11:37 am
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Oh yes, it definitely happened. Not the next day as I was saying goodbye to everyone (which is when I fully expected it to happen) but on the plane on the way back from our amazing honeymoon literally just as the pilot said ‘we’ll be landing in London in about 30 minutes’ (we live in London, not that it’s not glamorous in and of itself but it was more about coming back to reality).
All of the sudden I’m crying little a very small child whose parents are making her leave the party at bedtime. I was so glad to be married (and heck, at that point we still actually had 2 wedding parties to go) but I felt so sad about all the specialness of having all those people there to celebrate, of getting to look at and make fun things for months, and then getting to go on an awesome holiday together and stay in fabulous places, for that to be over. I hate to write this because it sounds like ‘la la la wedding planning is fabulous’ (which it sometimes is and sometimes isn’t) but what my post-wedding breakdown reminded me of is how spectacular in every sense of the word our wedding was. Because the thing about spectacles is that they’re always going to be temporary, and worthy of savoring when they’re happening. The other thing is that normal life is pretty great too, so I was glad I had the meltdown, that my hubs could both laugh at and comfort me, and glad I scraped myself together on the plane and came back to earth, started a new job, kept having a nice time, and began to enjoy married life.
February 18, 2011 4:57 am
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I was really really worried my wife was going to have a post-wedding meltdown. We both spent a lot of time on the wedding, but she spent A LOT OF TIME ON THE WEDDING. She was in art school at the time, so everything had to be handmade. Everything was personal. Everything was us.
And then the wedding day came. Yes, my mom got lipstick on my dress. No my flats didn’t fit. Yes, my wife did fall and completely wipe out during the hora. Nobody really danced, a lot of people had to leave early because it was a Sunday night, and we were so exhausted that we ended up cutting out an hour before we had to and driving home in my mom’s Prius (in my poofy wedding dress, no less). And yet, the wedding day was truly perfect. So many people were coming up to my parents saying it was the most personal wedding they’d ever been to. Which meant a lot, since for many, it was the first same-sex wedding they’d been too.
I was terrified my wife was going to have a post-wedding meltdown. Seriously terrified. And she didn’t. Not one bit. And I think part of the reason for that was that, for us, the wedding DID change things. We’d been together for 6.5 years at the time. At the time, our wedding was “illegal”…we only got legally married a year later when we moved to CT. But there is something, and I think it’s particularly true for same-sex couples, about committing publicly. This is why, even on days I felt like eloping, it was so important for us to have a wedding with our communities surrounding us. We were different for committing in front of people. And they saw us differently for making that commitment. And every time I say “my wife” in public, I acknowledge those differences.
February 18, 2011 5:07 am
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Oh! I should totally clarify, you’re talking about something TOTALLY different than what I experienced. I didn’t have a post wedding meltdown in a “I’m sad the wedding planning is over” way. I was on top of the WORLD, both that the planning was over and that we got married. But I did have a moment of emotional rawness at the change in our lives (spiritually, I think mostly) a few days in.
So those are kind of different things to me. I was so thrilled the wedding was over, but my soul was a bit raw from the changes.
February 18, 2011 8:03 am
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Totally. I guess what I would say is that, for us, as a same-sex couple married for almost 3 years, people always acknowledge the change. I don’t know if it’s because of legalization being so slow or what, but if I mention my wife, people say “congratulations!” as though I just got married yesterday. It’s weird. But for me, it helps remind me how worthwhile the wedding itself was.
February 19, 2011 4:22 am
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I had the meltdown before, not after, but I had the bomb dropped that my family was not coming to the wedding. I cried for 6 weeks straight, and then I was totally zen for the wedding day and every day thereafter. So I think its the same thing– reality knocked my pants off, but i eventually found a new pair. It just happened earlier than most I guess.
February 18, 2011 5:10 am
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“reality knocked my pants off, but i eventually found a new pair.”
This could be my favorite metaphor ever.
February 18, 2011 8:44 am
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Agreed. Stealing it for use in everyday life, and I will think of you fondly when I use it.
February 18, 2011 9:03 am
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The phrase “knock my socks off” became very important in my life the week before I was going to meet my husband in person. Ever since I’ve had a thing for fun, colorful socks with stripes or plaid or lady bugs and butterflies. He knocked my socks off and the ones I found after were so much cuter. :D
February 18, 2011 1:10 pm
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This may or may not be my new facebook status :)
November 15, 2011 3:12 pm
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We each had a meltdown but I think I can only talk about mine. Mine was at the brunch the next morning. I had been looking forward to this for ages. To back up a bit, my mom had kind of delusions of wedding grandeur. And I was determined to be a good daughter, so I let her run with it, but the brunch? That was all me. There was a ham. That was all I wanted at my wedding: a ham. Hams say weddings to me. And I was so looking forward to spending quality time with all my guests, hosting all of my friends at my childhood home, blah blah blah.
I get there, I cannot deal with a single person. I locked myself in a room with a giant plate of ham and ate it and sobbed. My cousin’s five year old boy was there (because he just happened to be around and he was sort of fascinated by me and weddings in general) and so was my best girlfriend. And I freaked out and ate my ham and didn’t talk to anyone else.
And it is hilarious in retrospect but at the time I was just being racked with emotions. Bludgeoned with them. And then it was over and that was better.
February 18, 2011 5:10 am
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“Bludgeoned by emotions.” Best phrase to describe this feeling, EVER.
February 18, 2011 7:52 am
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Hahaha. I love that your cousin’s five year old son was your best girlfriend. I can totally picture it.
Also, I have been known to sob and eat simultaneously. Mostly because my tears were partially low blood sugar induced and I knew if I didn’t eat the low blood sugar would continue and I’d still be awful. And that, ladies and gentlemen, was my first fight with my intended. Fun times.
But seriously, I’m so able to relate to this feeling. Hope everything went well afterward!
February 18, 2011 8:42 am
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Whenever I get meltdown-ish, the boy suggests food. When he’s really smart, he provides it.
February 18, 2011 10:33 am
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Love the thought of you locked in a room with a plate of ham and a 5 year old :) Also, this reminds me of the snickers ads where the boys become divas. They are totally me. I become an uber-bitch when I haven’t eaten, and if it gets too far past the hungry stage and I start to feel sick, it is hard to salvage anything at that point!
February 18, 2011 11:02 am
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Haha. Yes. Same here. Actually, this was advice my sister/best friend/former roommate gave him. That when I get grumpy for no reason he should offer me a cookie. Sounds childish, I know. But when I get like this it’s very hard to control my emotions or tone. I don’t think he quite believed my sister until this argument but now it’s one we look back on and laugh at. Me crying while trying to eat a sandwich. It also helped me realize that I could be ridiculous and have ridiculous fights but that he wouldn’t break up with me for it and we could talk out the argument after calming down (and eating!). It helped prepare me for other fights that were not low blood sugar induced.
February 18, 2011 11:39 am
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It’s one of my favorite wedding memories. He asked us all these questions about how late we stayed up dancing, and had a hilarious conversation with my girlfriend about just kid stuff. He was totally unfazed by my sobbing, ham-eating self. It was perfect.
February 18, 2011 11:28 am
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This is such a great story! Very cinematic!
February 18, 2011 12:18 pm
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I had a meltdown at around 3am the day of the wedding, after we’d gone to bed and the party was still going on.
