Just before Christmas, I asked my girlfriend to be my wife. "You might have put some clothes on", she said, "but yup, sure". Or words to that effect; I can‘t remember, I was drunk. But sincere - I had a ring and everything - and now we are engaged to be married, just like that.

So the festive season was more festive than usual, as friends and relatives toasted our good health and my derring-do with endless quantities of champagne. It was lovely.

I am still walking round in a cloud of smug - but now a biting new year has set in, and reality with it. Marquees must be ordered, caterers sampled, vows written, important choices to be made - Hello! or OK for the coverage?

This, in the words of a Peter Andre and Jordan song that a distant relation of mine had piped through speakers as he and his bride signed the register, is A Whole New World. The wedding industry is completely mental. One colleague, who got hitched last year, told me the best thing about being married was not having to plan a wedding anymore. I begin to see what he means.

Not only are there at least eight different Bride magazines, there is one publication devoted entirely to Wedding Flowers ("Your only guide to bridal blooms"). How do they begin to fill it?

There is even a men’s wedding magazine, Stag and Groom, lest you thought this was merely a women's game. I can only imagine what it contains - guides to the brothels of Bratislava for the stag do? Galleries of those revolting ruche ties and shiny waitcoats? "If I catch you reading it, the wedding’s off", my fiancée informed me, to my great relief.

One thing is clear: mere mention of the word "wedding" instantly quadruples the price of any given item. You couldn’t give a Christmas cake away at this time of year, but whack two cavorting figurines on the top and call it a wedding cake, and you would instantly have a queue of loved-up dolts trying to give you £400 for it. The wedding merchants are adept at that age-old trick of gently implying to madam that sir can't really love her unless he can afford the best for her.

I am not yet jaded, and the looping round of phone calls from our various excited mothers is immensely cheering. But it is sad that what begins as an earnest declaration of love ends up being so cynically exploited. "It's your special day", croon the girls in the dress shops, meaning: "two grand, or I'll make you look like a munter".

But I only know this detail from reports, as I was delighted to learn that superstition totally excludes the male from the dress quest. It's comforting to know that at least one marital tradition was thought up by a man.