I Do.

Firstly I would like to say that I promise this will be the last soppy post for a while…

Will you marry me? The four most dreaded words a man (usually) will ever say, dreaded only because the endless fear of her saying no is crippling. The fears that if she says yes, it may all end in divorce as so many marriages do. A question that seems to be fading away because 'marriage is an outdated constitution' so never gets asked… I for one believe in marriage and one day I will get down on one knee and say the words.

So why do I believe in marriage? Honestly, because it's the next step. When you are committed to someone and you are at a point where there is nothing or no-one more important to you and you love literally love them with every fiber of your being… It's the only thing left to do. I would want the world to know that no matter what this girl has got me for life, that the ring she put on my finger and the one I put on hers shows everyone that.

Statistically there are around three-hundred-thousand marriages in the UK every year, as unfortunate as it is about forty percent of those marriages end in divorce. But if you ask me a success rate of sixty percent isn't half bad. It's not something I would condemn as not worth it or not working. People break up all the time, it's a sad but true fact, just because they happen to be married doesn't mean that's the reason they broke up.

I have thought about getting married for a long time - No I haven't got wedding magazines in a box somewhere and I haven't pre-decided the flower arrangements. I have imagined standing, facing this woman, who I love with my whole heart and giving her my vows (that I will of course write myself), and saying "I do". The perfect wedding to me is making sure that my bride has everything that she wants. That there is nothing that goes wrong that the day she will have dreamed of for years is exactly as she dreamed it. Who could ask or want for more than that?

It's a lot of time and pressure, and getting married is expensive business but to me it's worth every penny. I can't imagine not getting married either. I am not religious and that creates a bit of a problem for my future wife-to-be because I will not get married in a church or by a priest/vicar/pastor or whatever. Does that mean the wedding my bride may want is something that I can't give her? I hope not, but I think compromise is something that I can do quite well, but I cannot compromise on that…

There are things that I want in my life; I have an outline rather than a plan, but on the top of that list is making the woman I want to spend the rest of my life with, know beyond any shadow of a doubt that I do want to spend the rest of my life with her. To me that means making her feel like there is no-one else in the world, that she is more important than everyone and everything else. She will be that to me everyday, but I want her to feel that for what I will make sure is the most perfect day of her life.

I have seen lots of wedding in films and on TV, who hasn't? I've only really been to a wedding reception before. Not that it bothers me really; it's usually a friend of the family or some distant cousin, but sometimes I would like to see the actual day itself. To get a feel for how the proceedings go, who does what and all that sort of stuff.

There's not just the wedding to think about, there's the reception. The moment that everyone who is there wants to see, the thing the bride looks forward to almost as much as walking down the isle, the first dance. I like to think I can dance, especially when I'm drunk but in reality, I'm not very good. I will absolutely need to take lessons to make sure my hobbit feet don't crush my wife's toes and/or new wedding shoes. There is something magical about that dance, the spotlight, the all but empty dance floor, the music and the camera flashes… That is the first true husband and wife moment to me.

I am hiring a band for the reception. DJ's are fine, there is obviously a much wider selection of music that can be played, people can make requests etcetera but it's not for them, it's for me and the future Mrs. Bennett (name subject to change as I would quite like a new last name I just haven't found one that fits yet). Besides people are going to dance anyway.

As often happens when I write about something personal to me, I have flashes of images that always make me smile. They are visual representations of the emotions I feel when I put my thoughts into words. I honestly wish that I could take them from my mind and insert them into these posts to help you see what I see… Right now I keep seeing the same three images; My beautiful fiancé walking towards me in a white dress with dozens of people smiling at her, the room where we will be holding our reception filled with fairy lights, flowers and all the people who mean the most to us, and me and my imaginary wife standing in the middle of the dance floor under a spotlight looking in each others eyes… she has no real face, but she is smiling at me and I'm smiling right back at her.

By the time the day is all said and done, all the guests are leaving, half being carried out the other half wanting to carry on drinking. When the cake has been eaten and the champagne is all gone and only the few most important people in the world to me remain, that is the moment that it will be the happiest day of not only my wife's life, but mine too. I will stand there in that room, surrounded by the mess of a great celebration with all the people I love and the woman that has made me the happiest man alive. I will sit and reflect with my wife about the day we have just had and laugh with our friends and family about who did what, the bad dancing and the drunken anecdotes... Perfect.

I am unquestionably the kind of guy that wants a happily ever after. And yes I know that's sad but I don't care. I want to be happy every day of my life and I want the person I will be spending every day with to be happy too. Having that perfect and special day is part of that to me; it makes sense, its how all the best stories go. Yes I know that life is no fairytale and yes I know that it takes hard work and compromise to make a life together work. But when I'm grey and old and still waking up to my beautiful wife, I'll know that I've had the happily ever after I was always looking for.