One of the 20+ wedding suites we’ve decorated for friends and family to make their night special and to help set the ‘mood.’
Yes, you read the title correctly. We’re talking about wedding night sex.
No, we’re not trying to be the next famous Christian marriage influencers.
But after the response we received about our last post, we felt the Lord nudge our hearts that we need to talk about intimacy again.
Then the Instagram & Facebook comments came pouring in…
Your Bible Health Swap This Week
#019: The Marriage Bed Toolkit
A Special Bonus Gift Today.
Normally, our weekly Bible Health swaps and printables are reserved for paid members. But today, we’re opening this one up as a special gift because this topic is too important to hide behind a paywall.
In this article, you’ll get a behind-the-scenes look at what paid members receive each week: practical Scripture-first teaching, simple swaps, and printable tools you can use.
Paid members, thank you. Your support helps us keep creating this kind of life-giving content and allows us to bless families who may not be able to afford a paid subscription right now.
“What I find most inspiring is seeing the positive way you two treat each other. The way you look at each other, communicate, and work together is exemplary and so uplifting. You both are a beautiful treasure to the world.”
— Elie A.
A young soon-to-be bride left a comment on our Instagram post about sex recently saying she was nervous about her wedding night, and that comment turned into a conversation in our DMs. The moment we started typing back, we thought, this is exactly the conversation Christian couples should be having out loud.
Think about how much preparation goes into a wedding. The dress, the flowers, the vows, the photographer, the seating chart, and months of decisions that everyone around the couple is happy to weigh in on.
Then the last guest leaves, the door closes, and two Christian people who spent their entire relationship working hard NOT to have sex are suddenly expected to know how to have wonderful sex, and nobody ever handed them anything close to a manual.
So here it is. :)
But this post isn’t just for the newlyweds. This is for anyone who is looking to rekindle the flame and get a healthy Christian perspective on sex in the marriage bed.
After nearly 20 years of marriage, eight pregnancies, seven children here and one baby in Heaven, and a whole lot of Bible health study, learning each other’s bodies and needs and desires and moods, this is what we say when we sit down and tell a younger couple about their wedding night, especially if they are virgins.
Before anything else, hear this: you do not have to have a perfect wedding night or perfect sex every time, because you have a lifetime to learn each other.
“And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed.” — Genesis 2:25
That verse is God’s picture of marital intimacy before sin ever entered the room, and it is beautiful. It is not a promise that you’ll walk into your hotel room with zero nerves and perfect confidence.
You’re human, you’re tired, and you’re about to do something you have never done with someone you have never done it with. Give each other grace.
Join the mission. Share Bible Health with someone who needs it.
Mama Z to the Bride: Honey, This Is Your Night, Too
Mama Z here.
Ladies, I want to start with the thing I wish someone had said to me plainly: your wedding night is not a performance you are putting on for your husband.
Your wedding night is something you are experiencing with him. That is a completely different mindsent, and it changes almost everything about how the night feels.
Here are some things that I did to prepare myself for my husband, and things that I wish I would have done had I known better…
Have Someone Prepare Your Wedding Suite
One of my favorite traditions is preparing the wedding suite for newlyweds. We have done this more than 20 times now for people we love, and it has honestly turned into a little ministry for us.
Ask your maid or matron of honor or close friend to organize it, and then let her go all out. We bring tons of votives, candles, roses, an essential oil diffuser, snacks, campaign or sparkling juice, puzzles and fun games (like they’ll play them but who knows!), special gifts just for them, engraved flutes, and we plan it sense by sense, because you may have barely eaten all day and because what you smell and hear and see when you walk in sets the whole tone. The full checklist is in the toolkit below.
The point is to set a stage for intimacy instead of expecting yourselves to go from wedding-day chaos to passionate lovemaking in about thirty seconds.
This is the most recent wedding suite we decorated for a young couple that we’ve been mentoring. The signature life size rose on the bed is a must with real petals and votives.
Barns, single hotel rooms, glass cottages in the mountains, Airbnb sheds… it doesn’t matter. We’ve learned to be flexible with the size and location. We pretty much have this down to a science at this point.