We were both drunk and sleepy, and he fell asleep as soon as he’d helped me take my dress off. Once he’s asleep, he doesn’t get up, so I freaked out that we weren’t going to do it. I started crying, then sobbing that our marriage was a fraud and that it was the worst thing that could ever have happened. I’m a happy drunk, so it wasn’t the drink talking. I was overwhelmed with emotion and love for my husband and so scared that we weren’t perfect.
I cried myself to sleep on my wedding night feeling all alone in the world, then woke up the next day, laughed at my self, had great sex and got ready to go for breakfast with my family and friends full of joy and happiness. My husband knew nothing about it and I’ve never told anyone!
February 18, 2011 5:11 am
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Oh no! Glad you felt you could share with all of us . . . (even if it is somewhat anonymously).
Plus, let’s face it, morning sex is better anyway. ;)
February 18, 2011 7:39 am
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I totally think this is a conversation people need to have ahead of time–expectations of the wedding night. It was something I hadn’t thought about until I saw it mentioned on a blog, which prompted the discussion between my now-husband and I during wedding planning. Had we not had that conversation, I’d have had the same reaction as you– very disappointed and weepy, over the fact that we spent our wedding night taking bobby pins out of my hair and crashing, because of course that’s not the expectation of Wedding Night.
February 18, 2011 9:04 am
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There was a thread that I can’t find from a little while back about how you may not have sex on your wedding night and that’s perfectly okay. After that I felt the need to go up to every engaged person I knew and go, “Just FYI, you might not do it on your wedding night. And if you make yourself do it, it might suck. Cut yourself some slack.”
It probably needs to be essential reading for the engaged, just so they don’t feel pressure.
February 18, 2011 9:08 am
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Was it the post Liz wrote about waiting to have sex until marriage? I’ve been looking through the archives for it but I can’t find it. at least not yet.
February 18, 2011 9:35 am
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I think so, though it may not be the only one. That one is here, and it’s AWESOME.
February 18, 2011 9:42 am
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THIS is exactly why I read APW.
You answer all of the questions that we baby brides have BEFORE WE EVEN HAVE THEM.
I think you’re actually made of magic. ;)
February 18, 2011 10:20 am
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I was going with “made of win” but that might just be me!
February 18, 2011 9:27 pm
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Even if it goes swimmingly, a wedding is huge and loaded with emotion. There is stress and overwhelmingness. Afterward, some of us cry. I had a honeymoon meltdown. It felt weird, but in retrospect it was completely understandable. I was worn out physically and emotionally. It doesn’t mean that I married the wrong person or that I shouldn’t have gotten married. It meant that I was one overstressed exhausted human being, giving vent to strong emotion.
February 18, 2011 5:13 am
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I think the meltdown/zen/emotional craziness is all about the moment it hits you: “My life is different now.” A good friend told me that her wedding day felt kind of hectic and she was mostly relieved when it was over. The moment that made her really feel emotional was at the RMV, when she had to change her license to her husband’s name. She’s never felt very attached to her last name, but it was a private moment in which she realized that she was entering a different kind of life. She loves her husband, and they’d been dating for about seven years before they actually got married, but it was a reminder that life moves forward, not backward. I’m anticipating something more like that for myself–I get very emotionally distanced from “big” life moments, but little moments afterward strike me.
February 18, 2011 5:14 am
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Yes, this says it perfectly. Sometimes I felt like my wedding was the meeting point of a bunch of different paths in my life. And as they merged into one I was afraid that some of them would no longer get traveled in my new married life. The anxiety surrounding that kind of finality was what caused a lot of my post-wedding meltdown.
February 18, 2011 7:08 am
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Yes! I just changed the name on my license recently and when she pushed the paper in front of me to sign I realized it was the first time I was officially going to sign as my new name. It was a very odd moment.
February 18, 2011 8:18 am
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When I went to the DMV to change my name, the woman there handed me a stack of little papers and told me to practice – that she’d fill in all the info and get back to me in five minutes. Lo and behold, the first time I tried to sign my new name, my original one came out. Whoops! It made the whole thing much funnier, and I’m terribly grateful to the super-nice DMV lady for facilitating it!
February 18, 2011 1:30 pm
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Yes, EXACTLY this. This is what I think we’re talking about… not that nonsense about how the wedding is the only important thing you’ll ever do, so as a lady you’ll be sad when you have no more ribbons to tie (gag!) But the moment of, “Oh, something changed. SHIIIIITTTTT.” Because even when we love the change, we have that moment.
February 18, 2011 8:48 am
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Yes! I had the name change bam. I’m glad it happened, too. Felt a bit like a rite of passage.
February 18, 2011 9:14 am
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Oh my god that is going to happen to me. I didn’t actually really realize it until I saw it all typed out. I better go warn the Mr.
February 18, 2011 3:43 pm
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“it was a reminder that life moves forward, not backward.”
I haven’t gotten married yet, but I am totally familiar with these moments. Sometimes they’ll even hit when you’re eating breakfast or something, and they’re weirdly… not “upsetting,” per se, but surprisingly intense.
February 18, 2011 11:01 am
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My friends asked me a few weeks later if I felt married. I still felt just like me. But life tends to surprise me.
All through college I’d find myself suddenly looking around and going, “when did I get to be a college student?” And then I graduated and started teaching elementary school and even after a few years I’d look around suddenly and think, “when did people start trusting me to teach their kids? When did I become an adult?”
It’s been more than a year now since our wedding and every now and then I still look around and am surprised by the thought that, “We’re married!!” At least I’ve moved on to declarations and exclamations instead of questions.
February 18, 2011 1:17 pm
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Oh man did I have one. We were driving to our honeymoon location, and had our wedding in the city where we live, so we came back to our apartment to pack and clean up the morning after the wedding. 2/3 sets of parents stopped by to say and drop off wedding stuff (and Czech pastries and sausage to welcome me to the family). After they left, I just felt so inexplicably alone! My poor husband kept replying “but…I’m still here?” I cried on and off for the rest of the afternoon and evening. I felt better (and a bit embarrassed) the next day, but at least thanks to Meg I knew I wasn’t the only one to have such a reaction.
February 18, 2011 5:15 am
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That was mine too. It felt awful to feel alone when you are standing next to your new husband!
February 18, 2011 6:39 am
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No wedding meltdown, more just a series of WTF moments for the past few months as I realize that while I don’t feel different, I look different – ring, different name, and I have to refer to J as my husband. Well, not “have” to, but you know what I mean.
But I’m going to go there – I *did* have the losing my virginity meltdown. It sorta sucked, to say the least. But I got over it, and J rolled with it, so it was all okay. And really, that’s what will happen if you have a wedding meltdown. The world won’t end, and your guy will be there, probably sorta confused, but he’ll be there for you.
February 18, 2011 5:18 am
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Yes, the Virginity thing sucked. Didn’t happen on the wedding night, it hurt too bad. Mission accomplished the next morning, but it sure wasn’t good. I knew it could suck, but I didn’t think it would happen to me. I thought I’d see stars, I mean we’d had some good make out sessions before we got married. Things got somewhat better on our honeymoon, but still not great. Things improved over time, but we had to communicate and educate. Those were some hard and awkward conversations, but worth it in the end.
February 18, 2011 7:15 am
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Oh, that’s exactly what happened to me, just months before the wedding so I wouldn’t associate the virginity meltdown with our wedding. Definitely had the owowowOWOWOWSTOP moment followed by hysterical crying thinking we’d never be able to have sex. Ever. Crazy much?
