You and your fiancé will be the center of attention.  
You’ll receive gifts, toasts, and good wishes.  
You’ll have parties thrown for you.  
You’ll be asked all about your wedding.

You’ll feel more in love with your fiancé than you have since he popped the question.  
You’ll find yourselves envisioning holidays in years to come, imagining new traditions you’ll start and the children that you’ll share them with.

The holidays are indeed a magical time for engaged couples.

 Many brides describe being flooded by an irrational sadness at some point during the holidays.  

Perhaps it happens during an engagement party thrown for you.  Or as you’re opening gifts on Christmas morning, your fiancé by your side for the first time.  Or as you go to sleep in your girlhood bed.

You can’t predict when this sadness hits, but it’ll be easier to bear if you understand why.

The sadness hits when you realize that it’s an end of an era in your life.  Next Christmas, you won’t be sleeping in your girlhood bed, but in the guest room, with your husband.

Or maybe it hits when you’re driving from your family’s house to his family’s house.  You’ve never had to leave your family before:  indeed, this is an end of an era.

So, as excited as you are about getting married to this great guy, and as much fun as you’re having celebrating your first holiday season together, don’t be surprised if you feel blue.  

Be gentle and patient with yourself...enjoy the moments of celebration and the excitement about the future, but also have respect for your past and how you are growing and changing.

Happy Holidays from Emotionally Engaged!

For every bride who worries about her relationship because you're no longer in the stay-in-bed-all-weekend-and-order-in-Chinese-food stage:  this op-ed by psychology professor Sonja Lyubomirsky in the New York Times:  "New Love: A Short Shelf Life":  

So if you and your fiance are actually able to take your hands off each other and function in the world as professionals, partners, family members and friends, read the full article.  

Lyubomirsky defines the differences between passionate love and companionate love -- a valuable and important distinction for every long-term (or about to become long-term) couple to keep in mind.

There's nothing wrong if you're not spending entire weekends in bed together anymore; hopefully, you did that when you were falling in love with each other.  And sadly, you only get to fall in love for the first time with your fiance once.  

Right now, however, you're probably getting big "hits" of passionate love for him as you plan your wedding, have special weekends away, take vacations, dream of your honeymoon, and plan your futures together.  As Lyubormirsky explains, women seek new experiences (planning a wedding sure is one, wouldn't you say?), and get a greater "hit" of happiness from novelty than our guys do.  

Rich stuff, this article. 

So applicable to your life as a bride.

I can't wait to get my hands on Sonja Lyubomirsky January 2013 book“The Myths of Happiness: What Should Make You Happy, but Doesn’t, What Shouldn’t Make You Happy, but Does.”  I'm going to give it to myself as a New Year's present.

I'm excited to launch my new site for Emotionally Engaged! 

My hope is to have Emotionally Engaged help clarify, deepen, enliven, empower and make even happier your experiences as a bride.  

You can expect lots of activity here on the blog, Twitter and Facebook, plus interesting and engaging workshops for brides and couples. 

But don't worry: if you enjoyed my previous blog posts, I will re-post them all here, one-by-one. Keep your eyes peeled for "From the Archives" posts for your favorites.

Follow me on Facebook and Twitter to stay informed.  And let me know what you think!