You’ve walked the aisle, said your vows, and enjoyed an amazing party. But does everything change after the wedding is over?
Image courtesy of Elise Margolin Photography
There’s a reason your wedding day is considered a “milestone” – it’s the first day in a lifetime that you’ll spend as a wife. And while most of your brain power has probably been dedicated to solidifying seating charts and picking a perfect playlist, you might have had a few quiet moments to wonder: does everything change after the wedding? Once the party is over and you’re back from the honeymoon, will your relationship with your now-spouse feel drastically different than it did before?
“Nothing has changed.”
After speaking with a few Brides of Long Island graduates, the overwhelming consensus is that not much changes after saying “I do.”
“Do I feel any different in my relationship with my husband? Honestly, not too much,” said BOLI Waleska Marie. “I think this was mostly because we moved in together…and then we bought our first house together in 2020. After the wedding, I went through the name change process and I could finally call myself a Mrs., and that did feel absolutely great to be called his wife. But again, not sure if just that alone helped ‘secure’ our relationship.”
An anonymous BOLI agreed. “I’ve been with my now-husband for 11 years, we got married earlier this summer, and I feel like nothing has changed.”
Fellow BOLI grad Jennifer Anderson was surprised that everything stayed the same post-wedding. “I actually thought that life would feel a little different after we got married,” she said. “It really didn’t. I chalk it up to being with my husband for 6 years before getting engaged, and living together for 2 of those years. Maybe if we had gotten married earlier in our relationship, I would have felt a shift. But waking up the next morning after our wedding was like waking up on any other morning that we’ve spent together – maybe more special, but not ‘different.'”
Image courtesy of ADA Studio
“I felt grounded and more secure.”
That’s not to say that EVERY bride will feel the same. BOLI founder Heather Cunningham definitely noticed a change after her wedding day. “It was almost like once I was married, I felt grounded and more secure,” she said. “Like we were more of a unit.”
Another anonymous BOLI echoed the sentiment. “I definitely felt different after our wedding,” she noticed. “I can’t really describe what felt different, but something did for sure. I guess I just felt like I had my own family apart from my parents. My fiancé and I didn’t live together until after we got married, so that contributed to the change for us. It was an adjustment, but a good one!”
Will things change for you?
Every person – and every circumstance – is different. You may feel like marriage changes a lot, or you may feel like marriage changes nothing. In either case, it’s a normal part of your relationship’s evolution.
Of course, any changes you experience after marriage should be positive ones. If you find that the opposite is true, reach out to a qualified couple’s counselor for guidance and advice.