Let Married Women Talk to You Beforehand
I love an “intimate bridal shower” with women you trust who shower you with intimate wear and intimate advice. One game we like doing is having each woman bring any pair of underwear without her name on it, and then the bride has to guess who brought which pair, and you would not believe the stories that come out of that game!
My favorite one was when a sweet grandma brought a pair of underwear from the late 1800s that had a large circular hole where you would expect there to be a hole, and she told us the stories her grandma shared with her years ago. Thankfully, nowadays women’s panties don’t have “intimate part holes” in them, but you get the point: sex today looks different than sex yesterday for women.
Here’s the part I care about most: have every married woman in the room give the bride one piece of marriage night advice. Women need women, and there is something beautiful about older wives helping younger wives walk into marriage carrying wisdom instead of shame.
Forget the Hollywood Version
Maybe your husband carries you across the threshold and within minutes you are having passionate sex without a single awkward moment. Praise God, and have fun.
But please do not assume something is broken if that is not your story. You might be exhausted, and your dress might require an engineering degree to remove, and your hair may be holding 47 bobby pins, and you may be sweaty and stinky from dancing and want a shower to feel your best, most confident self.
Take the shower. Your husband can wait a few minutes. Just don’t disappear into a two-hour bubble bath while he sits on the edge of the bed wondering whether you have changed your mind.
Take a little time privately to make the transition, wash your face, breathe, pray, put on something that makes you feel beautiful, and then walk out and enjoy your husband.
Fear of making a mistake keeps a lot of women from ever getting the full use of something good. That is true of a cabinet full of supplements and essential oils you never use, and it is true of the marriage bed.
This is the kind of practical Bible Health tool our paid members receive every week. Today, everyone gets the Marriage Bed Toolkit for free.
“Thank you so much for sharing this information. Your love for God and each other is precious. You have given me the courage to start using essential oils. I have some, but did not get the full use of them out of fear of making a mistake.”
— Gayle G.
Your Body May Need Time Before Intimacy
Here is where I want to get practical, because almost nobody explains this part.
Your mind can be saying yes while your body is saying not yet, and that is normal. During arousal, blood flow increases to your intimate areas and your body creates natural lubrication, which is a physical process that takes time and does not respond to being rushed. Giving your body the minutes it needs to get there is what makes sex comfortable rather than something you brace for.
This is why foreplay is not the warm-up act. Kissing matters, and touching matters, and being held matters, and feeling safe matters, and direct stimulation matters. Do not assume intercourse has to begin the moment your husband gets turned on, because his readiness and your readiness run on different clocks.
Notice what Genesis says about Eden. They were naked and they were not ashamed, and shame is the thing that makes a body clench. Medical doctors have long known that anxiety, fear of intimacy, and concerns about physical appearance among the causes of low arousal and the discomfort that follows, and pelvic floor muscles tighten in response to stress.
Scripture named the absence of shame as part of God’s design for the marriage bed thousands of years before a clinic wrote down what shame does to the body.
Lubrication Is Your Friend
With that said, have lubricant available on your first night, even if you normally produce plenty of your own, because nerves change things. It reduces friction and makes sex more comfortable, and it is not an admission that something is wrong with you.
We have a homemade recipe with essential oils that is super easy to make, and it is the printable in this week’s toolkit below.
Sex Does Not Have to Hurt
Ladies, please hear this, because there are so many myths tangled up in this one.
You may feel pressure or stretching or tenderness (especially the first time), and some discomfort is common. What you should not do is walk in assuming you are supposed to endure real pain.
Painful sex is generally a sign of a health condition that needs to be managed by a professional. Whether pelvic floor dysfunction or endometriosis or some hormone condition, please work with your doctor or physical therapist to get to the place where you are enjoying comfortable intimacy without fear of pain.
You Are Allowed to Say, “Slow Down”
If sex hurts if you’re uncomfortable in any way, tell him. If you need him to stop moving, or need more lubricant, or more kissing, or more time, tell him. If you need to stop altogether, tell him.
