A dirty little secret you never hear about marriage: you expect prewedding jitters, but recently, more and more newlywed women are down in the dumps after the honeymoon ... a phenom no one warned them. Cosmo investigates what experts call the post-I-do blues.

* It's a wedding-crazed world out there, with a bounty of betrothed chicks spending upward of a year mapping out every itty-bitty detail of their big day. And as a result, a new phenomenon is emerging. Once the vows are recited and life as husband and wife begins, many of these women are finding out that there's a flip side to what's supposed to be the happiest time in their lives. Dubbed the post-I-do blues, it happens when a bride gets so caught up in planning her nuptials, she feels an emptiness once all the celebrating stops.

"Some brides experience a mild sadness, realizing that the wedding that was such an obsessed-over, important event for them is now in the past," explains psychologist Dale Atkins, PhD, coauthor of Wedding Sanity Savers. "Others become seriously depressed, with a lack of motivation and sense of purpose that, if not resolved, can spill into the marriage and create long-term problems."

Even if tying the knot isn't on the horizon for you yet, you need to know that these newly wedded woes exist ... and that they're not inevitable. Here's what it's all about, plus how to get hitched without feeling glum afterward.

Bringin' on the Post-I-Do Blues

When Jordan, 24, returned from her ultrablissful honeymoon, she was struck with a rude awakening into real life. "The alarm went off, and I sprang out of bed thinking that I had to call the caterer and go to a dress fitting," she says. "I quickly remembered that all that was done with ... and it suddenly made me really sad. Most people would have been relieved that those stressful tasks were finished, but I missed them, and I craved that organizer mode my brain would go into when I was planning my wedding."

Rachel, 32, found herself in a similar situation. "After my big day was over, I felt like I had nothing to look forward to. I relived every moment of the wedding over and over in my head, imagining what I would do differently to make it even more perfect, I'd sit on the couch for hours, flipping through my wedding album. On one hand, I was thrilled to be married, but without this big goal to work toward, I felt so detached."

As Jordan and Rachel relate, the post-I-do blues aren't about regretting getting hitched. They're more of a sudden, unexpected feeling of purposelessness. After so much single-minded planning, the wedding is finito, which leaves many brides feeling rudderless, explains Minneapolis psychologist Gail A. Thoen, PhD. "It's normal to experience a void in your life after months of having Structure," says Thoen.