Blue Brides

Abstract

We conducted in-depth interviews with 28 newly married women to explore the experience of postnuptial depressive symptoms. Nearly half of the participants indicated that they felt let down or depressed following their wedding, and some participants reported clinical levels of depression. We found several stark contrasts between the bluest and the happiest brides. Blue brides described feeling uncertain in their marriages, focused on self during wedding planning, and characterized their wedding as an ending followed by unmet expectations. Happier brides expressed relational confidence, demonstrated a relational focus during wedding planning, and framed their wedding in terms of new beginnings and unexpected positive emotions. We discuss the implications of these results in terms of mental and relational health in early marriage.

Keywords

dyadic relationship/quality/satisfaction intimate relationships depression marriage newlyweds

Blue brides, women experiencing some degree of depressive symptoms after their wedding, recently have become a topic of interest in the popular media. Hundreds of magazine articles, ranging in outlets from Cosmopolitan to Newsweek, and dozens of television programs, including ABC News, have featured stories concerning postwedding “depression.” Estimates of the number of women who experience postnuptial depressive symptoms are often provided in this coverage, and these estimates range widely from 5% (Lee-St. John, 2008) to 90% (Paul, 2000). Personal stories abound on online message boards on wedding planning web sites, such as theknot.com, where newly married women describe their unexpected feelings of depression following their wedding. As reported in the media, such depressive symptoms include feeling blue, purposeless, or let down in the wake of all the wedding planning, or feeling lonely or disappointed as women reconcile their often diverging expectations and experience of marriage.

Much popular press appears to focus on the expectations for and the pressure to have the “perfect wedding” (Otnes & Pleck, 2003). Media analyst Mead (2007) concluded that weddings are portrayed in the media as “perfect” and “storybook” both in fiction and in “reality.” This can be seen in movie portrayals of weddings as well as in the tremendous media coverage of royal weddings, such as that of Prince William and Kate Middleton. This emphasis on the perfect wedding and the pressure it creates for brides is glorified by television shows such as “Bridezilla” and “Say Yes to the Dress.” The marketing industry has also played a role in promoting the search for perfection. In their book, Cinderella Dreams, Otnes and Pleck (2003) outline the many ways that marketing has helped create and expand the allure of the “perfect” wedding. Whether expectations come from the stories women are told as children, the portrayal and coverage given to weddings in the media, or from marketing, undoubtedly for many, the pressure and the quest for the perfect day influence many brides by shaping the meaning they attach to their wedding day as well as to their marriage relationship. This meaning, in turn, may create emotional and relational vulnerabilities, possibly precipitating postwedding depressive symptoms.

The stakes of postnuptial depressive symptoms are potentially quite high as emotional and relational vulnerability early in a marriage can set the stage for a transactional relationship between depression and relationship dissatisfaction and dysfunction. Indeed, research consistently demonstrates a bidirectional link between depression and marital discord (for a review, see Davila, 2001). Whisman’s (2001) summary of cross-sectional as well as longitudinal studies on depression and marital dissatisfaction demonstrates that marital dissatisfaction leads to depression (both in terms of symptomatology and diagnostic disorder) and that depression leads to marital dissatisfaction. Marital and family therapists are beginning to recognize both the possibility of postwedding depression and the potential for such depression to filter into marital dissatisfaction and disillusionment, which poses a threat to early marital stability (Gingrich, 2003). That is, though declines in marital satisfaction over time are often considered normative (see e.g., Karney & Bradbury, 1997), early relationship threats may be especially potent or problematic. For example, some research has found that feeling depressed about marriage in the first year is highly predictive of divorce by the third year (Buehlman, Gottman, & Katz, 1992).

Despite mainstream coverage, the possibility of postnuptial depression has been almost completely ignored within the research community. This lack of systematic research on blue brides from relationship scholars is surprising given the cultural pressure placed on couples to have the perfect wedding as well as the potential for disillusionment and other negative marital outcomes that such pressure may well precipitate. Given the dearth of extant scholarly work in which to ground a study on postwedding blues, the present research represents an exploratory investigation of the postnuptial emotions of 28 women within the first few months of their marriages. Though grooms likely also face the possibility of postwedding disappointment, our focus here is on the bride’s experience, as most of the work of planning the wedding (and hence the investment of time, energy and emotion), remains the province of the bride-to-be (Blakely, 2008). Our inquiry was guided by two general research questions:

Research Question 1: To what extent do newly married women experience postnuptial depressive symptoms in the first few months following their wedding?