Oh, and practice makes perfect. Or at least increases the chances of star-sightings ;)
February 18, 2011 1:32 pm
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and not a damn person can see it by looking at you. Not true, you have wedding rings!!! ;)
I didn’t have a wedding meltdown. Both C and I went into it thinking, we wanted to make things legal because we knew we wanted to spend our lives together, and the wedding was just a way to celebrate that. After it was over, it really wasn’t all that different for us … but it was different for everyone else. (Which is usually what I say when people ask me “how married life is” – “Not all that much different from not-married life. It’s different for everyone else, not for us.”)
I will say this – I had a professional conference I had to go to (well, I didn’t HAVE to go, but I sorta did, and I wanted to go) 2 days after the wedding, which C and I parlayed into a honeymoon (conference was in Metro DC area, we went to St. Michael’s, MD later in the week). I knew a lot of the people at the conference, and I won’t lie – I really dug all of the people fawning all over the newlywed who was there “working” on her honeymoon (it’s not really like working, only kind of like working). Seriously, it was like a drug for me. My husband is much more introverted, so he went into DC, ate at Ben’s Chili Bowl and went to the National Zoo. (And sent me pictures of pandas and big kitties.)
February 18, 2011 5:19 am
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I totally agree. It was much different for other people. We just said “Whoa, that was over,” and went back to our ordinary lives.
February 18, 2011 5:43 am
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No wedding night meltdown here, but I think this sums up why… I was HOPING things would feel exactly the same as they did before. Seriously, a big step along the way to us deciding to get married was the realization that we didn’t *have* to automatically change afterward. We could still be Me and Him, just with health insurance and society’s aknowledgement of what we’d privately decided long ago.
“we wanted to make things legal because we knew we wanted to spend our lives together, and the wedding was just a way to celebrate that.”
Yes, exactly. (and like you said, what has changed is everyone else/their response to us).
February 18, 2011 5:51 am
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Yes! You said this so much more concisely than I did. :)
February 18, 2011 6:01 am
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Yeah, but often everyone else changing and you feeling like you stayed the same can lead to a good cry too.
I was just afraid I’d forget what the wedding day felt like, myself. But I didn’t, so there is that too.
February 18, 2011 8:50 am
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You know, one thing that did kind of change, which was really stupid, is that in my mind it became socially acceptable to miss him. He’s been traveling a lot doing research, and about a month and a half after the wedding he left for 6 weeks. We talked every day – multiple times, most days – and I met him in New Orleans for a few days as well, but I really REALLY missed him more than I had when he traveled before, because my brain decided I could let myself miss him.
I took this a lot harder than I expected to, and was pretty hard on myself for feeling sad that he was not around. He took it hard, too – neither of us were prepared to miss each other that much. Granted, it was the longest time we had been away from one another (the other trips to date were much shorter), and I am sure that was a factor too, but we’re both very independent so we were trying to push back the “I miss you” feelings.
When he got home, our dog was so blissfully happy to see him I thought his tail was going to fall off from wagging so hard. He wouldn’t let C out of his sight. I remember thinking to myself, “Why is it that I cannot let go of some stupid notion that I am weak if I express how much I missed him?” It was a big turning point for me.
Not really a melt down, per se.
February 19, 2011 5:48 am
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Alyssa, each column makes me fall more in love with you.
I’m absolutely expecting to have Wedding Meltdown, because I do this after huge events. It’s exactly like losing your virginity–I picture it as an old cartoon running and running and then all of the sudden they’re over the edge of the cliff and they suspend there for a second still running and looking wildly around and then fall.
February 18, 2011 5:21 am
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No meltdown, but an aftermath… for the week after, on our honeymoon, I was pretty tired and emotionally exhausted but didn’t have a meltdown of any kind. However, we’re now six months on, I’m incredibly happy being married, but I am still processing our wedding day.
It was so incredibly emotional (cried for a large part of our very personal ceremony, had lovely speeches, etc). So when I think of the day, I still feel the rawness of it, though I wouldn’t have changed a thing.
And I can sometimes still get sad that I never get to do this again – I loved every bit of our day. And I sometimes think about whether I could have enjoyed my engagement more – for large parts of it, I was pretty nervous about getting married (never doubted the husband, it just felt like a huge commitment -something I never thought I’d feel beforehand) and I kind of regret not enjoying bits of the planning more, such as trying on more dresses (I bought one on the first day of trying on dresses, within 1,5 hrs of entering the store, and now wish I would have at least tried on one poufy princess ballgown).
So all in all – no big meltdown, but still processing, and that’s six months on and very happily married. I guess it just takes a lot of time to digest since it’s a pretty big deal, no matter how lovely and fairytale-ish your day is.
February 18, 2011 5:22 am
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Didn’t have one…six months out, and it never happened and I doubt it ever will. The wedding was not a huge deal to us emotionally even though it was a kick-butt party. I also never experienced Wedding Zen, so there’s that.
February 18, 2011 5:25 am
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My husband and I both experienced this. We got in the car after our reception was over to drive to our honeymoon inn (1 hour away) and just started sobbing. We were so overwhelmed by the fact that we were MARRIED and by all the people that came out to help us and support us over the weekend. I have never been so emotionally overwhelmed in my life. I’m SO glad my husband was dealing with it too…no one had to the be the only crazy sobbing person in the car.
February 18, 2011 5:27 am
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oh dear. i’m in the 3% and tend to be very emotional and dramatic! maybe i should start letting him know that i might have both meltdowns!
February 18, 2011 5:37 am
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You should definitely be talking about the wedding night and expectations. My husband had seen me meltdown over the guest list (among other things in my life), and he’d gotten me through them. I think that’s part of a husband’s job description.
February 18, 2011 1:20 pm
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I didn’t have either meltdown after the wedding. So you never know. But whatever you experience will be okay and valid. :)
February 19, 2011 9:30 am
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I didn’t have wedding night meltdown, but I had its closely related cousin: first holiday meltdown. Five months after getting married we decided to host both of our immediate families for Thanksgiving. It was a great idea on a lot of levels – no choosing between families, we got to create our own traditions, our wedding china actually got used – and went perfectly. We went to bed so proud of ourselves! But then I spent most of the next day in tears because it suddenly hit me that for the first time in my life, I wouldn’t be going to my parents’ for Thanksgiving or seeing my cousins.
February 18, 2011 5:48 am
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After reading posts on APW, I fully expected to ugly cry on my honeymoon. But I never had a wedding meltdown. To be honest, I was kind of disappointed that I didn’t have one (maybe not having one meant that it wasn’t real, or that I had done something wrong??).
After reading Alyssa’s response, I think I better understand why I did not have a meltdown. I had just watched several friends and acquaintances get married and turn into COMPLETELY different people after the ceremony. A couple of them went from sane, normal, fun, independent women to Stepford-esque wives in the matter of a day. It sounds crazy, but I am not even kidding. Every conversation seemed to start with, “Now that I’m married…” And it TERRIFIED me.
I didn’t want to be a different person. I liked who I was. I just wanted to be myself, married to the person I love. I was so very irrationally afraid that being married would change me in ways I would not like one bit. Imagine my relief when I walked back down the aisle a married woman and still felt like me. The next morning, still me. And all through the honeymoon and after, I was still me.
