Wedding Night Sex? No One Has It Anymore

Forget the piece of paper, or vows witnessed by your nearest and dearest, tradition states that your marriage isn't official until you and your new spouse have had The Sex later that evening.

Which is a shame really, beacuse most of us just aren't getting round to it.

After all, most couples getting married today already live together, and if you haven't tried before you buy, you're in the minority.

But even if you've had sex with your partner hundreds of times, there's still something alluring about Wedding Night Sex.

It's supposed to be emotional, mind-blowing and deepen your connection, confirming that you made the right decision to get hitched, isn't it?

Though really, given how smashed most of us will be by the end of our wedding days (here's hoping anyway), it's more likely to be awkward, fumbling and over pretty quickly (especially if you're keen to pass out ASAP).

The 'consummating the marriage' idea dates back to olden times when brides had to prove they were virgins and men had to prove their virility - with blood-stained sheets held aloft to the waiting wedding party to confirm the act had taken place.

But it seems times are a-changing. Depending on which study you believe, somewhere between a quarter and half of newly married couples don't get round to having the sex on their wedding night. And mostly that's because they're too drunk and shattered from the rest of the festivities.

Plus, you've got the rest of your lives to have amazing sex, why rush through it on this particular night just to say you did? Who wants to have the worst ever sex on their best ever day?

In a survey by VoucherCodePro, 48 per cent of newly weds didn't have sex on their wedding night. Their reasons were:

Groom too drunk (24 per cent)
Bride too tired (16 per cent)
Bride too drunk (13 per cent)
Had to watch kids (11 per cent)
Had fight before reception ended (nine per cent)
Needed to leave for honeymoon (nine per cent)
Pulled an all-nighter partying (seven per cent)
Groom too tired (four per cent)
Neither felt like it (four per cent)

So if you didn't manage it, feel better. And if you did, was it worth it? Because if you ask the Internet how its first night sex went, you're in for a treat...

On the HuffPo, we heard about how 'B' and her new husband headed to their room in a swirl of confetti...

"The groom helped B get the pins out of her hair, and freed her from her gown. Then he suggested a bubble bath while he ran back to make sure that his family was all taken care of, and to say some goodbyes that he would miss the next day.

"Two hours and two Law & Order episodes later, the bride finally took off her naughty negligee, put on clothes, and went to hunt down her husband. She found him in the bar, wasted, with his friends."

Or what about when there's the mad dash to the airport for the honeymoon escape? An all nighter sounded like the perfect idea at the time...

"We had about an hour between going to bed and having to get up to get a taxi to the airport for our honeymoon," one friend told me.  "I vaguely remember my new mother in law barging into the room while I was wandering around in my knickers.

"She wanted to put something red under the pillow, or something so we'd have sons... Needless to say, after her interruption, none were conceived that night."

One regular theme seems to be the difficulty of getting all the bobby pins out of the brides hair before sex can begin - and dealing with looking like the bride of Frankenstein when all that hair's let loose.

As Reddit user Arthropody describes: "I was trashed drunk and had eight million bobby pins in my hair. My husband spent an hour getting them all out of my hair while we ate room service.

"We passed out mid bobby-pin extraction. We were both way too tired to do anything."

Another user jero83 writes: "My wife started feeling really ill during the afternoon, so we ended up leaving the reception earlier than planned. We went back to our room for the night, where the combination of not feeling well + fake nails + contact lenses = uncontrolled crying (which helped in getting the contact lenses out), and me, comforting her, pulling out the thousand bobby pins the hairdresser had used.

"Amazing night."

tah4349 agrees: “Up and in constant movement since 4:00 that morning having had only a couple hours of sleep the night before, we were just exhausted.

"It took an eternity to get the bobby pins out of my hair, then I laid down for "just a second" and was out cold. Apparently my newly minted husband tried to wake me up but I was dead to the world. No wedding night lovin' for us.”

Could it be that the growing tradition for bigger, drunker and more raucous weddings is a nail in the coffin for wedding night sex? Well perhaps it is, but does it have to be that big a deal?

If you're waiting until your wedding night then perhaps it's a good idea to make sure you're not too exhausted and drunk to do it... But If you've already tested the goods, there's no harm in getting some shut eye and waiting until you're actually both really up for it - when hangovers have subsided and irritating relatives departed. It doesn't mean your relationship is doomed.

Or "f*** first," suggests sex agony uncle and columnist Dan Savage, who insists that getting your rocks off before the whole shebang takes place will take all the pressure away. Though quite where you're going to fit that in amid inserting several million bobby pins into your hair is another question...

[The 20 Most Stressful Things About Weddings]
[The Questions You Should REALLY Ask Before Getting Married]