After a year of planning and making sure everything was perfect, the lavish wedding ceremony was nothing short of magical -- the gown, the flowers, the music, even the weather, were fabulous. But for Rachel, the post-wedding blues hit soon after.

"The ceremony was over in an instant, and suddenly there was nothing to look forward to. I was so busy preparing for the Big Day, I failed to prepare myself for the real married life that came next. I felt really down for some time," she recalls.

Rachel isn't alone. For 1 in 10 brides, the start of married life marks the beginning of postnuptial depression (or PND), triggered when sufferers feel their fairytale dream has crashed down to earth. Postnuptial depression may not be a clinical diagnosis, but newlyweds will tell you it's real, and it can put the entire marriage on shaky ground. And there's a growing trend for newly hitched couples to get hit by the blues, say relationship experts.

What causes the post-wedding blues

For many couples, planning a wedding becomes the big focus and it can be hard to think about anything else in the run-up to the big day. Once you're back from honeymoon, married life can seem like something of an anticlimax in comparison. "The excitement leading up to the wedding involves adrenalin, fun and stress, and like any major event, this results in a dip afterwards," says Rebekah Fensome, a life coach.

Throw in the amount of money that's spent on the average wedding and the financial issues that this can create, and it's not too hard to see why your state of mind can be affected.

And compounding the problem is the fact that for many newlyweds, their expections of how their partner or relationship will change post-marriage are raised, and somewhat unrealistic. Rachel can attest to this: "I felt disappointed that my husband can't fix things around the house and such. Things he used to do which irritated me slightly, they really got on my nerves afterwards because I expected him to change his habits for me."

"It is perfectly normal to experience a sense of anticlimax after an event such as a wedding," agrees Caroline Carr, who is a hypnotherapist and a best-selling author and life coach with over twenty years experience of treating depression, anxiety and low self-esteem. "That's fine, and it'll usually pass as you both adjust and get on with your lives. But if those feelings last -- that's when it becomes unhelpful. A lot of depression occurs as a result of a trauma or huge change, but also it can just be 'there', and you can't pinpoint why."