So when Alyssa said, “But…nothing really changes,” I breathed a huge sigh of relief. Thank God I’m not the only one that doesn’t feel like I’ve been through a magnificent transformation. Five months after getting married, I still really don’t feel all that different. And I love that.
February 18, 2011 5:49 am
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“Five months after getting married, I still really don’t feel all that different. And I love that.”
Yes!! (Except replace five months with eight for me)
I had seen so many of my friends marry and turn into totally different people after the wedding (not necessarily bad-different, just not-what-I-wanted-different. And this might be because so many physical things changed for them – a number of them were living at home/virgins… and then had honeymoon babies – none of which was true for us), and I’d also had many older, long-married women tell me, “just wait: the minute the papers are signed, your boyfriend will start treating you like you’re his mother” or “once I married my wife, I didn’t recognize her anymore!” (read: in a bad way)
I kept wondering how this could be possible after a 20 min. ceremony, and even though I told myself it wouldn’t be like that for us, I harbored a secret fear that one/both of us would morph into Average Joe Husband and Un-Fun Housewife, and suddenly my life would be like “Everybody Loves Raymond.”
So I was profoundly relieved when we were still us… and I still am. :)
February 18, 2011 6:03 am
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Ohhh… when I talk about the wedding changing things, I mean in a spiritual way, or a religious way, or a how we relate to the world way. Not in a WHO I AM changes way. Eff! That’ would be horrible.
So, um, yes. Please don’t expect that you yourself will change, or the way the two of you will relate to the world will change. I mean, maybe it will, but it didn’t for us, and it FOR SURE does not have to.
February 18, 2011 8:54 am
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I’m not sure if it was a meltdown exactly, but the day after the wedding, after the post-wedding brunch, I felt sort of empty. Don’t get me wrong… I was thrilled to be married to my partner, and the wedding turned out exactly how I had always envisioned. However, it was just sad that it was over and everyone had gone home. I spent the whole week leading up to the wedding with my mom and my maid of honor (neither of whom live near me), arranging flowers, getting mani-pedis, folding programs, etc. It was just hard after an entire week of having my community with me, it was now just my husband and I.
February 18, 2011 5:55 am
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“It may or may not happen, and there’s really no way of anticipating (or preventing) it.”
Yes, yes, yes. I’m a very emotional person in normal life and had prepared myself to feel lots of highs and lows before, during and after the wedding, but the emotional roller coaster never happened. I’m sure that I analyzed my NOT having a meltdown as much as some people analyzed what having one meant for them. (did I do it right? what does it MEEEEAN?) So yeah – what Alyssa said. Be prepared for whatever emotions do or don’t come to you, and it’s okay to not feel the way you thought that you might.
February 18, 2011 5:56 am
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Yup. It’s not about anticipating or preventing or scaring anyone, it’s just a “Hey. This might happen. And it might not. Both are okay.”
February 18, 2011 9:16 am
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I had half of a meltdown, when the band leader announced the last dance and I froze on the dance floor with my eyes welling up, saying out loud, “No, no! It can’t be over already! Let’s keep going until I fall asleep on the floor!” We had to leave at 5 a.m. the next morning, which meant that was the end of enjoying the company of all our guests. And it had all been so wonderful. And so emotional.
I think I would have had more of a meltdown later on during our honeymoon, except my new husband got terribly, horribly sick and I spent all my energy trying to help him get well and feel comfortable. By the time we returned, married and ready to start our new normal, the meltdown potential had passed.
Aww, it’s been nearly a year since our wedding, and this makes me so nostalgic :)
February 18, 2011 5:58 am
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Oh… All this and I forgot to say, whatever you’re anticipating, don’t forget to try to be in the moment. It’s just like anything else with weddings (and life?) — you do all the research, and read all the stories hoping that the trail another blazed will help you find your own path. But in that moment when you realize, “Wait, where’s my meltdown?” or “Oh, here comes my meltdown,” mentally mark it, and then forget about the label and just have the moment, whatever it brings. You might even forget that there’s a category of “meltdown” while you’re in the middle of everything. But don’t let the label diminish whatever you’re in that time and place to experience.
February 18, 2011 6:25 am
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Yes, but what do you do when it is your future husband having the meltdown?
I am feeling pretty blissful about the upcoming marriage. He is scared he’s going to get me pregnant And That Would Be Terrible.
But I don’t want to have kids right away, either.
What can I do to alleviate his fears?
February 18, 2011 5:59 am
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Birth Control? Condoms? When I was dating my husband, he had very similar fears and it turns out he was awfully misinformed in his school health classes (I guess they were trying to scare them into abstinence). I found websites online with good info about how birth control works and showed them to him. It definitely helped alleviate his fears.
February 18, 2011 6:31 am
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Um, get on birth control or buy condoms (or both) and make sure he knows how to use them. Lady, nothing about pregnancy has to be accidental. Many of us have prevented it for…. a decade? more? If you use birth control properly, 100% of the time, chances are super low that you’re going to get pregnant. SUPER low.
February 18, 2011 8:57 am
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But you see, I don’t think it’s actually about pregnancy.
I think it’s his commitment-phobia.
Akin to yesterday’s post about the first big fight/when you really feel married. He knows that he’s going to be bound for me, for better or worse. That means (if I were a really evil person, which I’m not) I could decide “I want a baby” stop taking birth control and now he’s stuck with a decision he wasn’t part of.
In short, I think he’s afraid of the “my decisions are now our decisions” and vice-versa.
February 18, 2011 9:14 am
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Ah! Time for talking then, and pre-marital counseling (which everyone should be doing anyway!) That, and maybe do condoms. Nothing like birth control you can see, that he can feel in charge of.
February 18, 2011 9:45 am
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Two methods are better than one. ;-)
February 18, 2011 11:15 am
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These are all really great ideas! And I am definitely going to try the “explaining the Birds and the Bees” strategy.
But here are the “but’s”:
I’m already on birth control.
We’re Catholic, and really don’t like the idea of condoms. And by virtue of going through the church, we also get tons of pre-marital counseling – and sex ed. But, this is all pro-family information.
I’m wondering if other kinds of marital counseling (ie secular) would be helpful here.
We’ve read The Five Love Languages, and I’ve read the Seven Principles of Making Marriage work. It’s helped EVERYTHING, except his commitment-phobia.
I think if Spock gave us marital counseling, the FH would be much more excited about it. 1. Who doesn’t like logic? 2. Who doesn’t like Star Trek?!
February 18, 2011 3:32 pm
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Yup! Maybe. Though girlfriend… birth control is the most artificial form of, well, birth control that there is. Condoms are a step DOWN from that. So for serious, maybe start considering that as well.
February 18, 2011 4:46 pm
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Another suggestion would be to sit down and explain in GREAT detail how babies are made. Sex-ed in school does nothing to explain to guys how a girl’s cycle works. It’s a bit of an odd conversation to have, but explaining to a guy exactly how your cycle works can help alleviate the get-pregnant-right-away fears.
February 18, 2011 1:24 pm
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Since you are catholic, you probably fairly easy access to an NFP course. Depending on how far away your wedding is, I would recommend taking it beforehand, even if you choose not to use it after the wedding as a form of birth control. My fiance and I took a course that lasted three months (just 3 meetings, once a month) and I went from being pretty sceptical (I am not Catholic, but marrying one, and I personally have no religious objection to birth control) to actually wanting to practice it once we are married. It has been a bit of a shock to family/friends of mine, since I have been on the pill for most of the past decade.
