I recently was commissioned to paint an abstract portrait of my friend and his soon-to-be wife after their wedding in September. In the last few weeks we have scheduled and re-scheduled the timing for them to come in and sit for me to get a rough sketch of them to work from. Sensing their hurried anxiety and overwhelmed calendar I decided I would go to them and photograph them in a few poses and paint in my studio from those photographs rather then have them come in and sit for me live.
My thoughts immediately went to a natural curiosity concerning newly wed couples. Do they actually have time and energy to have sex on their wedding night? I can imagine after throwing the biggest party of their lives they may forgo sex for a nice big cheeseburger in bed before taking out bobby pins for an hour and falling into deep sleep. After all isn't that what the honey moon is for? I asked a handful of friends about there sex or lack there of on their big night and here is what they said.
"I had grand visions of rose petals on our bed and this incredibly passionate moment where we would have sex for the first time as a married couple. Michael even went as far as prepping the hotel room with chocolate covered strawberries and some of our favorite songs queued up on the iPod. When we got back to our room we immediately took on the project of getting me out of my wedding dress (which was a production in itself.) Once that endeavor was accomplished and just before sliding into bed we noticed an army of ants had broken into my strawberries before I could ever have a taste. And it seems the whole ant village was privy to the finding. Needless to say we spent more time cleaning that mess than making love."
-Rachel
"We rushed out of our hotel lobby as the party was winding down from the reception hall and like excited adolescents we recounted all of the funny memories of the day while we undressed ourselves. Jeremy was undoing his tie and I was pulling off buttons and kicking off my shoes while we both laughed and did impressions of some of our family and friends. We just sensed that things were different. We were a partnership and the gaze we had during sex that night was one I could never forget."
-Taylor
"I was so exhausted and starving that when we got back to our room at nearly 4 a.m. I sent Blake to the corner store down the street for some donuts and grape soda. I then began to slip into some black lingerie that without bringing I would have never taken off my wedding dress. Blake got caught up with some guests in the hotel lobby and was taking longer than I thought to come back. So I sent him a picture of what awaited him upstairs. Within minutes he was knocking on the door and I knew right then we would have to work a lingerie expense into our monthly budget. I felt the sexiest i've ever felt. More wanted than any other time in my life up until then. And the 5 donuts I ate beforehand made no difference to Blake or me."
-Emma
"I remember seeing Adam from across the room and really wanting to get back to our cottage on the lake for some consummating. I had every intention to make the night end with some hot and steamy love scene that would rival Denise Richards and Neve Campbell's performance in Wild Things. I wanted our naked bodies to fall out into the lake and for it to never end until the sun came up. Of course, plans don't always pan out as they do in our fantasies and moments later I looked over at Adam and realized he was too wasted to even walk without assistance. There was no love making that night but what we did do was hold each other as the waves lapped on the shore a few feet below our bed. It was the true fantasy of one day marrying the man I loved that was now a reality."
-Scott
"Kev was never a big drinker So when his college buddies came to town for the wedding and started taking shots I knew it would not end well. I ended up having to put Kev to bed as he faded into a drunken sleep at the end of the night. But then a sense of clarity came over me and I decided to take that moment to write down all of the memories in detail from my special day. Small moments I would have otherwise forgotten were instantly documented for safe keeping. I still look at that paper I wrote and it has given me so much happiness. We left on our honeymoon the very next day and Kev was not allowed to drink more than one glass of wine with dinner."
-Stella