News, Tips & Offers delivered to your inbox.

Why do so many brides feel empty and sad after the wedding is over? Take this advice and go from wistful to blissful in no time.

Kazzie Emrich's wedding was perfect from start to finish, and she was thrilled to begin a new chapter of her life with her husband, Bill. "But once we got home from our honeymoon, I began to feel an overwhelming sadness that this amazing event I'd spent almost a year planning was over," says the Chicago resident. "It was especially hard for me to attend weddings, showers and bachelorette parties, which I did a lot during my first year of marriage. Just seeing the giddiness of the brides made me feel sad—and envious. I even thought about my own mortality. As a girl, I had dreamed about my wedding and seen that day as a major life event that would happen way in the future. But now that it was over, it felt like an ending. The worst of the sadness lasted six months, but even now, three years later, I still haven't thrown away my unused invitations, and my bouquet is still hanging in the kitchen, where I had placed it to dry out."

These feelings—you can call them the "bridal blues"—are common among newlywed women, and they can last anywhere from several days to many months, says Alison Moir-Smith, MA, a bridal counselor in Brookline, Massachusetts. What's going on? "A wedding is physically and mentally all-consuming," she explains. "It's the focus of your life for a year or more and then it's over in one night. After such a huge buildup, there's bound to be a vacuum in your life."

While it's normal to feel sad that your big day is over, say experts, wouldn't you rather be excited about what lies ahead? Use these blues-busting strategies to ease the pain:

Create a buffer zone.

Jetting off to Hawai'i the morning after your wedding sounds romantic. But a better plan is to schedule your departure for a day or two later. After the whirlwind of the big day, this will give you time to get some rest and accept the fact that the wedding you spent so many months planning is actually over. "We left for our honeymoon early on the morning after our wedding," says Megan McDonnell, from New Fairfield, Connecticut, regretfully. "We went from this amazing feeling of having so many people around us the night before to being alone. If we'd stayed an extra day, we could have enjoyed being with our family and friends a little longer and relived the fun of the wedding with them. The finality of it would have felt less abrupt and harsh."

Page    1  2  3