I think understanding the fertility process (which most women actually don’t at all, let alone men) will be a huge help to you and your fiance, and might alleviate his fears. It is not ‘your’ responsibility to not get pregnant – he should be a part of that, not just something you control and he has no idea what you are doing.
Also, very much agree with Meg. I would certainly view condoms as a ‘step down’ from hormonal birth control. If you are Catholic, and not using condoms because of that, hormonal birth control is really not any different, except the onus is on the woman to take it, and she is the one experiencing any negative side effects. Not saying that anyone should not take the pill, but as someone who has had various health issues from it, I am very happy to not be taking it any more.
This was pretty long winded, sorry.
February 21, 2011 7:42 am
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The book “Taking Charge of Your Fertility” was recommended to me after we got married. I sincerely wish someone had recommended it to me when I started menstruating (although I think I’m old enough it hadn’t been written yet). It lets you KNOW what your body is doing every month, not just guess. And that knowledge can be used as birth control if you want to.
February 27, 2011 9:24 pm
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As a sex educator (yes, i love my job!)…please ALWAYS use a physical and a chemical barrier if you want to prevent pregnancy and the transmission of STD’s. This can super easy (spermicidal condom) or require two steps (oral contraceptives and condoms).
The most important part of birth control is always the first step, discussing and making a plan w/your partner.
February 18, 2011 8:54 pm
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Um, there were two. The first, just hours after the reception, when I had a moment of clarity (or wait…as much clarity as possible on 2 hrs sleep, wedding haze, and the Jaegerbomb your SILs just convinced you to take on no food), and realized that I had paid more attention to what I needed from my mom leading up to the wedding than what she ultimately needed from me.
And two. A week or so after the wedding, I realized a daily diet of champagne and chocolate just wasn’t sustainable. M started to throw away the rest of the box of chocolates we had from our honeymoon, and I totally lost it. I dreaded the end of the peace, love, joy, champagne and chocolate days and was terrified of returning to reality. Apparently, the box of chocolates signified that transition.
Turns out reality isn’t so bad either :)
February 18, 2011 6:01 am
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I felt that way about finishing the last of our wedding cake. Every night for a week I kept serving smaller and smaller pieces trying to make it last.
February 18, 2011 6:34 am
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I kept a bag of chicken flavored crinkle chips (about as appetizing as they sound) from our honeymoon in Aruba in our cupboard for about three months until my husband found them and made me throw them out.
I wasn’t eating them and they were unopened, I just didn’t want them to be gone. I was all, “But those are like the first thing we ate in Aruba!” And he was like, “ALYSSA. They are gross foreign chips. THROW THEM OUT.”
February 18, 2011 9:20 am
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We still have the soap that we took from our honeymoon hotel almost a year and a half ago. Every time I smell it I am reminded of exactly how I felt on our honeymoon!*
February 18, 2011 10:40 am
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hahahahahahhahahahahaha
I totally have these hoarder tendencies. hahahahaha Oh man, that’s funny. FOREIGN CHIPS? hahahaha
February 18, 2011 10:41 am
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Hahahaha — ew!
February 18, 2011 11:45 am
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It’s funny. I fully expected to have a wedding night meltdown; I mean I was that girl who would listen to our first dance song months before the wedding and cry. I so expected a meltdown that I warned Mark not to expect sex on the wedding night unless he wanted to do it with a giant snotty teary mess.
I did blow off some emotional steam the wedding morning (cried to my best ladies and mom). Later during the wedding and reception I kept thinking, “Well, I’m not crying now, but ohh I bet I will when we get to the hotel.”
And you know what? I didn’t cry a single drop. And it’s not that I wasn’t emotionally drained, or that my wedding wasn’t emotional, but for some reason the emotions just didn’t express themselves that way. We had a great wedding night; I took a bath AND a shower (oh God the hairspray), we went through the cards we got, we finished last-minute packing, did a little bow chicka wow wow, and went to bed completely, fully happy. I didn’t have a meltdown on the honeymoon either. In fact it’s been almost two months and I haven’t shed a tear.
I guess what I’m trying to say is, try not to take your expectations too seriously. Just let what comes, come, and it’ll all be fine. You may surprise yourself.
February 18, 2011 6:03 am
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This post is wonderful!!! I was one of those brides that was so afraid of the wedding meltdown… and I didn’t have one, and then was kind of disappointed that I didn’t. Haha. I think, at least for me, the length of my engagement had a lot to do with it. Our engagement was only 2 1/2 months long, so us being married was always imminently approaching. The wedding details were truly secondary throughout the engagement compared with us talking sooo much about marriage. So, when the wedding came, it was lovely. But it was actually the days after the wedding that we had talked so much about and were so excited for… Anyway, that’s at least why I think I may not have had the Post-Wedding Meltdown.
February 18, 2011 6:04 am
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I don’t know. The meltdown for me had nothing to do with the wedding details (ha! So glad to be done with al that), and just had to do with being afraid I wouldn’t remember what the wedding felt like. Oh, and epic jet lag (I hadn’t slept much for three nights).
February 18, 2011 9:01 am
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I had a mini one. Three days after the wedding, we made the long journey home with my in-laws in tow. Everyone was exhausted from working really hard to pull of a truly wonderful wedding. My husband and I had only had 24 hours together the day after the wedding and the rest of the time was spent with family (because we so rarely get to see them). But everyone was cranky that evening, and it was our first evening together in “our” home (we only lived together from after the wedding) and I was cooking spaghetti and feeling overwhelmed and tired and like marriage wasn’t quite meeting my expectations right then.
When he eventually kicked them all out to go sleep off their bad moods in their hotel and after he closed the door he came over, pulled me into a big hug and said “welcome home” and the floodgates opened and I cried so so hard. It was the relief and the sadness and the happiness and the exhaustion and the being permanently “on” the last seven days all rolled into one.
But it’s not something to be afraid of. We’re women. We tend to be emotional beings and weddings are high on the list of emotional events (in whatever way that might be) so it’s entirely normal and probably healthy to let it all out.
February 18, 2011 6:05 am
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That’s sweet.
February 18, 2011 7:50 am
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Oh dear, I expect I will have one. I had a leaving home to go to uni meltdown, and a starting to co-habitate meltdown, and always a finding a house/flat meltdown every year. Fortunately this means my other half is used to them. I’m prepared to have a bit of a post wedding sob, but I can’t be knocked out for six months emotionally dealing with it. I’ve got a degree to get. All right, subconsious? Got your marching orders?
February 18, 2011 6:05 am
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I kinda love that you just gave yourself a stern talking to. I hope you listen. :-)
February 18, 2011 9:02 am
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I had several meltdowns DURING my wedding, thanks to incredibly stressful weather…It wasn’t so much the process or experience of getting married but rather all the things that went wrong after almost two years of careful planning! It happens, I’m (mostly) over it now but it did kinda suck at the time…But like they say, the harder you fall, the higher you bounce and that was so true for my wedding! Because even though I cried (not out of happiness) three different times during the day, the other parts were SO joyful, happy and amazing that the downsides didn’t matter (much) in the grand scheme of things…
February 18, 2011 6:12 am
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Right, so I was in the teensy minority and lost both the same night. My meltdown didn’t come that night (well just a few tears, but I don’t think that was my meltdown, it was more just a wow, we finally did it). My real meltdown came a few weeks later after the novelty of playing house wore off. I looked the same, I mostly felt the same, but there were little parts of me that I was giving up. We both liked sleeping on the same side of the bed, so we roshamboed it and he won. Becoming one, takes, ummm, *blush* a little practice. He started to do things that I couldn’t believe anyone in their right mind would do (put the butter away in the fridge when I had purposefully left it out so that i could butter my toast with soft butter). The changes were subtle, but one day I woke up and I started to add them up and I wondered who I was anymore.