Research Question 2: How do women who experience postnuptial depressive symptoms characterize the meaning of their wedding and marital relationship compared with those who do not experience postnuptial depressive symptoms?

Method

Participants

A convenience sample of newly married women was recruited through snowball sampling, which involved distributing flyers on public bulletin boards to recruit participants and then asking individuals who volunteered for the study to pass information about the study along to anyone in their social network who may be interested in participating. We did not target “blue brides” in our recruitment, but rather solicited interviews with any newly married women. Thus, we did not know about participants’ depression histories when they volunteered to participate. The sample included 28 women. The average age was 26 years (SD = 3 years, range = 20-33 years). Twenty-seven women self-identified as White, and one woman self-identified as Latina. At the time of the interview, the average length of time the women had been married was 7.4 months (SD = 3.6 months, range = 2-16 months). The participants’ weddings ranged in size from 9 guests to 420 guests (M = 183 guests, SD = 100 guests). None of the participants had been previously married. Just over half (n = 15) of the women had lived with their husband prior to the wedding.

Procedure

The recruitment material contained the contact information for one of the members of the research team. Women who were interested in participating in the study were encouraged to contact the researcher to set up an interview. All interviews were conducted face-to-face. During each interview session, participants first completed a brief survey, which included questions about their wedding (including finances), mental health, and demographics. Next, participants engaged in an in-depth interview with a member of the research team. The interviews lasted between 16 minutes and 96 minutes (M = 45 minutes, SD = 23 minutes). The semistructured interview protocol included questions about the participant’s wedding (e.g., “How would you describe your wedding?” “What were your goals in planning your wedding?”) and her emotions prior to as well as following the wedding (“How did you feel leading up to your wedding?” “How did you feel the day/week/month after your wedding?” “What was your highest/lowest moment emotionally after the wedding?” “What emotion was most surprising to you after your wedding?”). Participants were asked to share about their emotions globally; they were not prompted to share any particular emotion (for example, we did not initially ask them specifically about feeling depressed or sad, although we probed for these emotions if the participant described experiencing sadness). We concluded each interview by asking participants to share any advice they would offer for women who were currently planning a wedding (e.g., “What advice would you give someone who is just about to start planning her wedding?”). The interviews were transcribed verbatim. Each woman received $25 for participating in the research.

Measures

Finances

We asked participants to report the total cost of the wedding (not counting the honeymoon). The average wedding cost was $24,123.21 (SD = $15,792.61), and the cost ranged between $1,200 and $65,000. The mean wedding cost in our sample is consistent with estimates of the average wedding cost in the United States, which is $27,021 (Reaney, 2012).

Depression

To capture the full range of potential emotions, we administered McGreal and Joseph’s (1993) depression/happiness scale. The directions for the scale stated that newly married women “can experience a wide variety of emotions after their wedding is over. We are interested in learning about how you felt in the first 3 months after your wedding. Please let us know by completing the following items.” Given that much of the mainstream media reports of postnuptial depression have focused on the first few months following the wedding, we selected the time frame of 3 months. Each of the 25 items described a particular feeling (e.g., “I felt happy,” “I felt optimistic about the future,” “I felt like crying,” “I felt sad”). Participants used a 4-point scale to indicate whether they felt this emotion “never,” “rarely,” “sometimes,” or “often.” The happiness items were recoded so that higher scores indicated higher levels of depression. The mean total summed score was 36.96 (SD = 9.55, range = 25-60).

To assess whether the depression had reached a clinical level at the time of the interview, we administered the depression subscale of the Brief Symptom Inventory, which contains six items (e.g., “feeling blue,” “feeling helpless about the future”). Participants responded to these items using a 5-point scale (i.e., “not at all,” “a little bit,” “moderately,” “quite a bit,” “extremely”) to describe how much they felt a certain way within the past 2 weeks. The mean total summed score was 8.64 (SD = 3.58, range = 6-21). We converted the participants’ scores to T-scores, and based on the standardized scores, 2 of the 28 brides in our sample reported clinical levels of depression (i.e., had a depression T-score greater than 63) at the time of the interview.

