Post {Royal} Wedding Blues are a real thing. I felt bereft on Sunday, as I swept up the last of the crumbs off our patio and put away the champagne flutes, so goodness knows how Meghan must have been feeling. With that in mind, I thought it might be apt to ask my sister-in-law Mia how she felt after she got married last year.

Watching the glorious royal wedding (no matter your views, you must agree they are well practised in the art of Occasion) reminded me of how deflating the days after your own wedding can be. Your mental landscape littered and forlorn with the tatters of your own bunting, much like the town of Windsor, now recovering from Markle-fest 2018.

I imagine other new brides are like I was; post-honeymoon, exhausted and gently depressed as they scroll through the hundred or more weddingy Instagram accounts, hungrily followed a year or more ago, to harvest images that would construct their fantasy self. Or was that just me? I lived with wedding inspo at my literal fingertips for 18 months (thank you phone) and my level of dependence was worrying. When I got engaged, I had no idea what a bottomless appetite I would have for wedding details, the hours I would gladly spend poring over images of thick cream card with fine gold borders, hand lettering in watery inks, artfully undone bouquets that trailed wistfully up a pale and delicate arm, and of course, the dresses. I had to force myself to unfollow most of them in the first month of marriage. It felt good, freeing, but also like pressing a bruise. After many months of quality time with these images, admired again and again, I had a relationship with them. Somewhere among them was my best, most fantastic self.

In the first weeks after the I Do’s, I couldn’t look my much loved wedding inspo in the eye. I was afraid that each billowing silk skirt or whimsical flower installation would conjure fragments of my own wedding day for harsh comparison; the moment I realised my spanx had rolled down and had given me five bellies in all the photos. When I looked over at a highly inebriated friend boring the ears off a sober relative and cringed. The lash extensions I scraped off before the honeymoon, leaving my own stubby lashes behind, like a scrappy shoreline after a luscious tide. Don’t get me wrong, I loved my wedding day and we are currently basking in the kind of newlywed bliss that I know is probably hard to look at without nausea, it’s only retrospectively that I have felt this anxiety.

Being a very slow learner, I have finally realised that reality could not hope to mirror my imagined Big Day. I cannot blame Instagram for this. Without it I would never have discovered the beautiful work of Luna Bea and the hair pins I wore in my hair. Nor the Catherine Deane dress I fell in love with and stalked online for months before admitting that I wanted it more than I wanted a bargain.

Saying goodbye to it all was sad, I had escaped into wedding planning whilst we decorated our first home, whilst I studied for a degree and got a more demanding day job. It had become my friend, my distraction and my adored second career. The pay was lousy but I am still sad I no longer need to scour charity shops for vintage vases (though that might be for the best. I was a bit too keen, has anyone else hustled elderly volunteers to drop the price of crystal? To my shame, I have.)

Despite all this, thankfully, as the months passed, I fell steadily in love with the memories of our wedding, even as my imagined one faded. The very normality of some moments are now my favourites; The surprising amount of sweat on my partner’s palms as he took mine and whispered, ‘you’re beautiful, I’m sorry about my hands’ (which gave us our last laugh as non-marrieds) and discovering my mother, gleefully barefoot outside at 10pm, telling my appalled, heavily pregnant friend all about her episiotomy. My naughtiest flower girl who asked me not to get married and who sat with her hands on her ears for the ceremony. Her sister, who twerked magnificently to the final bars of the first dance. Watching my husband’s face as he blushed slightly during his speech and experiencing a wave of joy that started in my toes.

Revel in all the happy chaos, future brides that may be reading! Soon enough you will be like me, no longer a Bride but a Wife. With it comes much happiness and hopefully, some leisure time.

How did you feel after your big day? What were the best/unexpected parts for you?