All that to say, dear engaged readers, do not be dismayed. This is all part of normal life transitions. If you’ve ever moved to a new city, started at a new school, changed jobs, you’ve felt things akin to this change. This may be a touch bigger, but you have the tools to adapt. It really is just a growing period. You’re not a different person, but you are ever evolving (in religious circles, we might call it going through the sanctification process). The meltdown is when you notice the changes and mourn them a little.
February 18, 2011 6:12 am
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I’m a teeny bit afraid of the one-two punch of both events in one go causing a super ugly meltdown, but I’m also super excited for both things so I’m hoping that it will be okay!
I have already emailed this Ask Team Practical column to my fiancé as a preemptive “it’s not you, it’s me”.
February 18, 2011 8:13 am
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OMG Melinda and Marley- same position and did the same exact thing.
February 18, 2011 10:28 am
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I totally wish someone had warned me about either meltdown! I also did getting married + losing virginity and once, and had a big, ugly meltdown at 3am! We didn’t get to the honeymoon site til late, first-time sex turned out not to be (and yeah, to echo someone above, I was totally sure that sex would never actually work. It took like 2 weeks, but it eventually did), and I had a complete meltdown. I sobbed until I was a big sticky mess of tears and was nearly hyperventilating. I think I scared my poor husband, because I’m not usually a crier!
Anyway THANK YOU for telling the yet-to-be brides that this might happen. And yet-to-be brides, maybe warn your soon-to-be-husbands, so you don’t scare them!
And remember, it’s just a postwedding meltdown, it ends, the marriage doesn’t and everything is fine!
February 19, 2011 10:42 am
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I had a gradual meltdown that happened little by little starting a few days after the wedding and ending a couple months afterward. Mostly I started holding my wife-liness to an impossibly high standard and started a frantic cleaning binge that resulted (positively) in me unpacking EVERYTHING for our new house in about two days. I was a freakish nester.
You know what was worse for me, though? About three weeks before the wedding, my husband started looking like a space creature to me. I mean, every time we did something together I was scrutinizing him and saying, “really? I’m marrying you?” Which, of course, I shook off and reminded myself how strange a creature I am and that if he did, in fact, morph into an alien we would then be the perfect pair. Was the only one who had the pre-wedding Twilight Zone vision?
February 18, 2011 6:13 am
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I had forgotten about this, but I *totally* said the same thing in my head (I think only in my head) about mine: really? You?!? We’ve been married a little over 1 1/2 years, and I still say that. I think I tend to say it to him now. Like when he dropped the bombshell that he doesn’t really like spaghetti. It’s shifted from a panicky sentiment to a more bemused kind of thing, though.
February 18, 2011 9:25 am
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Um, we moved my MIL in with us 10 days after the wedding…so I guess I didn’t have time for one, I was just onto our next milestone. :)
February 18, 2011 6:21 am
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I would say a wedding meltdown is nothing to fear. It doesn’t it hurt, it is just a much needed release. And my husband was so good at helping me through it. I fully expected my meltdown (I can be emotional especially when tired and when I was little I would cry when my birthday was over) but I did not dread it because I had learned to accept this aspect of my personality.
I describe the meltdown as an “emotional hangover”. You have this huge day overflowing with all different emotions and the next day/or after the wedding your entire family says bye (or just leaves in the case of my in-laws . . . weird) and there you are left alone with your husband and OH MY GOD this is what it will be like for the rest of your life!! But yet you don’t feel the elation of the previous day, you just feel tired and confused how everyone could be there for you the day before but then just leave you to go back to their homes and work (even though that is what they should do). So you cry for an hour or a day and then you feel better and happy and normal-like you usually do.
February 18, 2011 6:25 am
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Emotional hangover is the PERFECT way to describe it!
February 18, 2011 6:59 am
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Wedding night crier…right here! At the time, I thought it was a release of all the emotion of the wedding, and I still do. Planning the wedding, making the commitment, and having everyone you love present is emotional. However, after reading Alyssa’s response, I think she is absolutely right. In addition to feeling all of those emotions, I was finally reconciling my expectations with reality. For me, it was totally unexpected, but it was exactly what I needed to relax and enjoy the rest of the day with my Husband.
February 18, 2011 6:33 am
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Puke, snot, tears – approximately 2 hours after the reception ended. LOVED every minute of my wedding weekend. If there is such of thing as “puke of joy,” then that’s what I experienced. But my wedding meltdown included the bodily fluid trifecta. And that’s okay.
February 18, 2011 6:37 am
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Oh.My.Goodness. haha! Alyssa – this is fabulous. I must say I had neither the Wedding Meltdown or the Losing My Virginity Meltdown… both events happened (at different points) and afterwards (for both, I believe), I was kind of like…. What was the big deal all about?! haha Umm. Yeah. Obviously being married is a big deal – but it wasn’t a big deal in the way I thought it would be a big deal. As in, I didn’t feel completely different and it didn’t change my relationship with my husband. Basically, we felt the same, but extra committed. And that felt okay, because we had really been committed all along.
So that’s that. No meltdowns. Just feel good stuff where I walked around feeling all fabulous afterwards – like I had my own little secret that nobody else could get in on (in both instances). :)
February 18, 2011 6:42 am
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I’m with ya. I haven’t gotten married yet, so I have yet to find out whether or not I will have the wedding meltdown. But when I lost my V-card, I thought the same thing you did, “What’s the big deal?!” I wasn’t emotional, I didn’t feel remorse, it didn’t hurt…it was even fairly enjoyable. So I’m hoping I will be the same way with regards to the wedding meltdown. But I guess I’ll have to see…
February 21, 2011 10:41 am
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I had two.
The first was disguised as a fight with a bank manager. Long story short, none of the checks written by our guests could be deposited into my US bank account because they were made out to Mr & Mrs E**** and the name on the account was my maiden name. Fast forward to the first morning of our honeymoon and I am yelling and crying down the phone to the bank manager that I can’t come to the bank in person because I live in another country and I don’t know when I am coming back. It was big, ugly, gasping crying. I couldn’t believe I had to deal with this on my honeymoon, the first day I could sleep in with my husband. This shouldn’t be happening.
The second was about 10 days later at my in-laws in NZ. At this point we had been travelling for three weeks through four times zones. I was exhausted and had been called Mrs. E**** more times than I could deal with. At the NZ reception I was sick, literally, and very tired, literally, and overwhelmed by my new family. I locked myself in the reception venue’s bathroom and cried. A lot. I wasn’t sure why. (Luckily I had my make-up bag with me because I didn’t have time to do my makeup at the house). We had another week in NZ which we were suppose to spend catching up with friends. Hubby and I developed ‘colds’ and spent the next four days in the guest room in bed with the laptop watching downloaded movies and ignoring his parents’ pleas to go and visit family.
Maybe don’t plan for it, but be prepared for it. And always carry your make-up bag, just in case.
February 18, 2011 6:48 am
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This is a bit off topic, but…
OH GOD, THE CHECK DRAMA. Ours went on for 6 weeks. 6 WEEKS. It was ridiculous.
