This is why I'm GETTING MARRIED

Having met her (and thus being able to testify to her wanton vim and general stonking all-round coolness) I'm sorry pretty Polly Vernon, but I beg to disagree. In today's Grazia, Polly elucidates on all the valid and personal reasons she cites to eschew trad-bad marriage: and frankly, if you turn them on their heads, they are just as much reasons to wed.

Whilst I find Tracy McMillan's piffle to be shortsighted, insulting and pugnacious as well - I too was once an un-engaged woman. Surprisingly, I never once thought my lack of a man who put a ring on it (if you'll forgive the Beyonce-ism) was due to: 1) my occasional grumps; 2) my wanting a man who was both literate, kind, witty, wise and did funny things to my loins on just merely looking at him; 3) a penchant for harlot antics; 4) being slightly utopian in thinking the best of people 5) trying her best to make her little world and herself as good as they could be; 6) being a bit fragile touched with a latent lack of esteem. In fact, my future husband (hello, lover) probably chose me for many of these reasons, and has helped me to overcome and laugh at my many foibles - although he still doesn't quite get the shoe thing or expensive beauty tinctures littering our bathroom. And I won't even go into the harlot bit. The thing is, marriage isn't for everyone. Not all of us like all the trappings and traditional anachronisms that can make it as passe as carnations or Britney Spears (sorry love, your time is over).

Ultimately it is a matter of choice, and for those of us about to wed? These are exactly the reasons why I'm doing it...

1. I LOATHE BAD WEDDING DRESSES
Frankly, most of them are ostentatious netted monstrosities festooned with way too much diamante, cheap silk and yes, look like a literal pavlova. Which could be good, as you could save on a pudding for your wedding breakfast. They cost a small mortgage if you allow them to, but heck isn't the whole point that you can justifiably spend far more than you ever have done on the most significant dress of your life? I don't want to look like a princess, but a highway woman cum lovechild of a Rolling Stone, hence my plan to find as close a frock as I can to a Vivienne Westwood and pair it with a sweeping velvet cloak. Because I can, as the bride, wear my dreams.

2. WHAT IF I WANT TO SLEEP WITH ANYONE ELSE?
I don't. The thought of it just being him, me and our marital bed for the rest of our long years till we're wizened and old and wearing purple (a la Gogol Bordello) actually excites me. BRING IT ON.

3. I DON'T THINK I'M TOO GOOD FOR IT
I hope I'm vaguely quirky, wild around the edges, inspired and er, cool in my own special way. I don't see getting married as any sort of slight to these qualities, but as a sharing of them with my favourite person in the world. I like that I have this little diamond thing on my ring finger that is a daily reminder that he loved me enough to give me the best ring, ever. It puts some sparkle into my life, which is always a good thing.

4. I WAS ASKED
This isn't meant as some acrid "ner ner, I was asked and you weren't", but neither my gent nor I had been that sold on marriage until something just changed. It wasn't logic, expectation or coercing - it was just plain love that did it. Plus he asked just as I was tipsily waxing lyrical about the gilded toilets in the rooftop restaurant in Marrakesh we were dining in. From toilet humour to engaged - very us.

5. I HAVE THE INHERENT ORGANISATIONAL SKILLS
But heck, I'm still scared witless thinking of how I'm ever going to get all this nailed. This is where this blog comes in - I pick up titbits along the way, spread the word, and have a big fat reminder of timeframes and tasks. Today's post was going to be on flowers, by the way - that will have to save for tomorrow.

6. I CAN BE BOTHERED
I have quite a lot to do in life, trans-global bridesmaids (two of them at present - trust me to have such itchy footed girls), a myriad of activities and daily musts - but we're doing this whole wedding hohah because it begets a marriage that we hope will be long in the tooth and joyful.

ROGUE BRIDES: Fall-ing in Love: What the AW11 Fashion Weeks mean...

ROGUE BRIDES: Fall-ing in Love: What the AW11 Fashion Weeks mean...: "Alexander McQueen AW11 Whilst wedding dresses can be exquisite masterpieces, both beautiful and stylish, they are not always the mos..."

Fall-ing in Love: What the AW11 Fashion Weeks mean for Brides

Alexander McQueen AW11

Whilst wedding dresses can be exquisite masterpieces, both beautiful and stylish, they are not always the most fashionable of things.

