Post-wedding blues are completely normal. It’s your body is going through emotional withdrawal after an intense high from all the planning and preparations and finally, the wedding itself. The post-wedding blues happens to lots of brides, and grooms, too, so don’t worry, you’re not alone. But there are ways to battle the post-wedding blues.
1/ Leave a Honeymoon Buffer
We generally recommend not going on your honeymoon straight after your wedding for two reasons. For one thing, you’ll be exhausted and won’t be able to enjoy the first three days fully. But also, if you run your wedding straight into your honeymoon, you will deprive yourself of any proper time to look forward to your honeymoon, which means it may be over as quickly as the wedding was, and you'll suffer post-wedding and post-honeymoon blues all at once. If you leave a buffer, you’ll have time to recover, and you’ll have something else to look forward to.
2/ Consider A Mini-moon
In contrast, if your honeymoon is planned much later than your wedding, you might need something sooner to look forward to, to help you come down slowly from your extreme wedding high. Plan a trip down the country, or book a festival if there’s one close to your wedding, or even just have a little taste of luxury in a beautiful guesthouse or hotel, complete with spa treatments to help you relax. It’ll give you something small to look forward to without your actual honeymoon being over too quickly.
3/ Save Some Days Off
It’s up to you how you want to split your days off from work, but we recommend deciding what you really need them for before deciding on a whim that it might be nice to be off the week before your wedding. Suddenly, you’ll find yourself having to go straight back to the office after your wedding day and having to save the rest for your honeymoon and chances are you’ve already been given some extra leeway, so we wouldn’t recommend asking for more. Leave some days after the wedding to recover and relax before returning to the real world and avoid having post-wedding blues and being stuck at work. It’s often better than having days too many days off before the wedding.
4/ Talk To Your Spouse
Post-wedding blues are not just a term of affection for wanting to do your wedding day all over again, post-wedding blues are a genuine come down after such an extreme high, and they can sometimes be difficult to shake. Make sure you communicate your worries and feelings to your new partner in crime. There’s a good chance they're feeling the same way, and talking about it always helps. Don’t suffer through the post-wedding blues alone. You might even discuss this list and decide how to get over them together.
5/ Write Letters
This one is pretty flexible, and you can write as many as you want. Consider each writing a letter to one another before your wedding day about how you feel and how excited you are, and give them to each other when you feel the post-wedding blues coming along. It’ll fill you with that warm, fuzzy feeling of how you felt when you were anxiously and excitedly waiting to marry your beloved. You can even decide to write a few different letters to each other while actively keeping in mind that you might use them to tackle post-wedding blues.
6/ Switch Obsession
Part of the reason your post-wedding blues occur is that you’ve been obsessing and planning something so exciting for months, maybe years, and suddenly it’s all over. It probably feels like your wedding didn’t last a day, it lasted a year, and that’s a much longer event to get over. So instead of having something you’ve been obsessed over for months suddenly end, switch your obsession. Make a plan to take up something else instead. This is also a good time to pick up a good habit, like an evening jog, more reading or a new class. Take up something you ‘never had time for’ before. Because when you didn’t have any time, you managed to fit in a hell of a lot of wedding planning, so there’s no excuse for not using a fraction of that time to try something new. This will then become a good distraction from all the wedding planning you used to do.
7/ Plan Couple Time
Whether that’s your mini-moon, or you decide to replace your wedding obsession with a hobby you can do together, plan some real couple time that isn’t just relaxing in front of the TV and slipping straight back into the real world (although some down time with your new partner and Netflix is ok too). Plan some date nights to follow your wedding. Go out for dinner, go to a play or a gig or even just go out for a drink. You’re a married couple now, and it’s time to start doing a couple of things, so get into an early habit of planning regular dates together outside the house, so you always have something to look forward to.
8/ Get 0rganised
Use the time after your wedding to organise your house. Unless you’re already an incredibly tidy person, chances are your house has become a bit of a bomb site in the run up to the wedding; you probably haven’t had much time to do a ‘good’ spring clean or gone through your wardrobe to find out what you don’t need anymore. Not to mention there’s probably that drawer full of wedding-related notes, samples, swatches, etc., that you definitely don’t need anymore. It’s fine to keep mementoes, like your invitation or a table number, but if you’re never going to look at them again, get rid of them. If you organised a particularly good folder of notes, vendors and ideas, consider holding on to it to give to the next friend or family member to get engaged, but other than that, clear it all out.
9/ Don’t Make More Big Changes
One of the keys to not getting overwhelmed in life is to not make too many big changes at once. Big life changes can take their toll mentally, even if they’re a good thing. Your mind needs to be given a chance to process new information and adjust to new situations, and if there are too many at once, it can be disastrous. One of the main ones to avoid is moving house. Newly married couples are either on the cusp of wanting to move or have already just moved. This is something that should be carefully evaluated. If you’re deciding to move, and find the place you want to settle for life before you get engaged, consider the fact that the best way to do it might be to wait until you’re fully moved in and settled into your new home before you even think about getting engaged and planning a wedding. Equally, if you’re engaged and thinking about looking for a new home, it might be best to wait until after the wedding even to start looking. Planning two big, stressful changes at once can often prove to be too much.
10/ Relax
Above all else, it’s important to relax after your wedding to soothe post-wedding blues. By all means, throw yourself into something new, organise your house and take a trip, but give yourself a minute and take a breather. You’re coming off a massive adrenaline rush that probably lasted several months, and you need to give your brain and your body a chance to slow down, even if it’s just for a day or two so that they can fully recover and avoid post-wedding blues. Then, by all means, throw yourself into your new hobby, go for those jogs, plan your honeymoon and reorganise your house. Just make sure you take some time to relax first.
- Jenny