And now, of course, it happens every time a check shows up in my maiden name (this happens more often than you’d think) … I’ve gotten so sick of fighting with the bank that I just send the damn check back to be re-cut. Argh.
/tangent
February 18, 2011 7:11 am
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It’s funny – I was fighting with the bank for weeks trying to get them to take checks, and then I started depositing them in the ATM to see what would happen, and nobody ever said a thing. They just went through, no problems. I don’t know if that would work for everyone, but apparently my bank is inattentive to checks that go through the ATM.
February 18, 2011 7:18 am
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Yep, tried that. BOY did it cause problem. Over attentive bank manager. Pssh.
February 18, 2011 7:43 am
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Mailed in the checks with my name on them…
Check to “MyName HisLastName-a” went through, despite that person net yet legally existing.
BUT, the check to “MyFirst MyLast & HisFirst HisLast” was sent back because he hadn’t signed it!
February 18, 2011 11:25 am
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My sister-in-law signs checks that come to her maiden name in her maiden name to my brother, who then cashes them for her. A little annoying, but at least it doesn’t involve random bank people and the mail.
February 18, 2011 2:51 pm
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So many variables are possible. I have known other women that had meltdowns, especially the ones who were really looking forward to their wedding. One was disappointed there was nothing to plan anymore.
I didn’t have an “after wedding meltdown” when I got married. I had pre-wedding meltdowns because I had doubts about the marriage even though we’d been together for years.
But since I did go ahead and get married, I didn’t have a meltdown afterward. I do remember losing all interest in weddings and being glad I’d never have to worry about planning another one.
Didn’t have any other meltdowns until five years later when I got divorced.
I am no help at all in this conversation.
February 18, 2011 6:52 am
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I’m not there yet, but I foresee the “there is nothing left to plan!” meltdown.
I’ve been planning a wedding for the entire time I have been in law school. What will I do with myself when I need a break and have no need to look at wedding blogs anymore?
Tack on my (not quite well-medicated) OCD, and I will probably have a melt-down and resort to cleaning the bathroom six times.
Yay compulsive nesting.
February 18, 2011 9:23 am
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After you are married, you can start planning parties!
And what’s even better is that you don’t need to feel that if you don’t get it right, there’s no going back. You get do-overs.
February 18, 2011 2:00 pm
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Ahhhh I laughed so hard at this. You are hilarious.
February 21, 2011 10:44 am
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Oh man. Mine happened the day after our wedding, on our flight to Italy. I was exhausted, I hate to fly – so I was anxious; I was listening to my iPod, and the song I walked down the aisle to came on – Northern Sky by Nick Drake. I looked over at my sleeping husband, looked at his shiny new wedding ring, and BAM. I was just totally overwhelmed and in shock that this thing we’d been planning for a year and a half was over, and it was so amazing, and what if I forgot what it felt like, and now I was a WIFE – wtf?!… and… and… Yeah. :-)
The meltdown was good, it needed to happen. I had been running on adrenaline for a week, and it was really cathartic to just have a good, messy cry and feel all those crazy emotions I was feeling. I wish it had happened BEFORE we left for the airport, or AFTER we arrived in Rome and reached the privacy of our hotel, and not at 35,000 feet, in front of a concerned flight attendant who kept looking over and trying to decide if she should console me since my husband was still sleeping.
After that, I was okay. My husband and I reminisced about our wedding during our honeymoon, and I felt so happy and kind of relieved and just full of joy to start this new thing with him.
February 18, 2011 6:54 am
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As I read the beginning of this post, I didn’t think I had a Meltdown but as I continued through the rest of it, I realized I totally did.
It wasn’t a Wedding Night Meltdown because I was exhausted. I was ready to crawl into bed at 7:30 and I had to force myself to stay at the reception and not kick everyone out. I don’t think I could have handled any emotion at that point other that exhaustion. No, my Meltdown happened on our “staycation” honeymoon only a few blocks from our house. Suddenly I just started crying and I couldn’t figure out why. I felt like my cat had died or I’d just broken up with someone. I didn’t feel any magical married feeling and during my wedding day, I was not blissful at all. I felt like I missed out on The Experience. Luckily my husband was used to random bursts of tears and we were alone.
It is EXACTLY like losing your virginity. Perfect analogy. You expect some music or some sort of fanfare. If nothing like that then you at least expect people to notice. You expect people to see it written all over your face and you expect to feel something different.
February 18, 2011 7:01 am
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I got married this past weekend. Yes I had a meltdown. Around 1AM. I sobbed all night. I’ve never been one to express emotion so by the time I was home and alone I had to let it all out. Have you ever had the feeling while standing in a large crowd of loved ones and never felt more alone in your life? That was me at the reception. I just stood there most of the night. In a daze and feeling more alone than ever. Maybe over time I will come to realize more about what my meltdown was about. But as of one week later I believe that I just felt alone and that no one was relating or could relate to how I felt.
February 18, 2011 7:02 am
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Oh man, I had WEEKS of post-wedding meltdown. I was led to believe that they were reserved only for brides and grooms who really love planning and then mourn the planning process afterwards, but boy was I wrong.
We didn’t have a honeymoon until over a year after our wedding, so two days after we said “I do” we went back to work like nothing was different. So after spending an amazing weekend with all the important people in my life, I went back to the job I hated, with the people I hated and the shitty boss and it all just *weighed* on me. I cried almost every day.
But in the end my post-wedding meltdown was really good for me. It allowed me to see that I had been shifting my priorities in my new life with my husband and this crappy job was no longer a thing I needed in my life. I started making active changes to live the kind of life I wanted, the kind that would allow me to surround myself with many of the awesome people we had at our wedding.
So the point of this is that your wedding can mean lots of things to you. It can be hugely symbolic, or not at all. It can usher in a ton of emotions or it can be just another day. For me it represented the life that I wanted to be living and made me realize that there were parts of my life that weren’t contributing to my happiness.
But the most important thing to take away is that it’s OK if you feel shitty afterwards. It doesn’t mean you did it wrong. And it’s ok if you don’t feel shitty afterwards. It doesn’t mean you feel it *less*. And it’s always, always, ALWAYS ok to ugly cry.
February 18, 2011 7:02 am
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“I was led to believe that they were reserved only for brides and grooms who really love planning and then mourn the planning process afterwards, but boy was I wrong.”
Ohhhhh, no, for me, the Meltdown had NOTHING to do with the planning, and everything to do with the impact. Everyone has different reasons for an emotional overload, but it’s not just about planning, for sure.
February 18, 2011 8:08 am
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Right?! Nobody told me this! I thought I was free and clear because I had no emotional investment in the planning process.
But you’re right. My meltdown was big and it hit HARD and it was about everything, but it sure as Hell wasn’t about missing the planning. :)
February 18, 2011 8:17 am
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Yeah, I didn’t really care that much about planning, and still had my meltdown the next day. “My grief came, in part, from managing to get through the wedding without my father there, and in part because rites of passage really are a big deal, no matter how happy they make you.”
February 18, 2011 8:50 am
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Yeah, EFF missing planning.
February 18, 2011 9:04 am
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I am scared sh**less that I am going to be maudlin and sad at my wedding because my dad won’t be there. I wouldn’t mind feeling grief or meltdown after the wedding … when you lose a loved one I think you learn to get down and dirty with your emotions and understand that the vomiting grief-y feel is good and cathartic and necessary because it allows you to function as a human being 95% of the time. But, I just don’t want to spend my wedding fighting grief.