Analysis

The purpose of the present exploratory investigation was to further our understanding of women’s postnuptial depressive symptoms. To provide additional insight into potential factors that might be associated with depression, we considered the correlations between their age (r = .09, ns), length of marriage (r = −.05, ns), cost of wedding (r = .11, ns), and cohabitation before marriage (r = .04, ns); none was significantly correlated with postnuptial depression (as measured by the depression/happiness scale).

We used latent content (Lincoln & Guba, 1985) and constant comparative techniques (Glaser & Strauss, 1967) to analyze the transcripts. The first stage of analysis involved two rounds of coding. First, both authors independently read through all of the transcripts to allow salient themes to emerge from the data. Then, we met to compare and discuss these themes and to come to a consensus on the focal themes for further analysis. This meeting yielded six focal themes, including conflict, damaged relationships, decision making, uncertainty, voids, and wedding focus. Second, we then returned to the transcripts for focused coding, which involved independently refining the themes into conceptual categories and exploring the interrelationships between the women’s postwedding emotional experience and the refined focal themes reached by consensus. We also examined the extent to which the women described feeling depressed following their wedding. We met again to discuss how the refined themes were related to women’s emotions after the wedding. During this first stage of analysis, we were blind to the depression/happiness scores of the individual participants.

In the second stage of analysis, following an analytic technique that has been used previously in exploratory research (e.g., Caughlin & Scott, 2010), one author identified participants who scored at least 1 standard deviation above the mean on the depression/happiness scale (i.e., they had a score of 46.51 or above), which yielded five “blue” participants. Similarly, identifying participants who scored at least 1 standard deviation below the mean in the depression/happiness scale (i.e., they had a score of 27.420 or below) yielded four “happy” participants. The average depression/happiness score for the blue brides was 53.80 (SD = 4.15) and the average depression/happiness score for the happier brides was 26.25 (SD = .96). This difference in mean scores between the bluest and happiest brides was statistically significant: t(7) = 12.84, p < .001. Inferences about the differences between the two groups should be made with caution, but this method of analysis was appropriate in the current study because our goal was to explore how women who experience postnuptial depressive symptoms might differ from those who do not in characterizing their wedding and marriage (rather than to make definitive claims about differences between blue brides and happier brides).

After identifying the bluest and happiest brides, both authors independently coded the nine transcripts of the blue and happier brides using the refined focal themes that emerged in the first stage of analysis. One author was blind to the depression status of the participants; the other was not. We then met to compare and discuss our lists of which themes seemed to reveal differences related to the women’s emotional experience after the wedding. We agreed three themes in particular appeared to differ based on the women’s postwedding feelings, including the way in which the women framed the wedding day in their discourse, their focus and their certainty or uncertainty surrounding the marriage relationship. We then conducted a focused round of coding, in which we again independently coded the nine transcripts for differences in the two themes between the blue brides and the happier brides. We met for a final time to reach consensus on the contrasts between the two clusters of transcripts. Examples that appear in the results section were selected by discussion between both authors, and all names used in this study are pseudonyms.

Results

Our first research question asked whether newly married women describe experiencing a sense of depression in the months following their wedding. Our second research question asked about any differences in the way that the women who experience postnuptial depressive symptoms and those who do not characterize the meaning of their wedding and marital relationship.

Research Question 1: Postwedding Emotions

We found the extent to which newly married women experience postwedding depressive symptoms varies. Although 16 (57%) women in our sample did not provide any mention of sadness or depression, 12 (43%) did reference such feelings. Among those who reported feeling some sort of depression, there was a great deal of variation. A number of participants described feeling a mild to moderate sense of sadness after their wedding. For example, one woman said, “I felt a medium to high degree of disappointment.” Another said, “I think now, as time’s gone on, the honeymoon phase, um, or whatever, you know, is, is ended that I’m feeling a little bit more, um, let down, so to speak.” Another described feeling “not necessarily lonely, but, a little bit, kinda sad, a little down sometimes.”

