Weddingbee Blog

In general, I don’t think I’m a very emotional person. My default is pretty happy, and my departures from this status quo are usually fairly brief and relatively infrequent. As a result, any considerable display of emotion is a marked departure from my norm. Which is exactly why the day after the wedding has been far more difficult than I ever could have imagined.

When discussing the emotions swirling around weddings, you generally discuss whether or not you’ll cry during the walk down the aisle, or during the vows, or during the toasts. No one discusses whether you’ll cry on the day after the wedding. And most definitely no one discusses whether you’ll cry more than a decent amount on the day after the wedding. But I’m here to tell you that it can happen, because it did to the Snow Cones.

We woke up completely energized and content on the morning after our wedding. We enjoyed a nice, casual brunch with our out of town friends and then opened our thoughtful wedding gifts with our families. We packed up the car to head back to Pittsburgh, and we were all of about 4 feet from the curb in front of my house when the tears started to fall. That was about six hours ago, and they continue to come and go, completely out of my control. I couldn’t put my finger on what was causing my tears; part of it was because I had hard good-byes to faraway friends, part of it was because I was unbelievably happy with our day on a whole, and part of it was because weddings evoke an absurd amount of emotion and there’s an inevitable amount of emotional diarrhea that happens. Wedding day was all of the happy, day-after-wedding-day was all of the “Wow. That actually happened. What now?”

After spending the better part of the afternoon sniffling, here’s the best comparison I can make. Getting married, and the day after the wedding, feels very similar to the sensation that I experienced when my parents said good-bye to me immediately prior to my freshman year of college. Realistically, you know that there is so much excitement and development coming into your life in the coming days and months. Despite that cognitive realization, there’s still a highly emotional component to it all, too. There’s the distinct feeling that something big has changed, and it’s not ever going to revert back to the way it used to be. On some minor level, it’s a bit sad; life as you know it is now life as you knew it. On a much more major level, it’s exhilarating; rarely do you have an opportunity to experience such a significant change.

Maybe I’m an oddball, but I cried the day after the wedding. Regardless of whether that’s an expected response or not, it was my response, and I hope to never forget this amalgamation of emotions, since it’s very likely a once in a lifetime experience.

Did you experience any surprise wedding-related emotions?