How do you wear a wedding dress that is distinctive, steeped in tradition and a fulfils a firmament of expectations without donning a Baked Alaska number, or going get-thee-to-a-nunnery (pronto) prim and demure? Answer: you put in some fashion magic. For one day, you can legitimately go achingly high octane, vogueish and decadent: most of us get few opportunities in daily life to indulge ourselves in such beauty as that a wedding dress can be. Fewer still of us are bold or Carrie-ish enough to really wear what we truly want to. Why wouldn't we opt for the spirited, heartbreaking beauty of a almost intangibly embellished silken sheath, or a couture-worthy swathe with a red-carpet swamping train? Yes, we might take out half the congregation with the latter, but a wedding dress should be incredible, and make you feel likewise. It should be, I feel, an unforgettable virtuoso display of our personalities and often unmitigated fashion desires.

With the denouement of the past weeks' raft of autumn 2011 fashion weeks, and a certain nascent Royal's wedding dress just one of the dramas overshadowing what has been a quietly spoken show season, you might be wondering quite what fashion has to do with bridal attire. Among the moodier, crepuscular undertones of the Paris shows in particular there was, however, just as much to ravish and beguile. The restrained sexuality and careful timbre shot through with the shine and lustre of moonlight tones, ash, pewter and pearl sequin pailletes at Donna Karan, and pre-ordained autumnal blankets of pumpkin, forest green, amber, red and russet - might at first seem utterly at odds with notions of what a bride might look to. And it was all sorely lacking in the whirligig exuberence and disco love of the summer shows. But the surprising thing is, perhaps these shows do have legs for a bride marrying this year. Historically, grey and blue were the colours of a bride, with blue the hue of purity and chastity: Queen Victoria's married Prince Albert in 1840 in white silk designed purely so that she could show off some lace she had been given by incorporating it into her dress. It was the wedding dress that changed Western bridal tradition. Ever since, snowy hues of cream, ivory, oyster and ice white are your conventional bride's colour of choice - fittingly, Burberry's fairytale snow shower end to its London catwalk show was the most beguiling and irresistable of them all.

Guillaume Henry, star in the ascendant at Carven remarked in December's Vogue that "Clothes should be uplifting, like Champagne", and the same is no less true for a bridal dress. In among the blouse and pencil skirt combinations of the autumn shows, there were touches fit for any fashionable bride. Some could just lift a dress from anodyne to captivating. With a flash of Dior velvet, chiffon ruffles, the feathers and sparkle of Versace's closing dresses, the smoky rose as at Miu Miu, sheer polka dot tulle at Stella McCartney, heads swaddled in milkiest coffee hued mantels at Donna Karan, or perhaps YSL polished silk floor-sweepers married with gilt gold chains encircling the waist or dripping down golden backs. Arguably the most lovely of the trends was a Julie Christie kind of beauty - as at Chanel and many others - that softly toed the line between ingenue and sex kitten. Wind flushed cheeks, nibbled lips (you know, as when you were too young to wear make-up proper, and gently bit down on your lips to render them flushed and pink) and almost universally softly virginal, clean swept back hair or simple centre parted ripples.

Naturally, the incandescent north star of the shows was that of Sarah Burton, burning a spell at Alexander McQueen with her stately and incredible show of Snow Queens and Elizabethan stomachers. As befits the whispered winner of the feted commission to design Kate Middleton's wedding dress, this was a breathtaking and romantic collection fit for a queen - yet not shy of the borderline roguery (and thus magnificence) of the McQueen legacy. The millefeuille layers of silk tulle, elaborate surface detail and porcelain-bodiced mantua gowns touched with milky fur may have marked these as dresses of boundless beauty, but the staging of the show in the Conciergie from whence Marie Antoinette was taken to the guillotine was a remarkably incisive and naughty statement to make. A death star perhaps? But the fact of all stars, and of all brides who give in to their inner fashion maven, is that they light up the darkness for a very long time to come - radiant and true to themselves. If Kate has plumped for Burton's McQueen, she would be the future queen who speaks to us all in making such a brave, but beautiful choice. Though we will have to fit the silhouette of our dresses to the venue, not having Westminster Abbey to play with after all.

All that glitters...

I believe in the common parlance of the fashion firmament, these are known as killer shoes. The sort that make you want to possibly do a Fay Dunaway and stage a heist at your local Barclays to buy them.
Ladies, look. And. Weep.
Tomorrow I promise to be back to the usual wedding guidance and wisdom, but who's to say these can't be secreted under your wedding frock, coyly flashing every now and again?
(*this would be me trying to justify mortgage-worthy shoes).

CHRISTIAN LOUBOUTIN Sexy Strass 100 peep-toe pumps, £1, 995.
http://www.net-a-porter.com/