The morning after your wedding, you’re supposed to be looking through everyone’s photos, eating leftover cake and talking about how you wish you could do it all again. So what happens when you wake up wishing it had never happened?

I recently received an email from a reader describing exactly that. Her ceremony had been perfect, but the reception completely unravelled. Family members complained, extra guests arrived unexpectedly and promised help with setting up fell through. The music was switched off after complaints from her dad, taking their chance of a first dance with it. By the end of the night, she and her new husband had argued and gone to bed without speaking.

The following day, while clearing up the venue, she was hiding in a toilet cubicle trying not to cry, and she sent me a message.

There’s very little space given for this version of a wedding in the stories we tell about getting married. We can laugh about a collapsed cake or rain during the photographs, but admitting you hated the day you spent months planning takes real guts and is much harder to do. Especially when everyone keeps telling you it must have been “the best day of your life”.

You Don’t Need a Disaster to Justify Feeling Disappointed

If this sounds familiar, you’re allowed to say what happened. You can love your partner, want your marriage and feel devastated about your wedding.

Sometimes everything goes to plan and you still have a rubbish time. You might have felt uncomfortable being the centre of attention, spent the whole day worrying about everyone else or found that the wedding you planned didn’t feel like you once you were actually in it.

That can be difficult to explain, especially if your guests keep telling you how much they enjoyed themselves. Their experience can be different from yours and you don’t need a dramatic story or someone to blame to be honest about how you felt.

Don’t Put Additional Pressure on Yourself

After months of planning, spending money and managing everyone’s expectations, an upsetting wedding can leave you with very little left to give. Get through the immediate jobs as simply as possible. Ask someone you trust to help with the clear-up, return the hired items or field the messages asking how it all went.

Eat something, get some sleep, and allow yourself some time to grieve the day you thought you’d have. Leave the thank-you cards and Instagram announcement post until later. You don’t owe anyone else a glowing review of an experience you’re still trying to process.

You can also decide how much you want to tell people. “Some parts were lovely, but we had a difficult day and I’m not ready to talk about it” is enough. Ask close friends to stop forwarding wedding videos or tagging you in photographs for now if that helps. You can appreciate their excitement and still need some space.

Dealing with the Photos

Avoid making decisions about your photographs straight away, too. It will probably take a few months for your professional images to arrive anyway, but there’s no rush to go through them. Make sure they’re stored safety and come back to them when you feel ready. Right now, looking at your dad smiling for the camera might make you want to throw your phone across the room, but in a few years time you might be really glad to have them.

Lean on Each Other

In the reader’s email, the stress eventually became an argument between the couple. That’s a miserable way to end your wedding night, and it deserves a conversation of its own. Find some time together away from the relatives, the venue and the remaining jobs. Go for a walk, have dinner or sit on the sofa with a takeaway. Talk about how the day felt for each of you. Listen to the answer, even if you experienced parts of it differently.

If you hurt each other during the argument, apologise for what you said or did. Then talk about how you’ll handle the family behaviour that contributed to it. Each of you may need to take responsibility for speaking to your own relatives, rather than leaving your partner to deal with them. You can agree to make today a kinder start to married life.

Then draw a line under the wedding together. Give yourselves room to feel sad about it afterwards, but then decide to move forwards as a team.

Speak to the People Who Hurt You

Right now you might feel like burying yourself in the ground, but when you’re emotionally ready, do think about speaking to the people who disappointed you.

Try to identify what you want to say before you start discussing it with everyone involved, and once you’re ready, tell them what their behaviour did to you. Keep the conversation focused on what happened, its impact and the boundary you need going forward. They may get defensive. They may insist they were only trying to help. You can still say your piece and hold the boundary even if they never apologise.

If a Supplier Didn’t Deliver What They Promised

If a supplier failed to provide something you’d agreed and paid for, email them with specific feedback. Set out what was promised, what happened and how it affected the day. Include relevant photographs or correspondence, and ask for the refund or partial refund you believe would fairly reflect the failure.

Give yourself time to write a clear message because a furious email at 2am is unlikely to give you the result you need. Be calm, factual and give them a chance to offer to fix it.

I Do Redo?

Later, you might want to create another small celebration of your own. Wear your wedding outfits for another portrait session. Organise an intimate gathering and only invite the friends who made you feel loved. Cut a cake, say your vows again and dance to your first dance song. Doing this can give you some happy memories associated with your wedding, alongside the painful ones. There’s no deadline for arranging this either, and you don’t have to recreate the wedding exactly. In fact, I expect it would feel very liberating to do something entirely different… Vegas vow renewal anybody???

Your Feelings are Valid

You deserved to enjoy your wedding. You deserved guests who treated you with care. and suppliers who kept their promises. It’s fair to be angry that you didn’t get that. But for now, start with focusing on your partner and the next thing you can do together. Because someone else’s behaviour at your wedding doesn’t get to decide how you spend your married life.