by Lorraine Sanabria Robertson,
The wedding cake was served and eaten, the champagne popped and sipped, the dance floor “Wobbled” and cleared, and the guests have all gone home. Now it’s just the two of you, you and your husband, alone together. Gulp!
What do you do now? So many brides, myself included, spend so much of their time planning their special day that they forget one very important thing, there’s life after the wedding! After the presents have all been opened and you’ve been home a little while since your honeymoon, you may begin to realize that things are not quite the way that you expected them to be. If I had a dollar for every time a new bride told me that, I wouldn’t need to win the Lotto, I could fund it! You are not alone if you feel this way! In fact, you are completely normal and in the same company as millions of other new brides.
It’s so easy to let your expectations get the best of you. Your wedding day is sacred, a day that you’ve probably looked forward to your entire life. That kind of excitement and anticipation brings big expectations, but not ones that are very realistic. I expected to return from my Mexican honeymoon and float in marital bliss for at least the first year with nothing to do but love my husband and have really great sex. Yeah, right. It sounded good. Then reality set in and I found out that there is more to marriage than love and sex, even really great sex! I didn’t expect many of the relationship changes that happened, like adjusting to living together and dealing with our new extended families, and I definitely didn’t expect to still be busy with so many post wedding details.
I also didn’t expect to have wedding withdrawal. I was thrilled that my wedding day seemed flawless. It turned out one hundred times better than I imagined. Then I spent a week relaxing at a luxurious five-star hotel on the beach in Mexico with my new husband rubbing suntan oil all over my bronzed body. Yup, married life was looking and feeling pretty good at that point, until I got home and “… wham! “… wedding withdrawal came crashing out of nowhere like a big blue tidal wave and wiped out my picture-perfect fantasy.
What is wedding withdrawal? It’s when you miss the fun, excitement, anticipation, craziness and stress of planning your wedding. You’ve lived and breathed your wedding for probably most of your life “” or at least the past six months. It’s only natural to miss this. Wedding withdrawal can happen to the compulsive organizer or the carefree planner. Whether you had a five-course meal with 300 guests or an intimate dinner with immediate family and friends, planning your wedding can be as taxing as having a second full-time job. Your wedding consumes so much of your mind and your time, then all of the sudden in one day you’re done. It’s over. Your wedding day has come and gone. No more appointments with the caterer. No more flowers to choose or pretty silk ribbons to tie around tiny bottles of bubbles. No more fantasizing about what your wedding day will be like, and the hardest part of wedding withdrawal: nothing for you to do.
– Excerpt from the book, “Help! I’m a Newlywed … What Do I Do Now? Wife-Saving Advice Every New Bride Must Know to Survive the First Year of Marriage,” by Lorraine Sanabria Robertson.
Learn how to deal with life after the wedding, wedding withdrawal, and more than 225 Do’s & Don’ts to start your marriage off on the right track in “Help! I’m a Newlywed.” Whether you’re stressing about your new-in-laws, your new sex life, or your new husband leaving his clothes all over the bedroom floor this book will help you graduate from girlfriend to wife without having a panic attack.
Lorraine blogs at RunWifeyRun.com and AskWifey.com; and you can follow her on Twitter at @AskWifey. Her life-changing wedding was featured on TLC’s “A Wedding Story.”