Several women mentioned that they did not feel like they had a reason for feeling depressed: “For almost a week I was feeling depressed, and I didn’t know why. I can’t say, I can’t say why, but it was maybe a month, month and a half after the wedding” and “I got kind of depressed a couple of times, but I didn’t really have a reason behind it.” Other women tried to make sense of their emotional state:

I didn’t expect to feel, um, so depressed there for a while. It was weird, and it h—I mean, I had no reason to, and I was like, “I should be happy. I’m married now,” but, um, I, I mean, I guess it was just the coming down from all the hype and then having nothing to do.

For some participants, the sense of postwedding depression was more intense. The participants who indicated the greatest degree of depression on the depression/happiness scale spoke clearly in their interviews about feeling depressed. When asked about the emotions that they experienced in the months following their wedding, the blue brides described feeling a clear sense of sadness. These brides explained how their feelings of depression were tied to expectations. For example, in response to the question “What emotion was most surprising to you after your wedding?” Briony said:

Being depressed. I was really surprised about that, because, I mean, you know, you expect to get married, and you’re gonna be happy forever or whatever, but, I mean, I knew that before, and it’s not like I really was expecting that, but I was at least expecting it for the first year or something.

Similarly, Bianca shared:

I never expected to be sad on our honeymoon, and I was. I remember feeling, like, completely ridiculous that I was, like, feeling sad. I specifically remember, I was showering, and I just started thinking about things, ‘cause I think people build up this, like, idealized expectation that your honeymoon you’re just all about each other, and it’s perfect. And it was great, and there’s nothing about it that I would change, but you still are a human being. I think I was surprised that I was, like, that I had a time where I was, like, in tears over something.

Beth labeled her sad feelings the “wedding blues,” and described how they were linked to the void that was left in the wake of the wedding planning: “You go through a little bit of the wedding blues where it’s like, ‘Man!’ You do all this planning, and it’s, like, blink of an eye, it’s over. I’m like, ‘There’s no more?’”

In short, the answer to our first research question was that women did indeed report experiencing postnuptial depressive symptoms, and these symptoms ranged from mild to intense feelings of sadness in the months following their wedding.

Research Question 2: Contrasts Between Blue and Happier Brides

We found three commonalities among the ways that women with postwedding blues characterized their wedding and marital relationship compared with the women who did not report experiencing postwedding depression.

Relational Uncertainty Versus Relational Certainty

A clear theme among the blue brides was a sense of uncertainty about the marital relationship. Briony expressed a general sense of relational uncertainty: “I think it was just mostly the difference of before the wedding we were pursuing each other, after the wedding we had each other, and so it’s like, ‘Alright, now where does our relationship go?’” For several blue brides, relational uncertainty took the form of unclear relational expectations. When asked by the interviewer, “What do you think was the most unexpected feeling you experienced after your wedding?” Beverly responded:

Um. [pause] U—unloved at times. Um, I thought it would be one hundred percent all about us, all about being in love and perfect everything, and, um, then I realized after the wedding that we are two separate people as well. So I think that was the biggest surprise to me because I was thinking I was expecting what my parents had in a marriage, and we weren’t there.

Briony explained how her depression was linked to her uncertainty about what were realistic expectations for her to have of her new husband: “I guess probably what caused being depressed is just dealing with, you know, kinda learning more to rely on each other, or maybe expecting too much from the other and not getting it.”

For other blue brides, relational uncertainty took the form of questioning whether they had made the right decision about who (or if) to marry. As Beverly put it:

Questioning if this was right, if we were, if we did this, and if this is what we wanted, and, um, we did not wanna have to go through it [the wedding] again. We were married for forever, and then questioning: Was this the right choice? Are we going to be married forever?

Bridget also expressed uncertainty about her decision to marry her husband:

I’m trying to figure out the right way to phrase it without it sounding bad. Regret is not the right word, second guessing is not the right word, but maybe just wondering. Not that I made the right decision, because I know I made the right decision. I’m glad I chose to marry him, I would never make a different decision. But there’s just things that pop up where you think, “I kind of wish I had known that prior to committing to this person. Not because I would have chosen not to commit to them, but just because I would have had a more complete picture of what I was signing up for.”

