Perhaps this is a really stupid musing, considering my total and absolute lack of much of any knowledge about…“that.” Still, it was one of those sudden thoughts I hadn’t considered before.
These days, alot of people schedule their weddings over a year in advance, sometimes over two years. Alot of college students who get engaged while still working to a degree tend to do this. Now, from my incomplete knowledge, I gather that…um…“that” time can move around just a little for women, month to month. I’ve heard of it moving enough to align itself with other women’s, I don’t know if that’a a myth or not (I imagine I can check Cecil’s columns on that one.)
So what if you set a wedding date and made all the plans and everything a year in advance, and then it ended up falling on a day during that time of the month. Do you postpone the consummation for a few days until the honeymoon? Do you go ahead and enjoy other types of gratification not involving that area? Or do you just plunge on in and throw caution to the wind? Most of my friends waited until marriage for coitus, I can’t imagine they’d want to wait another day, but still…
Anyways, sorry if this is pretty vulgar to consider, but I just had to share my pointless musing about this with someone.
Thanks to the wonders of birth control pills, it’s not a problem. Fortunately, my wedding–planned a year in advance–fell naturally in a “happy time” of month. But if it hadn’t, the doc had various solutions for me.
You can manipulate menstrual cycles with the Pill. One thing I have heard of doing is going straight from the white active pills (there are 3 weeks worth of them) to a new pill pack and thus white pills–skipping the pink inactive pills completely. There may be some spotting, but after a few months the body adjusts into a normal rhythm and so a honeymoon could remain unspoiled.
You could remind yourself that you have just made a life commitment to another person and that expressing that love means more than a couple of spots on the sheet.
BTW, if most/many of your friends are waiting for marriage, there is a good chance of there being a little blood anyways.
Totally side stepping your idea that you can’t have sex during your period, if one is on the Pill one can not only predict but control when one’s period is. If one cared.
Sure, your period isn’t a stumbling block to a happy honeymoon, but I shudder at the idea of changing tampons whilst wearing a wedding dress. I’m sure there are bigger accidents waiting to happen, but I’d like to see hard proof.
Aren’t most women pretty regular by their 20’s? If I were to set a wedding date today (ha!) I’m about 90% I could schedule it for a year from now with confidence my period wouldn’t be falling then. I mean, yeah, it might shift 2 or 3 days over the course of a year, but if I picked what would be the middle of my cycle now, there’s no way it’d be that dramatic a shift in such a short time.
I personally wonder if this will be disproven at some point. I’ve a. worked with all-women since college( early ed is like that, you know) b. before that lived in a female dorm for four years, and neither has ever made a noticable impact on my cycles…
Lucky you, elfkin. My cycle never evened out. I have to stay on the pill even though I haven’t “needed” it in going on a year because, if I didn’t take it, my period would just show up whenever the heck it felt like it. It’s like waiting for a bomb to go off–definitely not something to fool with when a white silk dress is involved.
My mom’s and my cycles were kind of synched when I was a young teen in that we’d start within a few days of each other.
My cycle isn’t even, either. But you know, I wasn’t a virgin on my wedding night gasp … it wouldn’t have been the end of the world if biological difficulties prevented us from bumping the fuzz. As it happens, I caught a bad bad cold on our honeymoon so it wasn’t terribly romantic. We just decided we’d do a “do-over” honeymoon sometime in the future.
I dunno, when you think about getting to spend the rest of your lives together, how much you get it on during one week isn’t such a big deal.
While peeking through my best friend’s fiancee’s bridal magazines (I couldn’t help it! They were on the coffee table!), I saw an article which earnestly discussed how to use the Pill to adjust the bride’s cycle. Oddly, it was sandwiched between a of for honeymoons in Figi, and for wedding limosines.
Darn. Scrap that garbled last sentence and substitute this one: “Oddly, it was sandwiched between advertisements for honeymoons in Figi, and for wedding limosines.”
Well, some of us are too lazy to sit down and calculate when our period is going to hit. :o My cycle was never very regular as a teen, and even now it’s not 28.3 days on the dot like some peoples’, so it really wasn’t worth it to figure out when it was due. Time bomb is right. I can usually tell when it’s going to hit, maybe a day or two in advance, but I would not be sure enough to schedule a wedding a year in advance. I would consider going on the pill just for the adjustment benefits, were I to get engaged. I am getting very vivid images of red and white, and it’s not the Canadian flag! :eek: I also kind of think sex during a period is yucky, but YMMV.
Well, my wedding was during ‘that time’ which didn’t really bother either of us that much - I’m very light flow (WHOA TMI) and my period usually subsides by about 6:30 or so. I would have continued to take the white pills if I hadn’t bloody well been thinking of everything else to do with the wedding I forgot. Oh well. Still had tons of fun!
Well, amongst us Orthodox Jews, we make as sure as we can to not let it fall during that time, as sex during menstruation is Biblically forbidden. It also helps that our engagements are usually pretty short.
If, due to bad planning or other circumstances, the bride is having her period on the wedding night, then not only is the consummation postponed, but they have to let someone else (usually a small child) live with them until she can go to the Mikvah and they’re allowed to consummate it.
Well, I tried the Pill trick of taking only active pills for two packs, and my period came anyway. I was too lazy to calculate out when my time would likely arrive, but that was by far secondary to scheduling the wedding on the right day: my parents’ anniversary, a Saturday, at the church I wanted, and so on.
And yes, changing a tampon in a wedding dress is a bit of a nightmare. There I was, packed into the tiny stall at the church, my floofy petticoat and train and veil all over the place. That was hours before the ceremony, and after that, I didn’t drink even the tiniest sip of water, so that I wouldn’t have to go through it again for a long time. I got to the reception and was so thirsty that I sucked down 4 glasses of punch, 2 glasses of water, and 3 glasses of wine pretty much back-to-back. Ah, me.
Anyway, my MENSTRUATION didn’t have the slightest impact on wedding night/honeymoon activities. Ahem.
I thought Orthodox Jews specifically planned wedding nights to fall during the woman’s most fertile time, which would not be during her period? At least a former co-worker of mine, who got married in Israel, told me so. She’s not Orthodox, but originally went to an Orthodox synagogue to discuss wedding planning.
The first question the rabbi’s wife asked her was the date of her last period, then counted on a calendar and announced the wedding date. Couldn’t have cared less that they had already reserved a reception location, etc. “So,” I said, “what did you do?” Her response: “What else could I do? I went to another rabbi, and lied about the date of my last period.”
I forgot. Oh well. Still had tons of fun!