A husband who loves you wants to know.
And Bride, Let’s Talk About Your Orgasm
Please do not walk into marriage believing that intercourse means his orgasm and your job is finished. Your pleasure matters, and this is the piece most women were never taught.
Sex by itself does not reliably bring most women to orgasm.
In a 2018 study in the Journal of Sex and Marital Therapy surveying a national sample of 1,055 American women ages 18 to 94, only 18.4% said intercourse alone was sufficient for orgasm, while 36.6% said clitoral stimulation was necessary and another 36% said their orgasms simply felt better with it.
Don’t fake an orgasm, and don’t pretend something feels wonderful when it doesn’t, because every performance you give on night one is a lesson you will have to unteach later. Guide him instead.
Tell him slower, or right there, or not so much pressure.
None of that is dirty.
You are teaching your husband how to love your body, and the two of you will keep learning it together for decades.
I hope this helped, and please DM me if you have any questions. :)
Now let me hand this over to my hubby…
Know someone who needs this? Send it to them.
Dr. Z to the Groom: Brother, Slow Down
Dr. Z here.
Guys, remember one thing above everything else about sex (especially if this if your first time with your wife): your job is not to prove you are a man, it is to cherish your wife.
If your bride is a virgin, what she is about to share with you takes tremendous vulnerability. She has entrusted herself to you, and your first assignment is to protect that trust.
Let Her Set the Tempo
This isn’t the dance floor, and you don’t need to lead every move. Let her determine much of the pace, particularly as you begin attempting sex, and ask her out loud how it’s going.
Is this okay? Do you want me to slow down? Are you ready? Do you want me to stop?
Guys worry that asking questions kills the mood, and it doesn’t.
Communication builds trust, and trust is what makes great sex possible in the first place.
That principle runs through the whole marriage, too, because how you speak to her, serve her, and make her feel loved during daylight hours shapes what happens after the lights go out.
Do Not Race Toward Anything
Your body may be ready long before hers is, and that is a physiological fact rather than a character flaw in either of you, because arousal changes her intimate areas, and lubrication takes time to build.
So give the process time.
Kiss her, touch her, hold her, tell her she’s beautiful, and pay attention to what her body is doing.
Truly, I wish my dad or best man would have told me this years ago: foreplay isn’t the five-minute obstacle standing between you and intercourse. Foreplay is part of sex.
If she needs considerably more time than you do, then she gets it, and you have the rest of your life to get good at reading her.
Don’t Expect Her to Finish From Intercourse Alone
This one will save you years of frustration.
Sex feels wonderful for many women, but you are not a magic orgasm button, and the research is clear that most women need extra stimulation in addition to intercourse in order to climax. So learn her, ask what feels good, and watch how her body responds.
Mama Z made this exact case in her article last week when she wrote that God did not design marital intimacy as something a husband enjoys and a wife merely endures.
She’s right, and the sooner you build your marriage on that assumption the better.
Don’t finish, roll over, and think that went great. Ask her how it was and how you can do better.
What If You Finish Earlier Than Expected?
It happens. And not just on your wedding night!
You have waited, you’re excited, you’re nervous, your wife is standing in front of you, and suddenly the grand experience is considerably shorter than the one you imagined.
Brother, you’re fine. Next time, go slower, pace yourself. Take a quick break if you need to.
Don’t turn one experience into an identity, and don’t get embarrassed and emotionally disappear on your wife.
Stay close, kiss her, hold her, keep loving her, because your stopwatch does not have to mean intimacy is over. If it becomes persistent and distressing over time, talk with a qualified healthcare professional or your pastor, because something else may be going on.
What If You Lose Your Arousal?
That can happen too. You have been awake since six in the morning, you spent all day surrounded by people, you’re exhausted and thinking this has to work, and your body decides not to cooperate.
Don’t panic. And bride, don’t leap to the conclusion that he isn’t attracted to you, because bodies respond to stress and his has had a long day.
Take the performance pressure off the table, hold each other, laugh, and rest.
You’re still married tomorrow.
