So we've all heard that very few couples have sex on their actual wedding night. And there are plenty of psychologists willing to espouse their opinions that it's because of exhaustion, emotional overload, yada yada yada. You want the truth -- in my opinion -- inebriated brides and grooms do stupid things that result in no official consummation of the marriage because half the time they're barely speaking to each other by the time they fall into bed. No really, I'm serious.
True confessions: On our wedding night, just as my new husband got amorous, my cell phone rang. Almost 10 years ago that was not normal, and we'd only turned the phone on to charge it for the honeymoon trip the next day. The call was from the security company back in D.C. -- our house sitter was having a rager in our house. All the police got involved because my husband was the district commander at the time and this dumb-bunny who was housesitting had decided throwing a tiki-themed hot tub party at police captain's house (eight blocks from the station) was a good idea. Uh, not. By the time the cops got our house cleared and the "fires" were put out, Bill and I both passed out cold. No hanky-panky.
But most of the time, the reason couples don't copulate on their wedding night can be attributed directly to alcohol. Three true stories... Names have been concealed to protect the guilty.
G. was a beautiful bride. However, she didn't eat all day and by the end of her wedding reception luncheon, she was completely potted on the lovely champagne cocktails that kept being put into her hand. Her new husband took her back to her hotel room, where she proceeded to pray to the porcelain God for most of the night. They went out for sliders in the wee hours when she finally sobered up enough to walk and was starving to death. She laughs about it now. The funny thing is, G. is in her 70s now and has four children, countless grandchildren, and her first great grand-baby. My point is that getting tanked at your own wedding is not a new thing for this generation. It's a long-standing tradition, albeit not a great one.
B. planned an amazing wedding for her family and his, and he was quite the Groomzilla, insisting on having half of his family in the wedding even though she didn't know them. After the wedding reception, B. and her new hubby bid their guests adieu and left under a hail of confetti to go to the honeymoon cottage on the property where there wedding was being held. When they arrived, the groom helped B. get the pins out of her hair, and freed her from her gown. Then he suggested a bubble bath while he ran back to make sure that his family was all taken care of, and to say some goodbyes that he would miss the next day.
Two hours and two Law & Order episodes later, the bride finally took off her naughty negligee, put on clothes, and went to hunt down her husband. She found him in the bar, wasted, with his friends. She went back to the cottage and went to sleep, alone. I'm pretty sure that marriage didn't get consummated til a couple of apology-filled days into the honeymoon.
M. was the worst bride I've ever heard of -- and I know the story to be absolutely true. She got absolutely and completely wasted at her wedding, rolled out and disappeared before the end of the reception. The groom hung in and thanked and said goodbye to their guests at the reception. When he finally got the chance to break away from the crowd, he returned to his honeymoon suite to find his drunken bride had locked him out, complete with the security bar. He knocked. He banged. He yelled. He called over and over, her cell and the room phone. And then, after somebody called security on him, he went down to his parents' room and confessed what had happened and spent the night with them.
The messed up thing was that M. was utterly oblivious to the chaos, mayhem and embarrassment she'd caused the night before -- nor did she seem to care. She made no apologies at the farewell brunch, which she arrived very late to and had missed saying goodbye to half the guests anyway. Her first stop at the brunch? The bar.
Okay, common theme here? Alcohol. Or rather, the over-consumption of alcoholic beverages in a celebratory nature. Thing is, I've seen brides and grooms belly up to the bar and do shots like it's their 21st birthdays rather than their wedding nights. What's up with that? Don't you want to remember what you just spent 12 months and $20,000 planning? Or is seeing it all on YouTube the next day enough for you? And are those really the memories you were hoping to make on your wedding day? Not to mention the potential for nasty fights if you're both too inebriated to have any sort of good judgment.
In my opinion, most couples don't get nooky on their wedding night because one or the other of them is too wasted for it to happen. It's not the stress. It's not the emotional overload. It's the booze sleeping in the center of the nuptial bed.
Until next time, happy wedding planning from Weddings in Vieques and Weddings in Culebra!