For Bianca, the experience of relational uncertainty was so intense that she pondered divorce while still on her honeymoon: “And then we even got in a fight on our honeymoon, which I totally was, like, you know, ‘Oh my God. We’re getting a divorce.’”

By contrast, none of the happier brides indicated that they questioned their decision to marry or that they felt uncertain about their relationship. Rather, all four described feeling a sense of clarity and satisfaction in their marital relationships. For Harper, the sense of relational confidence was linked to her feelings of happiness after the wedding: “Everything just seemed to fit, you know. Our relationship was flowing fine. I was happy.” Helene also described her marriage positively after the wedding: “As far as being married, you know, the marriage itself was really good, um, you know, once we kinda got passed the wedding part.” When asked about the most unexpected feeling she experienced after her wedding, Hollis described being pleasantly surprised by the sense of relational certainty she felt in being married: “I didn’t anticipate that nice feeling of the security of that commitment.”

Focus on Self Versus Focus on Relationships

The blue brides evidenced a focus on self in talking about their weddings, whereas the happiest brides prioritized their relationship with the groom and their relationships with others. The blue brides viewed the wedding day as primarily the bride’s day, whereas the happier brides took a more inclusive view of the day. When talking with her fiancé about wedding decisions, Bridget indicated a clear priority on her desires over the desires of others:

I just said, you know, “Why am I having to sacrifice? I’m the bride.” You want to be a Bridezilla, because you want to make every decision. You want everything the way you want it, and you want to stomp your feet, and you want to say, “This is my day and, you know, bugger off, because I want it the way I want it.”

Bianca expressed a similar focus on self: “It was my day, and it was gonna be perfect for me.”

By contrast, the happiest brides did not evidence the same self-focus. In fact, Hollis explicitly stated that the focus of the wedding was not all about the bride: “It was just never anything like, ‘This is my wedding.’”

Whereas the blue brides tended to focus on their vision of the wedding day, the happiest brides seemed to value including the ideas of others in planning the wedding. For example, blue bride Bridget described her vision for her wedding:

You’re the bride, and you feel like the decision should be yours, and then all of the sudden you feel like, “Why can’t I make these decisions? Like, why shouldn’t I be allowed to just decide what time I want my wedding to be? I mean, I’ve had a dream of having a wedding at twilight my whole life. So don’t tell me I have to have it at four when it’s gross and muggy and it’s not pretty when I want to walk down the aisle to candles and that’s how I’ve always wanted it.”

But happier bride Hollis debunked the idea of privileging the bride’s vision for her wedding: “I don’t care that it’s, like, the bride’s day, you’ve been dreaming of it since you were a little girl. Well, that’s too bad, because now you have a partner, and that’s what life’s about.” Similarly, Hannah explained that the wedding was not necessarily the bride’s day alone: “No, it’s not my day. It’s our day. You have to make sure that it’s not your day. It’s your day as, as a couple, and I think brides tend to forget that.”

The blue brides tended to prioritize their own experience at the wedding, whereas the happiest brides expressed more concern with the wedding experience of their guests. In recalling her experience at her reception, Bridget shared her frustration and characterized her guests as intruders on her day:

I remember being really angry while we were eating our meal because people kept coming up and talking to us, and I just wanted to eat my dinner and dance. And I was just mad, I was just mad that I couldn’t even eat my dinner at my wedding.

This stands in contrast to Hollis, who was focused on hosting and welcoming her guests:

We realized very quickly it’s not about you guys [the bride and groom] either. It’s about, like, making sure your guests have a great experience, just making sure that it was a fun event for people who do take the time out of their schedules to come and celebrate with us.

The difference in focus on self versus focus on relationships was particularly evident in the participants’ responses when we asked them for their advice for wedding planning. All five blue brides uniformly advised engaged women to prioritize their wedding wishes and to fight for the decisions that were most important to them. Beverly said, “Pick your one thing and fight for it. I picked one thing that I was not gonna compromise on. Um, and I, I fought that.” Bridget elaborated on this advice:

I would say, sit down and figure out the three to five things that are really important to you, that are your top five priorities, that are your nonnegotiables, and hold very tightly to those things and do not let anybody change your mind.