To Both of You: What If Sex Doesn’t Happen?
Then it doesn’t happen, and your marriage is not ruined.
You have not failed God, and you have not failed each other.
Maybe sex was uncomfortable, or neither of you could relax, or he couldn’t maintain his arousal, or you are both simply wrecked from the long day.
You are allowed to stop, fall asleep in each other’s arms, wake up, eat breakfast, and try again when you’re rested.
For newlyweds: there is no prize for consummating your marriage before midnight.
For couples married 50: you don’t need to consummate your marriage every night.
Have the Pregnancy Conversation Before
This should not be a wedding-night surprise for either of you. If you’re ready to welcome a baby immediately, wonderful.
If you’re planning to wait, decide together beforehand what approach you’re both comfortable with, and talk it through.
Same goes for married couples when they get home from a hot date and they enjoy intimate time together.
Communication is the best preventative medicine for nearly every marriage issue, especially when it comes to children, family, finances, and of course, sex
For the Couple Who Has Been Married Thirty Years
We did not write this only for the couple checking into a hotel this Saturday.
If you have been married ten or twenty or forty years, read back through everything above and ask yourself an honest question:
When was the last time I approached my spouse the way I did on my wedding night?
Not with the nerves, but with the attention, and the wanting to get it right.
Somewhere along the way most couples top preparing. The room stops getting set, and sex becomes the last item on a long day instead of something either of us moved toward on purpose, and then we wonder why it feels like a chore.
So set the room. Light the candle, put on the music, run the diffuser, and take the shower. Ask the questions you stopped asking a decade ago, because her body has changed and so has his, and the answers you memorized in year three may not be right in year twenty-five.
Rekindle the spark, fan the flame, or whatever language you want to put on it. The practice underneath it is the same one we’ve been describing all along, which is two people paying real attention to each other on purpose.
This Is the Beginning, Not the Final Exam
Your wedding night may be passionate, or tender, or hilarious, or awkward, and it will most likely be some combination of all four.
Mutually-satisfying marital intimacy is not created because two people miraculously know what to do on night one. It is cultivated over years, as you learn where your spouse likes to be touched, as you learn to talk about sex without flinching, as you learn to say what you want and to hear “not like that” without taking it as a verdict on your worth, and as you learn to give pleasure instead of chasing your own.
Somewhere along the way two bodies that once felt unfamiliar become home to one another.
“I am my beloved’s, and his desire is for me.” — Song of Solomon 7:10
That’s the heart of it. Not performance, not pressure, not proving anything, and not the counterfeit version of sex the world has been selling you since you were twelve.
Husband, cherish her. Wife, receive and love him. Both of you, communicate, laugh, experiment within the freedom God has given you in your marriage, and enjoy one another.
You do not have to have a perfect wedding night. You have a lifetime to learn each other.
Why This One Is Free
Normally an article like this one, with the full toolkit attached, is what our paid members receive each week. This one is going out to everybody, because a young couple standing at the edge of their first night together should not hit a paywall while they’re looking for an honest answer, and because a wife who has been quietly enduring something for fifteen years should not have to pull out a credit card to find out she doesn’t have to.
And to our paid subscribers: thank you.
You are the reason we can give this one away. Your support is what makes it possible for us to hand this to every bride, every groom, and every couple who needs it, and we don’t take that lightly.
You are funding this ministry, and this week you are funding it for people who will never know your name.
Bible Health Swap #019: The Marriage Bed Toolkit
As a reminder, all of your members-only goodies are in your Bible Health Vault.
This week’s Swap puts today’s teaching into practice.
For wedding nights, date nights, and everything in between.
The goal is not a flawless wedding night, and it is not a performance either of you has to pull off.
The goal is two people learning each other.
Prepare the room.
Slow the pace down.
Say the thing out loud.
Then give yourselves the room to be new at this, whether tonight is your first night together or your ten thousandth.
Start with this week’s printable, then choose one tool below.
