They can call the vicar/registrar and the reception venue, but offer them a choice of table runners and menu combinations and their eyes roll into the back of their heads as they wish for a nuclear apocalypse to break out and save them from the alien world of flowers and lace.

This is completely fine with me; I can handle organising things on my own (apart from calling up and booking the venue, I have a severe case of talking-on-the-phone phobia) and will probably have more fun going over things with my girlfriends than having to handcuff someone to the bed under the guise of SEXY TIME only to ensure they don’t run away when you get the wedding folder out.

Likewise, if Paul wants to get involved, I would be overjoyed because let’s face it, although really it’s mostly the bride’s day, technically it is a celebration of the union of TWO people and so on and so forth. But dear men, presumably if you are planning to get married, you know each other very well, too well to be polite about things. So why say you want to get involved in the planning when you quite clearly don’t?!

The guest list is important – it sets the foundation of the whole wedding. Are we going to have a quiet wedding breakfast in a fancy restaurant or a massive rugby-player-style piss-up in a private hire room of a club? The guest list determines that. And yet, even after I told him that after the guest list he would be free to wander to pastures wedding-free, he still didn’t want to do it.

Paul used every excuse under the sun to avoid sitting down and thinking of names: I’m tired from work. We’ll do it after dinner. We’ll do it when I have a day off. We’ll do it after we’ve worked the budget out. But even after I spreadsheet-raped him into finding out how much we have to spend on the happiest days of our lives, the guest list still looked empty and lonely. This not including the fact that we want a huge reception (with cheap drinks, because everyone knows that loads of drunk people equals great party) but can’t think of anyone we like enough to invite. So far, we’ve only come to the conclusion that he wants a jacket lined with a Liverpool shirt.

Anyway, the point I’m making is don’t just say you want to be involved in the wedding planning to be polite. If all you want to do is turn up on the big day and (hopefully) not pull a Ross-from-Friends-style fiasco, then just say so! Trust me, your future wife will have more than enough friends and relatives eager for input and as we all know, too many cooks spoil the brew…