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Post Wedding Blues and How to Avoid Them

After months of planning and looking forward to your wedding day, it is only natural to feel a little sad and flat once it is over. Usually, the sombre notes are short lived as the pleasure and joy of being married takes hold and you begin to look forward to a brand new phase of life together.

Unfortunately, for some, the transition from being single to married is not nearly so smooth. Today 1 in 1o brides fall prey to a condition known as Post Nuptial Depression making sufferers feel desperately low, aimless and disconnected from their newly married state. To them, life after the wedding seems mundane and meaningless with nothing to look forward to and it can be a struggle to even get out of bed. In severe cases the black cloud can linger for up to six months making for a miserable start to married life.

The good news is that you don't have to leave it fate. You can make sure that you don't become a candidate for the Post Wedding Blues by following these Top Ten Tips.

1. Adopt a healthy and helpful perspective. First and foremost your wedding is about the ceremony that officially unites you as a couple and commemorates this landmark in your life. Everything else is secondary to that.

2. Create balance. Wedding planning can be fantastic fun but not when it becomes an obsession. Plan your day and prepare yourself in equal measure. Open your heart and mind to all the changes that you face.

3. Broaden your focus. Living only for your wedding day means you face a dramatic loss when it has passed. The months before you marry and the first twelve months after are significant and special too-cherish and celebrate the entire experience.

4. Tune into yourself. Allocate regular, private relaxation time to honestly acknowledge your thoughts and emotions and release anything that feels uncomfortable or negative. Write it down, share it and discuss it- anything but suppress it. Your courage now will reward you richly later.

5. Get some clarity. Ensure that you are absolutely clear about what you are doing, why you are doing it and what it means to you and identify your intentions for getting married. Deep contemplation is calming and a clear mind brings inner confidence.

6. Release your single identity. Getting married is a major life transition and in order that you can complete it successfully, you need to be prepared to let go of your single life and single way of being so that you can happily embrace your new married status.

7. Go through the process. You face a phase 'in limbo', when you are no longer single but not yet married, which can throw you. You may feel unsure, lost, confused-it's just part of the Rite of Passage. Acknowledge it-let it happen. Fighting it only magnifies the feelings that sit within you to return at a later date.

8. Allow for a period of adjustment. Feeling married and behaving married takes time. It is an attitude, a way of being that grows and develops. Take the pressure off yourselves and look forward to getting into the groove of being married at your own pace during the first twelve months.

9. Arrange things to look forward to. Your first year of marriage is special so make it memorable. Hold post wedding dinner parties for friends and family and look at photographs/filming together. Book some short trips away and spoil yourselves as a couple to help you come down gently from the high of your wedding.

10. Live in the moment. Let your wedding day be something to look forward to but steer clear of a fixated countdown. Instead, practice being in the present and get the most out of all that is happening around you so when your day comes, you will know how to experience it in real time and savour every minute.

And when it's over, you won't be afraid to let it go, because you know that life's magic only happens in the here and now. The action, the drama, the passion and love can only exist in the present moment, and if your mind is elsewhere, you'll miss it!