Tool 1: Mama Z’s Simple, Safe Homemade Lubricant
This week’s featured printable is the recipe Mama Z has been making and recommending for years:
Simple, Safe Homemade Lubricant
It combines:
2 tablespoons organic jojoba oil
1 teaspoon organic evening primrose oil
4 drops of a gentle essential oil (optional)
A small glass salve jar for storage
Jojoba is the workhorse because its profile is close to what skin produces on its own, and evening primrose adds a softer, richer feel and is great for her hormones. Coconut oil works in a pinch if that is what is in the cabinet.
If you use essential oils, keep them gentle and skin-appropriate, and choose an aroma that helps you get in the mood rather than one that just smells nice in a diffuser. Lavender, clary sage, Roman chamomile, rose, and ylang ylang are the ones we reach for.
Tap download below to begin…
Two cautions before you make your first batch, and both matter.
First, if this is your first time, make it without the essential oils. Vulvar tissue is sensitive, and you want to know how the plain carrier oils feel before you add anything to them.
Second, this recipe is essential oil-based, and it is not 100% compatible with latex condoms. Meaning, a high concentration of essential oil can break down latex, and that might go against your pregnancy goals if that’s what you’re using them for. But if you stick to this recipe and even use one drop less of essential oils, you should be fine
Keep this recipe card with your other Bible Health resources so it is easy to find when you want it.
The rest of your Marriage Bed Toolkit is below.
Non-Toxic Essentials for a Healthier You
Pro Tip: Start with the everyday products your family actually uses, then make cleaner swaps from our non-toxic essentials list on Amazon. Shop here.
Tool 2: The Wedding Suite Setup Checklist
Hand this to your maid of honor, your matron of honor, or whoever loves you enough to go set up a room while you are getting your hair done.
Work sense by sense.
Smell: an essential oil diffuser already running before you arrive, and fresh roses.
Sound: a playlist queued and playing, not something anyone has to fumble with at midnight.
Sight: candles, dimmable lighting, and the overhead light off.
Taste: real food, because you barely ate today, plus campaign sparkling juice and the engraved flutes.
Touch: clean sheets, a robe, and something you feel beautiful in (or nothing at all).
Extras: a small gift for each other, a game or two, water on both nightstands, phones charging in the other room, and the lubricant jar within reach instead of buried in a suitcase.
Now ask yourself: which one of those would you have forgotten?
Start there.
Tool 3: The Bride’s Seven
Seven things we would tell you the week before your wedding.
Your night, not a performance.
Your body sets the clock, not his.
Take the shower, and take the ten minutes to transition.
Lubricant is a tool, not an admission.
Pressure is normal, and real pain is a signal.
Say slower, right there, and not so much pressure out loud.
Do not fake anything, ever, starting tonight.
Which one of those seven is hardest for you to believe?
That is usually the one somebody taught you wrong.
Find this helpful?
Tool 4: The Groom’s Seven
Brother, the same exercise.
Cherish, don’t perform.
Let her set the tempo.
Ask out loud, and keep asking.
Foreplay is sex, not the opening act.
You are not a magic orgasm button.
If you finish fast or lose your arosal, stay close instead of disappearing.
Ask her afterward about her experience, and how you can please her better next time.
Pick the one you are most likely to forget in the moment.
Tell her tonight that it is the one you are working on.
Tool 5: The Conversation Card
Five things to settle before you get to the hotel, not after.
Are we open to pregnancy immediately, and if not, what are we doing to avoid it?
Does either of us have a medical condition, injury, or history the other should understand tonight?
What are we each hoping for, and what are we each nervous about?
What is our plan if it does not happen?
Who are the two married people we can each call if something is not working?
Read them out loud to each other. Do not hand this to your spouse to fill out alone.
The fifth one matters more than couples expect. Most people who spend years silently struggling do so because they never named who they would tell.
Tool 6: The Rekindle Plan
This one is for the couple who has been married ten or twenty or forty years, and who read everything above thinking it was for somebody else.
Pick one night in the next two weeks and put it on the calendar.
Set the room the way you would have set a wedding suite. Same checklist. Same effort.
