Yes, six years after that wonderful ’needle in a haystack’ moment at the Shooting Star pub in Yardley, we’ve finally decided that we are going to get married on Saturday 6th October 2012! Such has been the excitement generated amongst our friends and families by this announcement, that we’ve decided to set up this wedding blog which I hope will amuse and inform our readers and provide me with some sort of cathartic outlet.

My love of weddings – that fairytale vision of youthful beauty gliding down the aisle in a picture perfect setting – is rooted deep in my psyche. And whilst I knew that there would be some organisation involved, I hadn’t quite appreciated the scale. I blame the fairy stories. You know the ones – those where the prince successfully woos his bride-to-be and the wedding follows just a sentence or two later. A paragraph at the most. It’s the same with the ballet. From the romantic declaration of love to the wedding day itself it’s a quick change of costume, a bit a set shifting and, hey presto, there they are, the radiant couple. It just seems to happen. And it’s all absolutely perfect.  Only in real life it’s becoming alarmingly clear that weddings far from coming together as if by magic, are a gruelling exercise in project management (why on earth didn’t I put my name down for that Prince II training??), financial planning and creativity. Am I up to the task ahead? Follow this blog and you’ll find out. I should, however, make it absolutely clear from the outset that I know that all of the knotty wedding issues with which John and I will grapple over the next 13 months, matter not a jot – who cares about the colour of the carpet at the reception? Saturday 6th October 2012 will be a celebration and a declaration of the love we share. Everything else is mere peripheral detail. No more than the icing on the cake . . . but we do like icing, a lot. And whilst no one will notice (but me) if the burgundy carpet clashes with the red roses on the table at the wedding breakfast, it would be nice if everything was perfect. Like I say, I blame those fairy stories . . .