Emily Lynen, a 29-year-old, and Amber Lynen, a 35-year-old, were eager to have sex on their wedding night. However, it didn’t go as planned. After exchanging their vows on October 21, 2021, in Pasadena, California, the couple stayed at a bar until late. Just as they were beginning to undress in their hotel room, Amber Lynen’s maid of honor, her best friend and her brother’s girlfriend knocked on their door… and proceeded to get into bed with the newlyweds. The visitors stayed and chatted for two hours.
The couple, who live in Cincinnati, took the interruption in stride. “To be honest, the story of everyone ending up in our bed is a great story,” said Emily Lynen, a program director (Amber Lynen is a legal assistant). And she added, “It’s a memory that I will always laugh about. We have the rest of our lives for a night of sex.”
Imagine the wedding night, as dictated by popular culture: vows are exchanged, champagne glasses are empty, and the guests have left. The newlyweds retire to their private chambers (finally) for the thrilling consummation of their marriage. Right?
Well…sometimes.
In all cultures, the wedding night has been elevated to such mythical expectations that the term “wedding night” can be cheekily exchanged for “sex”. It can be a night shrouded in mystery, and sometimes disappointment, due to anticipation, anxiety, or the well-known and outdated exhaustion.
According to a widely cited study published by the Guttmacher Institute in 2006, 95 percent of people in the United States have had sex before marriage. Of course, there is also the other 5 percent. In many cultures, the wedding night can mark the couple’s first attempt at intimacy; however, according to multiple mental health experts consulted for this article, the reality is that many couples do not achieve this initiation rite on their actual wedding night, even if they had hoped for it.
Carol and Ronnie Gee, retired military personnel living in Atlanta, were in the Air Force when they married in 1973. As they lived on a base in Idaho, with men and women assigned to separate dorms, they had no private space to consummate their marriage. So they saved up money to rent a one-bedroom cottage for the night. Unfortunately, the bed had an old mattress that sagged so much in the middle that it was physically impossible to have sex.
“My husband was lying on the bed while I uncomfortably perched on top of him,” Carol Gee recounted. And “there was no way we were going to make love on the gross floor, even after sweeping and mopping it.”
They finally consummated their marriage two weeks later when they were assigned a house on the base, which had a new bed.
“This unusual start showed how our union could be: fun and absurd,” said Gee, who is 75 years old, as is her husband.
“There is a lot of pressure for it to be the perfect ending to a quite significant day,” commented 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 had on any random Tuesday in 2019, but you will always remember the one you had on your wedding night.”
Anne and Eric Lee, a 45-year-old couple living in Philadelphia, married in 2016 after three years of dating. “We decided to wait until marriage to have sex because we wanted to make sure our relationship was based on a strong emotional connection,” Lee said.
Lee, a nurse, and her husband, an accountant, planned a special wedding night, filled 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.”
However, perhaps the night doesn’t always live up to expectations. Cheyenne Taylor, a licensed mental health counselor and sex therapist based in New York City, advised, “If you have the idea that sex on your wedding night has to be perfect, try adjusting your expectations.”
That’s exactly what helped Dawn-Michelle Lewis, a project manager, and Shresth Sethi, a data analytics consultant, when they got married on October 9, 2022. “I had a feeling that we weren’t going to have sex on our wedding night,” Lewis said. “Besides being sick, we had two ceremonies that day,” one Sikh and one non-religious.
Instead, on the wedding night, the bride’s mother spent time helping her take off her dress after Sethi fell deeply asleep. The couple, who are 30 years old and live in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, consummated their union the next day. “Either way, we prefer morning sex,” Lewis said.
Planning can also work for couples who were already sexually active. “We were very strategic in how we wanted the night to go in order to have sex,” said Ofelia Saba Ramirez about her wedding to Jessica Saba Ramirez, both graduate students, on March 25, 2022. They limited their alcohol consumption and stayed hydrated on their wedding day, in addition to drinking energy drinks to stay awake.
In the end, both 41-year-old women, who reside in Los Angeles, had sex that was “not with all the energy in the world, but incredibly memorable,” according to Ofelia Saba Ramirez. They felt that they continued to have a sexual connection that they believed was an important part of their relationship, and despite being exhausted, they were proud of themselves for making it a priority.
“The dominant modes of popular culture have infiltrated our minds and made us believe that wedding night sex must be a magical night of mind-blowing pleasure,” said Shavon Gaddy-Dalrymple, a New York-based psychotherapist specializing in relationships. “Couples tend not to plan for wedding night sex,” she added, “but they have the highest expectations for its success.”
Gaddy-Darlrymple recommended appointing a friend to be the wedding night planner, someone who can prepare the room where the couple will go after the wedding and help ensure that they leave the wedding reception with enough time (and sobriety) so they are not completely exhausted.
However, regardless of how many opportunities a couple has, it is possible that they may still not have sex on their wedding night.
Tina Lesley-Fox, 47, and Melissa Lesley-Fox, 44, had three wedding nights and did not have sex on any of them. The couple, who now live in Syracuse, New York, first married on March 6, 2004, but the same-sex marriage was annulled in Oregon the following year. Their second marriage was a commitment ceremony in August, followed by a legal marriage in New York on August 27, 2011, once same-sex marriage was legal in the state.
It helped that they did not adhere to traditional expectations as a same-sex couple. “We made everything up and organized everything ourselves,” said Tina Lesley-Fox, director of faith development at a Unitarian church. (Melissa Lesley-Fox is a part-time accountant).
“We remember being very tired and excited to be married,” she added, and then “going to sleep.”
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