Have Your Period at Your Wedding? What to Do:

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It’s almost time for your special day. You’ve chosen the perfect dress, the most romantic venue, and booked your honeymoon. Then, you stop dead in your tracks and realize your period is due on your wedding day. Or, worse, your wedding day has arrived and your period suddenly starts out of nowhere. The best way to plan for this possibility is to try and fit it into your wedding plans well ahead of time. If you do happen to have your period at the wedding, however, there are a few things you can do to avoid any mishaps. First of all, don’t panic! Keep smiling and enjoy your day. The following tips can help you pull off your dream wedding without too much interruption from “Aunt Flo.”

What to Do If You Expect Your Period at The Wedding

If you have enough time to plan for this and you have a regular cycle, you can book your wedding events the middle of your cycle. However, some people don’t have a regular cycle and this can cause complications or surprises. It isn’t possible to reschedule your wedding when it is only weeks or days away, so here are a few tricks to quickly stop you from starting:

  • If you are on the pill, skip the “break week” of pills that have no hormones. If you are on week 2 or 3 of your pills, throw out the break week that usually causes your period to start and start on a new pack of pills. This will hopefully keep your hormone levels high enough that you can delay your period for a week. This may cover your wedding and part of your honeymoon. Then you just take your “pill break” when you are done with the festivities. Of course, check with your doctor before doing this!

  • If you are not on the pill, go to the doctor and start taking them two weeks before your wedding. have you start taking pills the first Sunday after you pick up your prescription. If you do this two weeks before your period is due, it may delay your next period until after your wedding day. Keep in mind that some people experience “mid-cycle” spotting the first month they start taking the pill, so this method may not be foolproof.

Unexpected Period on Your Wedding Day

Some women may start their period early if they are under stress. If you expected “Aunt Flo” to come a week or two after your wedding, but she shows up early and too close to your wedding, here are a few things you can do:

  • Buy a menstrual cup and use it - seriously they are awesome and you will be much more comfortable!! These cups are inserted into the vagina and cover the opening to the cervix. You just empty the cup out every few hours. Some women also choose to use a back-up tampon or pad to prevent leakage. The cup can also be inserted prior to sex to help keep things tidy on your wedding night.

  • You can make love on your wedding night anyway! This is entirely up to you and your partner. Some women experience more pleasure having intercourse during their cycle due to the extra lubrication and sensitivity. Some find it more painful. If your partner is okay with it, just go ahead and get intimate. Just make sure to have a towel from home that you can place down to protect the bed. If you are a virgin, there will be a tiny bit of blood loss anyway, so it won’t really matter much. Set aside some time to discuss with your fiancé how he feels about you getting your period at the wedding.

Experiences of Other Brides

1

Birth Control Pills

It is just my luck that I have always had an extremely regular period that is right on time every single month, but for some reason the last few months my period has been coming at different times. The wedding stress has made me up to four or five days later than expected. My wedding was on the 20th of March and I was supposed to start my period on March 10th. With this new schedule of my period being a little late, I was worried I would be on my period on my wedding day. The stress was getting heavier and heavier and a week window is not enough to be sure I wasn’t going to be late. I really didn’t want to see my period at the wedding! I asked my doctor for some birth control pills to help regulate things.

Here is what happened, I took two packs of pills back-to-back without taking the “placebo” pills to start my period. I was lucky it worked for me and I didn’t start before or on my wedding day. Problem is, I was so crampy and bloated. I felt miserable all day and didn’t feel like making love on my wedding night because the bloating was so bad. I would definitely recommend talking to your doctor about other options because this just didn’t work well for me.”

2

Dep Provera Shot

“I went to my doctor and took the Dep Provera shot about a week before my period was due. My period never came and I completely enjoyed my wedding day, wedding night, and my honeymoon with no period. I have been on the shot for six months now and love not having my period. I was a little worried at first about not bleeding, but the doctor said medically it is completely safe to stop your periods. Just a reminder that if you want to conceive, you need to go off the shots for up to a year for the hormone levels to normalize again. I was very happy with it and feel just fine.”

3

Evening Primrose and Red Raspberry

“I have a friend who is a master herbalist and she recommends Evening Primrose and Red Raspberry. You just take it a few days before you expect your period at least twice daily, but up to three times daily. Continue to use them through the day you don’t want your period and then stop. It works for me every time!”