A cautionary tale

If you're getting married - be prepared to argue. Not about what shade of pink your flowers should be, or which songs should make the wedding playlist, but about other people, their opinions, their expectations and keeping them happy.

For a wedding you see isn't just about you and your groom - it seems to be about everyone else too. And "everyone else" doesn't seem to care if you have a vision for your day, or that you have been working for months and months and months to create something wonderful, "everyone else" would just like to chip in their five pence worth regardless of your best laid plans. And it seems that on top of everything else it's your job to make everyone else blissfully happy.

In the eight years that Mr Jones and I have been together we have rarely had a serious arguement - you know the sort that very quickly get out of control, the kind that feel like the arguement is actually having you, rather than you having it. The sort where you end up wondering how it even started and by the end of it you're not quite sure what your point was. Before the beginning of this year we'd had a maximum of two. In the past five months alone we have had three - all courtesy of "everyone else".

So if you're planning to get married you have two choices - 1 - tell everyone from the very beginning that you don't care what they think or feel about it but that you're having your wedding, your way. Or 2 - prepare to argue - not with them - but with the person you love most - even though you know it's neither of your faults and that the argument isn't about either one of you.

There is one final (and probably preferable) option - elope.