By contrast, all of the happiest brides advised engaged women to focus on the marriage relationship rather than the wedding itself. Helene offered this recommendation:

Probably the cheesiest advice in the world: Remember you’re planning for your marriage, to spend the rest of your life together. You’re not planning for your wedding for one day, Put a little bit of extra time into planning for your future rather than that one day, honestly.

Harper offered a similar perspective: “It’s about you and your husband getting married. It’s not about what color your dress or your bridesmaids’ dresses are, the centerpieces on the table, and things like that.” As Hollis put it, “You should be focusing on your relationship and your marriage. The wedding is one day.”

Wedding as the End Versus Wedding as the Beginning

All five blue brides framed the wedding day as an ending in some way, frequently followed by a void. For some participants, the wedding was the finale at the end of a long crescendo in the story of their relationship with their husband. As Bridget described:

I think even just coming back from the honeymoon is a letdown. It’s anticlimactic. You just think, it’s just this fairytale, and the wedding is the climax, and then you come home and you have to go to work the next day. And nothing is different. Nothing is different at work, nothing’s different with your friends, nothing’s, nothing’s different.

Bianca likewise framed her wedding as an ending, which left a void in its wake:

It’s like life was punctuated by these really exciting, big events. Then it was like, Well, this one’s [the wedding] over, so now what am I gonna do? It’s over, and we have nothing to look forward to.

In fact, several blue brides, including Bianca, bemoaned the fact that, with their wedding behind them, they would never be a bride again: “I definitely experienced a major letdown after things were over. A day I remember that I, like, burst into tears that the wedding was over, and I would never be a bride again.” As Bianca points out, this sense of the wedding as an ending was directly related to her experience of sadness after the wedding. Briony also framed her wedding as the end by expressing nostalgia for it: “In a way it was a little bit of nostalgia about how I’m never gonna be able to relive those moments that were just happening just a few minutes ago.”

Unlike the blue brides, the happiest brides characterized their wedding as a beginning of sorts. Harper framed her wedding as the beginning of her marriage, which in her mind, was directly linked to her feelings of happiness: “I was happier, because the honeymoon, you know, was fun, exciting, felt like the beginning of a relationship.” Hollis framed her wedding as the beginning by celebrating various “firsts” that came along after the wedding, and she too, made the connection between this frame and her happiness:

We were really happy. Like, every time there would be something, it would be like, “first married whatever,” like, “first married, you know, beer at a festival,” or something like that. So that went on for, like, the first year. You know, like, “first married Christmas,” “first married Thanksgiving,” “first married everything.” And we were celebrating all of our month anniversaries for the first year.

In addition, the happier brides did not describe the same nostalgia for their wedding that the blue brides did. For example, Helene said that she did not think about her wedding at all after it was over: “It was a nice wedding. You know, it was a relief that everything went well. I probably never really thought about the wedding again.”

In short, we found that women who reported experiencing a greater sense of postwedding depression differed from women who did not experience feelings of depression in three clear ways: blue brides described feeling relational uncertainty in their marriages, focused on self in planning their weddings, and characterized their weddings as the climax of their relationship, whereas happier brides expressed relational confidence, focused on relationships during wedding planning, and framed their weddings as the beginning of a new chapter in their relationships.

Discussion

The purpose of the current investigation was to explore the extent to which some women experience postwedding depression and the manner in which these blue brides characterize their weddings and marriages, especially in contrast to happier brides. We found that women assigned different meaning to their wedding day and to their marriage relationships, and this difference in meaning was linked to a difference in their emotional experience following the wedding. Some women in our sample experienced a mild sense of the wedding blues, whereas for others, the feelings of depression were more severe. In addition, we found that, compared with women who did not report feeling depressed, women who experienced postwedding depressive symptoms described a sense of relational uncertainty in their marriages, expressed self-focus in describing their wedding planning, and framed their wedding as a climax or endpoint in their story.

