Every once in a while, I will receive a text message or an email from a past bride (or mother of the bride) a few weeks after her wedding has passed. The subject typically reads the same each time. “Miss me yet”. I immediately know the underlying message of the message. It is the post wedding blues! Many people ask if they are a real thing? You bet your ass they are! Even for me!
According to me, a non-psychologist who actually studied journalism at the University of Southern Mississippi (shout out), here’s how I see it.
Most women, and some men, dream about their wedding day, or the idea of being married, for a good bit of their lives. One day, your significant other surprises you with a beautiful ring and asks you that most important question, “will you marry me?” You are over-joyed to finally be getting married, and the new jewelry is pretty exciting as well. You spend months (or years) planning your wedding and during that time, everyone cares about you. Everyone wants to know everything. They want to see the ring, they want to know how he/she proposed, they want to know when the wedding is, where the wedding is, details, details, details. Everyone cares and everyone wants to be invited.
You have a ton of parties in your honor including a bachelorette party where your friends celebrate nothing but you – bridal showers, engagement parties, brunches, lunches, rehearsal dinner. It’s all so exciting! Then the wedding day comes! You are beautiful and everyone talks about it all night long and your social media pages are blowing up. Everyone says that your wedding is the most amazing, most beautiful and most fun wedding EVER (especially if it is a wedding that Kelly Sherlock Events has planned)! The entire night is about you (and your new spouse) and your spouse is going to fall out of his/ her skin because he/ she is so excited and in love with you. It is the best 24 hours of your entire life.
Then you wake up the next morning married and glowing. God willing, you head to the airport and jump on a plane and you spend the most amazing few days, or weeks in the most amazing place and have the most amazing time ever. And do not forget about that social media page. It is still blowing up as people are posting amazing pictures of you and your most amazing day and they are saying the nicest things ever. You have more likes than you have ever had! It’s all just so amazing!
Then, you come home. You are married. The wedding is over. The honeymoon is over. Sure, you have the pictures and the video that you are looking forward to and, still, everyone is talking about how amazing your wedding was. But, it is over and life is back to normal. Now, the attention is gone, the day is done, the gifts are unpacked and you are back to having to go out and talk about other things rather than yourself and your wedding! Not to mention your bank account is a bit smaller as well. All of your energy, your hopes, your dreams and your life revolved around this wedding for so long, even before you were engaged. Something that consumed your thoughts since you were young has now come and gone. Although the blues will pass and you will realize that there is so much more happiness and amazing excitement to come, you better believe that the post-wedding blues are a real thing!
I definitely had them after my own wedding, but more than that, I realize that I get the post wedding blues almost every weekend. I work with my couples and their families for half the year if not a full year (or more) of my life. Emails, texts, meetings and phone calls almost every day for months. I learn about their families, their relationships with each other, with their friends. I know about their finances and I know a good deal about them as people outside of their wedding details. In some cases, I eat family dinners with these couples and their families. We share holidays and cocktails, and truly personal pieces of their lives together. And even though they have no idea what is going on in my life, because they let me into so much of their lives, I truly do feel so close to many of my clients. So much so that at the end of the process, typically on a Sunday after a huge wedding or a series of huge weddings/ wedding season, I too have the post wedding blues.
My husband says that it is like going through a divorce every time a close client’s wedding is over and I guess he is right. For me, so much of my life revolves around wedding dates and the details of my clients and what is happening with them during the planning process. Each time I take on a client I am consumed with their feelings, budget, concerns, desires and hopes and I put my energy into them until the very last song of the reception. I still cry sometimes when my brides go down the aisle and I still shed a tear or two when my brides and grooms dance with their parents. I am still invested after all the years of doing this and perhaps some people think that me having emotions is a flaw in this industry. But I disagree. This is what makes me good at what I do, and honestly, these clients and these families are a part of me forever. As I think back at different times of my life, I can equate those times to the brides and families I was working with at the time. I love to fall in love with my clients. It is what makes the planning, details and stress worth it! This is why having that connection is so important!
I realize that I might be the minority here, and I am okay with that. It is truly the difference between just working to collect a paycheck and actually being invested in the success of the outcome. I am in it and I give a care because I care about my brides, my grooms and their families, especially if they have a puppy in the wedding! So be aware that the post-wedding blues are a real thing and they are normal (even for the really invested vendors in the industry). Find yourself a vendor that will "post wedding blues" you! And for my clients, just know that I am missing doing everything for you, as much as you miss having me there to do it all!!!
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