Marital bliss


So, the deed's done and Jen and I are now bona fide husband and wife (though we won't be calling ourselves that).

I can thoroughly recommend dispensing with anything "traditional" that you're not fussed about (in our case: stag and hen dos, best man, bridesmaids, car, the bride being given away, rings, cake, sit-down meal, favours, name changes) and instead doing things your way and focusing on what really matters to you, which in our case meant...

* making full use of a stunning venue by hiring it for the entire weekend so that the vast majority of our 145 guests could stay over, but keeping the fact it would actually be a wedding quiet until a month before the event

* making full use of our friends' many talents - everything from piano-playing and DJing to hairdressing and making canapes and homemade flavoured vodkas

* writing personal promises and ending the ceremony with an enthusiastic mass singalong to 'Bring Me Sunshine'

* spending hours ensuring the music's just right - a selection of mellower (read: mainly post-rock) albums for Friday night; a good sequence of pre-ceremony songs; not one but two first dances; a heady mix of 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s and 00s classics for the main part of the wedding disco; and a carefully crafted post-midnight playlist aimed at recreating Rock City (see post below for details)

* enjoying superb food for every meal, including a fabulous hot and cold wedding buffet - I honestly don't know how the youth hostel staff managed it, and I'm sure it transformed quite a few guests' opinions of what modern youth hostels are like

* sorting out flowers for a grand total of just over £50 (including delivery) from a local farm and arranging them ourselves in a random assortment of vessels (including Newcastle Brown Ale bottles - oh the hardship at having to ensure there were enough empties in the run-up to the wedding...) decorated with either black and white ribbons or lime and lilac ribbons (the latter the colours worn by the Suffragettes...).

It really couldn't have gone much better. There were a couple of slightly hairy moments - the fact that the bar was pretty much drank dry both nights, and my laptop having a spectacularly ill-timed seizure twenty minutes before the first dance and then discovering my attempts to back up all of the music on a portable hard drive had failed. But an iPod plugged the gap and mercifully the laptop somehow revived itself and was fit to carry on within quarter of an hour. The weather too was superb (hard to imagine now that it's so unbelievably wet outside) - clear blue skies all Friday and most of Saturday, just clouding over to send everyone inside in time for the music and buffet to kick off.

Not that it was exactly stress-free - there was all of the manic dashing about and fleeting snatches of conversation with friends that anyone who's got married will be familiar with. And, in the absence of any bridesmaids, it was a bit nervewracking knowing I was responsible for lacing Jen into her dress - but in the end having a bit of time alone together immediately before the ceremony was a relief. (Incidentally, the lack of bridesmaids to carry what was a modest train and the narrowness of the aisle did mean I managed to plant a size ten footprint on Jen's dress as soon as we entered the room together...).

Phase I of our honeymoon consisted of a very relaxing three nights in a four-star spa hotel elsewhere in the Peak District. The food in particular was amazing - all foams, drizzles and jus, meaning we felt as though we were starring in an episode of The Trip (still not sure who was Coogan and who was Brydon, though). The only slight dampener was Jen coming down with a 24-hr bug, but it didn't really take the shine off things.

Phase II is Glastonbury (fingers crossed for a repeat of last year's weather) and then we'll hopefully be heading to the Far East for Phase III later in the year.

So, what's it like being married? Much the same as before, except with bookshelves covered in cards, a wine rack full of champagne and a wadge of John Lewis vouchers probably sufficient to buy everything in their electrical department...