We study the minimization of ADMs (Add-Drop Multiplexers) in optical WDM bidirectional rings considering symmetric shortest path routing and all-to-all unitary requests. We precisely formulate the problem in terms of graph decompositions, and state a general lower bound for all the values of the grooming factor C and N, the size of the ring. We first study exhaustively the cases C = 1, C = 2, and C = 3, providing improved lower bounds, optimal constructions for several infinite families, as well as asymptotically optimal constructions and approximations. We then study the case C > 3, focusing specifically on the case C = k(k + 1)/2 for some k ≥ 1. We give optimal decompositions for several congruence classes of N using the existence of some combinatorial designs. We conclude with a comparison of the cost functions in unidirectional and bidirectional WDM rings.