Wedding night sex: do most couples have sex after their wedding?
Chances are good that you have big plans for your wedding night. After the guests clear out, you have a luxury honeymoon suite and you're probably planning on breaking it in. Even though very few of us actually wait until marriage to have sex these days, wedding nights still hold an almost mythical status — and expectations are high to have a sex-fuelled night that you’ll never forget. You imagine you'll wake up covered in lube and sweat, feeling very satisfied indeed.
Well, I hate to break it to you — but it might be time to lower your wedding night sexpectations. I know, it’s meant to be one of the highlights of your life — and your relationship — but it’s good to know this now: the sex will probably be kind of shit. In fact, it probably won't even happen.
First of all, most people don't even have sex on their wedding night. Lingerie company Bluebella surveyed 1,000 women and found out the 52 percent of them didn’t even get down — and a survey from the Vow found exactly the same thing. Why? Well, the reasons are complicated — but there are a lot of different factors that mean your wedding night sex might be lackluster or even nonexistent. That’s OK — you have the rest of your lives to make up for it.
So what is it that makes the wedding night so unsexy? Here’s what you have to keep in mind.
You are so, so tired
First things first — it’s impossible to describe how tired a wedding can make you. The stress, the excitement, the dancing. I don’t care how sexy you think your partner is, I don’t care how much you’re looking forward to ripping all of their clothes off — there’s a very good chance that you’re going to be far more interested in burying your face in your pillow by the time you actually get there.
Just how tired are you? Well, one study found that seven percent of brides were so tired they straight-up fell asleep in their clothes. We’re talking that level of tired. You may be far more excited just to burrow into that big comfortable bed — and that’s totally understandable.
There may have been day drinking
Never underestimate the power of day drinking — or, hell, of morning drinking. One of the reasons you may be tired or not in the mood is that weddings often have hours and hours and hours of toasts, champagne, and everything else.
And though drinking might make you a little horny when you’re feeling tipsy, at some point it tends to go the other way — especially for him. As Shakespeare says about drinking: “it provokes, and unprovokes; it provokes the desire, but it takes away the performance.” We’ve all been there.
You might have other things on your mind
As much as you might imagine your perfect wedding night, don't be surprised if sex ends up far lower down on the list of priorities than you imagined it would be. Some people scroll through their wedding photos on social media, others just want to goof around — and pretty much everyone wants to eat.
"The first thing we did was climb onto the bed (tux and gown still on) and opened all of our cards to count our cash,” one bride told the Huffington Post. “Then, ordered pizza. Even though we had a buffet at the reception, we were still starving. We ate pizza in bed while watching TV. We did NOT consummate our marriage that night. We were way too tired!"
They’re not alone — 26 percent of people said they spent their wedding night eating, having missed out at the wedding itself.
Some couples sneak away earlier
It’s not all doom and gloom for wedding sex — people still fit it in, even if it’s not on the wedding night (or in the wedding suite, for that matter). It’s not just guests who sneak away to have sex at the wedding reception, sometimes the couple finds a little quiet nook for some nooky at their own big day. And a third of women have sex the morning after the wedding — and say that it totally fulfills those wedding sexpectations, just a little later than initially planned. And having amazing morning sex is a lot better than having messy, lazy tired sex on the night. So wedding sex actually is happening, it might just not be how you imagined it.
So let the expectations of the night go. You’ve got a whole marriage of amazing sex ahead of you, so if you’d rather curl up with a slice of pizza — or fall asleep on top of one — there’s no judgment. Wedding sex will still be there in the morning — and it will be worth the wait.