February 18, 2011 12:01 pm
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I think something about the stay-cation honeymoon makes the transition different. We didn’t take a traditional honeymoon, and instead stayed in a local hotel for two nights after the wedding. Then we went back to our place, and work commitments crept in right away and we both understood why people usually go far, far away for a week or more after a wedding. It’s not just a “vacation,” it’s a liminal space of transition in a relationship, and we sped through it and didn’t have time to take it all in and process it all before adjusting to “real life.” Oh well. It was all fine in the end, it was just a little jarring to adjust to reality SO quickly after the wedding.
February 19, 2011 10:03 am
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I love this post. I’d heard about the post-wedding meltdown while I was engaged and thought I would probably be the type of person who had one soon after the wedding. I figured it would happen because I was pouring so much of myself into wedding planning and that I would be lost in this new world of marriage and different expectations and having a new name and so on.
But instead… I rode a post-wedding high for about a week and enjoyed time with my husband at home. (We couldn’t afford a honeymoon so we just stayed in town.) After that high wore away, I was fine. It was actually amazing how easily I stepped out of wedding-planning mode and back-to-real-life mode. I had looked at — easy round numbers — 20 wedding blogs a day while planning. I stopped reading all but one (APW, of course) in a week and didn’t mind. I enjoyed time with my new husband. I felt like myself, but with a new name. I still have some issues about the name change but they only pop up occasionally.
It’s been over a year now since we got married and I don’t think I’ll have a meltdown. I don’t know if there’s a secret to not having a meltdown. Maybe, because I was so scared that I *would* have one, I became more aware of my feelings and was able to stop it before it happened? I’m not sure.
Like Maddie in the comment above me, I also went back to my crappy job a week after the wedding and I realized it just wasn’t worth it to me anymore. I think maybe I took the energy I had been using to fuel my wedding planning to take me to the next level of where I wanted to be (ie, starting a business of my own). Sometimes I laugh about the fact that I didn’t like wedding planning, and now that I’m off the hook for it, I am back in the wedding world as a photographer :)
One thing, though… I am a compulsive journaller. I write in my diary 3 or 4 times a week. That helped a lot with the transition.
February 18, 2011 7:18 am
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You know, if I hadn’t been jetlagged, I don’t know that I would have had one. Maybe staying at home saved you ;)
February 18, 2011 9:05 am
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I think there is a lot to this theory. We didn’t do our honeymoon until like 6 weeks later. So all through the exhausted next day, we recapped the wedding with my parents and just goofed off… and then went to sleep in our own bed and went back to work. I kept thinking about how awful it would have been to be traveling anywhere because I was stupid-tired and my head was still spinning from the wedding. Being productive at work was insanely hard, but it allowed us to get used to being married in our normal environment.
I’m super glad I fought for normal time at home before our honeymoon adventure. I know he loves me anyway, but I feel like preventing an avoidable meltdown is good for both of us.
February 18, 2011 1:04 pm
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Just before these comments I wrote about having a stay-cation honeymoon. Then I started wondering if there was a link between stay-cation honeymoons and lack of meltdowns because I never had a meltdown. Then I saw these comments. :) Maybe there is an interesting connection? Perhaps making the transition within a more familiar environment reduces the chance of meltdowns? Although, I did (at the time) wish we had had more time “away,” but maybe that would have augmented the perception of change and stress? Interesting to ponder. :)
February 19, 2011 10:12 am
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I felt relief more than anything. The night was adorable, full of love, and a crazy amount of fun, but I have never gotten over something so wonderful that quickly, as I did the wedding. As soon as it was over, I had this exciting new adventure of being married. It didn’t occur to me to do anything but laugh like crazy, enjoy some cocktails, and just breathe. It was (and still is) a great feeling.
February 18, 2011 7:19 am
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We totally had a meltdown. But, for us, it wasn’t just sobbing. It was a throw down, blow out Fight. (Yes, with the capital F.)
It was 2 days after our wedding, and the type of fight you never want to have, especially with your brand new spouse. Hours were spent on it.
And we said absolutely nothing that has any relevance now, 6 months later.
We took a few days to recover, but in the end, we were better than before. And the realization that we could HAVE that fight, and still be ok was enough to really make us FEEL married.
February 18, 2011 7:20 am
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I did that too – a few days after we got home from the honeymoon. Hours – DAYS of fighting. 11 months later and I barely remember it. But it was important – we did work out some things that we needed to.
Still sucked though.
February 18, 2011 8:51 am
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I didn’t have a moment of meltdown, but still feel a slight sadness that it’s all over. Not because I loved planning (I hated it, my mom did pretty much everything, which made me insanely happy), but because the day itself was more amazing than I ever expected, mostly because, like others said, it is one of the few days (or maybe the only day) in your life where everyone you love is in one place loving on you. It was just such a loving environment (Ok I’ll stop using that word, I sound like a Hallmark card), that I didn’t want the weekend to end. Even my husband, whose family mostly didn’t come, didn’t want to leave. This could also be heightened by the fact that we don’t live near either of our families, and I come from a very, very tight extended family.
February 18, 2011 7:25 am
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I love this analogy.
It took me 11 years to have my losing-my-virginity meltdown. (Seriously. And yes I did lose my virginity *that* young, hence then decade-later meltdown.) I hope the wedding one isn’t following in another 9 years!
But seriously, post-wedding I had a massive physical crash. I took to my bed sick and exhausted purely through over-stimulation (and probably 48 hours with too few calories, despite doing my best to eat as much as I could). It hits everyone in a different way, but yes, it will probably hit you too. But also, you’ll be fine. And then you’ll be married which, if you’re putting the effort in, will only get better. Ah, just like the sex. It really is the same!
February 18, 2011 7:26 am
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Ha!
February 18, 2011 9:06 am
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I just want to caution about getting all worked up and EXPECTING a melt-down. I think I had a meltdown, but I have them with a fair amount of regularity that it’s faded from memory somewhat! The point is that, while emotionally intense moments happen, we need to recognise them and accept them, but don’t feel entitled to become a snivelling wreck/screaming banshee (my meltdowns follow both patterns) just because you got married. They happen: you’re no less of a good person/bride/wife/woman because of the meltdown. Nor have you missed a certain part of the experience by not becoming overwhelmed by emotion in the days/weeks/months following your wedding.
February 18, 2011 7:27 am
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Indeed. I’ve noticed this bizarre thing where we’ll mention something on APW (something that sucks, like a wedding meltdown) and then people think they are broken when they don’t have one… instead of feeling…. awesome? Lucky?
You might have one. You might not. You’re not broken no matter what.
February 18, 2011 9:08 am
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I completely forgot that I had a post-wedding meltdown. Mine happened at the very end of the weekend, when my husband and I met up with two friends at a bar (of all places!) to catch the end of a preseason football game before we parted ways. I hugged my friend (who I’ve known for 20 years), and I just started crying. I was so incredibly happy that we’d gotten to be with everyone and so sad that it was all . . . over; that it couldn’t be one big lovefest all the time.
It wasn’t messy, it wasn’t scary, it wasn’t public (well, not really), but it did happen. It’s good to embrace it, let it happen, and then take a deep breath and move on. Because you will love the place that you’re moving on to.
February 18, 2011 7:32 am
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