Picture the wedding night, as popular culture has often dictated it: The vows have been exchanged, the Champagne flutes are empty and the guests are gone. The newlyweds retreat to their private quarters — finally — for the exhilarating consummation of their marriage. Right?
Wrong. — sometimes.
Across cultures, the wedding night has risen to such mythic expectations that even the term “wedding night” has become winkingly interchangeable with “sex.” It can be a night shrouded in mystery — and sometimes disappointment, owing to anticipation, anxiety or good old-fashioned exhaustion.
According to a widely cited study published by the Guttmacher Institute in 2006, 95 per cent of people in the United States have had sex before marriage. There is, of course, the other 5 per cent. In many cultures, the wedding night may mark the couple’s first time attempting intimacy. However, the reality, according to multiple mental health experts consulted for this story, is that many couples do not reach this rite of passage on the wedding night itself, even if they had hoped to.
Carol and Ronnie Gee, retired military sergeants who live in Atlanta, were in the Air Force when they married in 1973. Because they were living on base in Idaho with men and women assigned to separate dorms, they had no private space to consummate the marriage. So they pooled their money to rent a tiny one-bedroom house for the night. Unfortunately, the bed had an old mattress that sagged so much in the middle that sex was a physical impossibility.
“My husband was in the valley while I was lying uncomfortably above him,” Carol Gee said. And “no way were we going to make love on the nasty floor even after sweeping it and mopping.”
They finally consummated two weeks later when they were assigned a house on the base — one that had a brand-new bed.
“This unusual beginning demonstrated how our union would probably be,” said Gee, who, like her husband, is 75. “Fun, silly.”
“There’s a lot of pressure for it to be the perfect end to a deeply meaningful day,” said Vanessa Marin, author of Sex Talks: The Five Conversations That Will Transform Your Love Life and a licensed psychotherapist specializing in sex therapy based in Santa Barbara, California. “After all, you won’t remember the sex you have on a random Tuesday in 2019, but you’ll always remember the sex you had on your wedding night.”
Anne and Eric Lee, who are 45 and live in Philadelphia, married in 2016 after three years of dating.
“We decided to wait until marriage to have sex because we wanted to ensure that our relationship was built on a strong emotional connection,” Eric Lee said.
Lee, an accountant, and Anne Lee, a nurse, planned a special wedding night, replete with candles and rose petals.
“The night was everything we expected and more,” Eric Lee said. “It was an incredibly intimate experience. We still feel that connection today.”
But the night may not always exceed expectations. Cheyenne Taylor, a licensed mental health counsellor and sex therapist based in New York City, advised, “If you buy into the idea that sex on your wedding night should be perfect, try to adjust your expectations.”
Which is exactly what helped Dawn-Michelle Lewis, a project manager, and Shresth Sethi, a data analytics consultant, when they were married on October 9, 2022.
“I anticipated not having sex on our wedding night,” Lewis said. “Aside from being sick, we had two wedding ceremonies that day” — one Sikh and one non-religious.
Instead, their wedding night was spent with the bride’s mother helping her get out of her wedding dress after Sethi had fallen fast asleep. The couple, who are 30 and live in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, consummated their union the next day.
“We’re more morning sex people anyway,” Lewis said.
Planning can work even for couples who were already sexually active.
“We were very strategic in how we wanted the night to go so that we could have sex,” said Ofelia Saba Ramírez of her wedding to Jessica Saba Ramírez, both graduate students, on March 25, 2022. They limited their alcohol and stayed hydrated on their wedding day, also consuming energy drinks to stay awake.
In the end, the couple, who are 41 and live in Los Angeles, had “not the most energetic, but incredibly memorable,” sex, according to Ofelia Saba Ramírez. They felt they were continuing the sexual connection they said is an important part of their relationship, and despite being exhausted, they felt proud of themselves for making it a priority.
“Mainstream forms of pop culture have infiltrated our minds and made us believe that wedding night sex is supposed to be a magical night of earth-shattering pleasure,” said Shavon Gaddy-Dalrymple, a psychotherapist in New York City specialising in couples.
“Couples tend to not plan their wedding night sex,” she added, “but have the most expectation around its success.”
Gaddy-Darlrymple recommended designating a friend to be the wedding night planner, someone who can set up the room the couple will retreat to after the wedding and help ensure the couple leaves the wedding reception early (and sober) enough that they are not completely exhausted.
However, regardless of the number of opportunities a couple has, they still might not be able to have sex on their wedding night.
Tina Lesley-Fox, 47, and Melissa Lesley-Fox, 44, had three wedding nights — and didn’t have sex on any of them. The couple, who now live in Syracuse, New York, were first married on March 6, 2004, but it was annulled the following year after legal same-sex marriage was overturned in Oregon. They had a commitment ceremony that August, followed by marriage in New York on August 27, 2011, once same-sex marriage was legal in the state.
It helped that they didn’t buy into traditional expectations as a same-sex couple.
“We made everything up and organized everything ourselves,” said Tina Lesley-Fox, a director of faith development for a Unitarian church. (Melissa Lesley-Fox is a part-time bookkeeper.)
“We do remember being very tired and excited that we were married,” she added, “and going to sleep.”
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
Written by: Allison Hope
Photographs by: Naomi Otsu
©2023 THE NEW YORK TIMES