Though the sample was a small convenience sample, the quantitative measures of symptoms of depression in conjunction with the women’s narratives indicate that some women experience depressive symptoms following their weddings. The bluest women in our sample characterized their postwedding emotions in terms of “sadness,” “disappointment,” feeling “let down,” and “depressed.” In their discourse, the women often linked these feelings to uncertainty in terms of unmet expectations or voids left in the aftermath of the wedding. None of the happier brides used such negatively emotive terms when asked to describe their feelings after their wedding. Despite the probable pressure for the “perfect” wedding, none of the blue brides in our sample linked their feelings of depression or unmet expectations to the wedding itself. In fact, many women explicitly commented on the success of the wedding day. For even blue brides, the wedding appears to have lived up to their expectations. Rather, it was after the wedding that the blue brides experienced a letdown and found little direction for moving forward in their relationships or their lives.

Beyond reporting negative affect, several points of contrast emerged between the blue brides and the happier brides in our sample. First, the blue brides uniformly indicated a lack of certainty in their decision to marry or their marital relationship, often linking this uncertainty with disappointed relational expectations, whereas the happier brides all expressed confidence in or contentment with their marriages, with some observing that their sense of contentment was unexpected. It may be the lack of expectation of relational bliss (i.e., realistic expectations for the new marital relationship) that sets the stage for pleasant relational surprises rather than relational disappointment. Second, blue brides demonstrated a focus on self in describing their wedding planning, whereas the happier brides expressed a broader relational focus that included their husbands-to-be or other relatives or friends. This self-focus was perhaps most evident in the advice the women offered. Each of the blue brides suggested that engaged women would be well-served to decide on a few aspects of the wedding that were nonnegotiable, whereas the happiest brides cautioned women to remember that the emphasis should be on the marital relationship that followed the wedding, rather than the wedding day itself. Finally, the blue brides characterized their weddings as a culmination or climax of sorts, framing it as a finale or ending event often followed by a void. By contrast, the happier brides made sense of their weddings as a new beginning. These points of contrast were often talked about in terms related to uncertainty. Some brides were uncertain of the direction or nature of their relationship following the wedding and even pondered if divorce might be on the horizon. Plausibly, viewing the wedding as the endpoint indicates a lack of thought as to what comes next, which in turn could help fuel relational uncertainty.

The experiences of relational uncertainty versus relational certainty are of import here given that research has found that individuals who experience relational uncertainty about their marriage are more likely to be depressed than those who do not experience such uncertainty (Knobloch, 2007; Knobloch, Knobloch-Fedders, & Durbin, 2011). Knobloch et al. (2011) also found that individuals who experienced relational uncertainty expressed more aggressiveness, articulated more negative emotions, and displayed less liking for their spouses in conversations. Relational uncertainty also appears to be linked to perceiving one’s spouse’s behavior in a negative or pessimistic manner (Knobloch, Miller, Bond, & Mannone, 2007). Uncertainty, depression, negative conversational behaviors, and negative perceptions may well interact to further a negative marital environment, anxiety, and distress. In brief, “doubts about the status of a marriage could foreshadow dissolution” (Knobloch et al., 2007, p. 157). Our current findings support this extant work by demonstrating that relational uncertainty might be related to the experience of postnuptial depressive symptoms.

In addition, our findings are consistent with previous research in which unmet standards or expectations of relationships have been linked to feelings of marital dissatisfaction (Vangelisti & Daly, 1997). The extent to which the blue brides might have idealized expectations of married life and then become disillusioned (see e.g., Huston, 1994) is another potential avenue for future research. Furthermore, unmet expectations and uncertainty may well be related. Some blue brides cited unmet expectations about their marital relationships as the source of their relational uncertainty, which they then indicated as a reason for their feelings of sadness.

In attempting to understand what might differentiate the women who experience postwedding blues from those who do not, it is important to note that many variables that are potentially associated with postwedding depression were not associated with depression in this study. For instance, it would seem plausible that women who married at younger age, who did not live with their husbands prior to the wedding (and thus potentially faced a greater adjustment after the wedding), or who spent more money on the wedding might be at greater risk for depression. As we noted in the results, none of these factors was significantly correlated with women’s depression scores, but these potential correlations should be investigated in larger samples. In addition, the bluer and happier brides were fairly well-matched in terms of demographic features, and thus the similarities between the two groups of women presents the question of whether such factors might not be central in the experience of postwedding depression, but again, such variables should be systematically considered in future research.