Then ask three questions you have not asked in a decade:
What feels good now that didn’t used to?
What doesn’t feel good now that used to?
What have you wanted to ask for and haven’t?
Then take your time, the way you did the first night, before you both got efficient at it.
Not every obstacle in the marriage bed is physical.
Know someone who could use this?
“Mama Z, may you know that your example is beautiful in God’s sight. Your wisdom and practical tips, recipes, ideas, and healing remedies have blessed me beyond words.”
— Dawn R.
A Few Honest Questions People Ask Us
Is it appropriate for Christians to talk about sex this directly?
Yes. God designed it, Scripture describes it without embarrassment, and the Song of Solomon is in the Bible on purpose. What is not appropriate is vulgarity, and what is not helpful is silence. The Church left a vacuum here, and the world was glad to fill it.
Do we need lubricant if nothing is wrong?
Nothing is wrong. A woman’s natural lubrication fluctuates depending on your body, and it will be different whether it’s your first time ever, or your first time after pregnancy, or your first time after menopause ends.
Having it on hand just in case you need it is simply a good idea.
What if one of us has a history that makes this hard?
Then you go slowly, you tell each other the truth, and you get help from someone qualified. A wedding does not erase what a body learned before it. Bring it to God, and bring it to wise people you trust, and do not treat needing help as a failure of faith.
We have been married a long time. Where do we start?
Tool 6. Pick the night, set the room, ask the three questions.
One faithful step.
Then build.
Your Voice Matters
What is the one thing you wish someone had told you before your wedding night?
Not the advice you got, but the thing nobody said. If you had five minutes with a bride or a groom the week before the wedding, what would you tell them?
We would love to hear it in the comments, because somebody reading them may be getting married soon.
Renew Your Mind. Rebuild Your Life.
Bible Health is about far more than sex, what you eat, the products you use, or what you do for your body.
It is about learning to live the abundant life God designed for you, growing stronger spiritually, physically, mentally, emotionally, financially, occupationally, and socially.
As a paid subscriber, each week you will receive Scripture-first teaching and a practical Bible Health Swap to help you put what you are learning into action. No information overload. No chasing the latest health trend. Just Biblical truth and practical steps you can actually use in your life and with your family.
And the moment you join, you unlock the Bible Health Vault, including:
Your complete 30-Day Bible Health Blueprint
Four Bible Health eBooks
Bible Health Swaps, recipes, printables, guides, challenges, and practical resources
Our growing library of members-only teachings
Monthly livestream teaching, Q&A, and prayer with us
Replays and resources you can return to whenever you need them
You do not have to change everything at once.
Renew your mind. Take the next right step. Then keep building, week after week, in all seven areas of your life. Give us one year and your entire life will change…
Learn more about the 52-Week Transformation Journey here.
Or, become a paid subscriber and begin your Bible Health Transformation Journey today!
As always, our hope and prayer is that you experience the abundant life.
~ Dr. Z & Mama Z
Keep Exploring
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References
Women’s Experiences With Genital Touching, Sexual Pleasure, and Orgasm: Results From a U.S. Probability Sample of Women Ages 18 to 94 (Journal of Sex & Marital Therapy, 2018; PMID 28678639)
Painful intercourse (dyspareunia): symptoms and causes, Mayo Clinic
The hymen’s tale: myths and facts about the hymen, Ohio State Health & Discovery
Preventing HIV with condoms, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
Hysterectomy and sexual function: a systematic review and meta-analysis (Journal of Sexual Medicine, 2023; PMID 36857309)
10 Things I Wish I Knew About Sex in My 30s as a Christian Wife
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This is wonderful, and I’m saving it. I have three young adult children, so the ways the church talks about (or doesn’t talk about) sex has become heavier in my thoughts lately. I so appreciate you addressing sexuality frankly but without vulgarity. As a Christian wife, I have been in situations where I desperately wished there were Christian resources, but it felt like I either had to turn to the perversion of the secular, porn-saturated world or figure it out myself.
Thank you for a wonderful conversation that needs to be had. Because marital sex was always meant to be something beautiful.