Although we did not systematically examine factors that precipitate postwedding depressive symptoms, our findings provide a basis for further examining the risk factors for postnuptial depression as well as for offering recommendations for circumventing this depression. For example, whereas advice on wedding web sites tends to focus on how to cope with the wedding blues, it may be more prudent to consider ways in which postwedding depressive symptoms might be preempted. One obvious potential factor indicated by our findings is an intense focus on the bride’s own wishes and desires for the wedding to the exclusion of the wishes of other people, including her fiancé. Engaged women might do well to expand their focus to include consideration (if not prioritization) of the goals of others when planning a wedding as one way to provide a broader perspective on the meaning of the day. In addition, framing the wedding as a big finale or a climax of sorts could plausibly set up life after the wedding as anticlimactic. Thus, it may be helpful to encourage engaged women to spend as much time and energy preparing for marriage as they do in preparing for the wedding event. Focusing on the marital relationship and on cultivating realistic expectations for marriage when planning the wedding could potentially lessen the risk for both uncertainty and sadness following the wedding.

Conclusion

The current project represents one of the first empirical investigations of postwedding “depression.” To our knowledge, despite the popular press given this topic, no social scientific research on postnuptial depression could be located. Thus, this study represents the first step toward understanding and validating this phenomenon. However, the exploratory nature of the study introduces a number of limitations to the present research. First, we used a convenience sample of newly married women, which included primarily young White women who were several months into their first marriage. In addition, we did not assess the socioeconomic or education level of the participants (although the information about the cost of their wedding provides some insight into this demographic dimension). It would be useful to systematically document the incidence and severity of postwedding depression in a larger, more nationally representative sample.

Second, the method in the current investigation was both retrospective and cross-sectional. It is possible that some women were responding to interview questions based on concurrent emotional experience, whereas some were retrospectively reporting their postnuptial experience. This does not preclude meaningful interpretations of the present data, but a longitudinal investigation following newly engaged women throughout the wedding planning process, the wedding, and the first year of marriage would allow researchers to more conclusively identify risk factors for developing postnuptial depression as well as to more precisely identify when such depression is most acute and how long it might last. The women in our sample had been married anywhere from 2 to 16 months, and retrospective bias was not accounted for. In addition, given the link between depression and divorce established in previous research, longitudinal investigations could also consider a potential link between postwedding depression and marital dissatisfaction and divorce.

Third, there is evidence that one in five women experiences depression at some point in her life (Mayo Clinic Staff, 2013). The average age of depression onset among women is 26.5 years (Mayo Clinic Staff, 2013), which is approximately the average age of first marriage in the United States (Whisman, 2001). Due to the cross-sectional nature of the data, it is possible that the less happy women suffered from depression prior to the wedding, particularly that these same women may also have histories of depression, which we did not measure and cannot speak to in the present study. However, when asked about their postwedding emotional experience, the women in this sample linked their feelings of depression to their weddings without offering other explanations, but the extent to which the wedding might have simply coincided with the onset of depression that is not wedding-related remains unknown.

Despite these limitations, the findings presented here provide an impetus for future research on postwedding depression given that the responses referencing postnuptial sadness were unsolicited. Participants were recruited to participate in a study about their newly married experience, not specifically about feelings of postwedding depression, and the interviewers asked participants what feelings they experienced in the months after their wedding without reference to depression. Perhaps, the most striking finding of this study is the clear contrast between the blue brides and the happier brides in describing their postwedding expectations and experiences, which suggests that further exploring these and other potential differences would yield findings that might prove particularly useful in helping women plan for their weddings and their marriages in ways that mitigate the potential for postnuptial depression.

Although future research can lay the groundwork for more systematic recommendations, the current findings allow us to offer some preliminary practical advice to those involved in wedding planning. Most notably, our results suggest that women would do well to focus more on relationships—with their future husbands and with their friends and family members—and less on the wedding and oneself. Our findings also point to the need for greater premarital counseling in order to help individuals cultivate realistic expectations regarding their own thoughts and emotions beyond the wedding day.

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

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