Question What do an ancient Cotswold barn, Glastonbury Abbey, a Cornish cliff-top marquee, three historic Bristol mansions, two hotels, one cruise ship and the city's Harbourside Planetarium have in common?

The answer is relatively easy, I guess. Particularly for a burgeoning numbers of friends and colleagues.

Each and every one of those locations has been, or is going to be, the venue for one of their wedding days.

But what I find more intriguing than the many and varied sites chosen for tying the knot is the fact they are doing it at all.

It's as if a rash of 21st century marital fever has broken out around me, rather in the manner of swine flu.

Only this is a potentially interminable and costly pandemic, one which demands you sign up to treatment for years.

I can only conclude that weddings are obviously very much back in fashion. All those politicians who promote the values of established family life, as lived by those with 2.4 children, should be jumping for joy (before, that is, they pop out of the House of Commons bar to meet their mistresses).

Being a child of the Sixties when all and sundry railed against such a conformist stance, this new tidal surge up the aisle has come as a surprise.

Don't get me wrong, I conformed, maritally speaking, though by then we'd graduated into the early Seventies when rebellion was measured by the width of your flared trousers.

I thought I was doing the right thing but my mother's reaction was about as sour as a pint of milk left on the doorstep for a week in a heat-wave.

We had opted for a register office "do." She felt cheated.

But, hey, as I pointed out to her at the time, it did have the benefit of being exceedingly cheap.

Such juvenile jesting didn't wash with her, however, and by dint of a curious, somewhat contrived set of circumstances, she had the last laugh by managing to screw up our big day.

How? By getting lost en route, thereby failing to make the cut along with my Dad and my kid sister who was going to be our maid of honour.

I won't dwell on it any further save to say that tensions ran high and I would urge all those planning even the smallest of nuptial celebrations to tread very carefully when it comes to matters relative.

Anyway, I find myself rather envying the current crop of soon-to-be Mr and Mrs.

I realise that today's weddings can be so much more exciting, now you can get hitched in all manner of places.

Exchanging vows while seeing stars in a planetarium, or treading in a cow pat en route to the barn, adds a certain edge to any ceremony.

I wish them all the very, very best but despite all its horrendous hitches I wouldn't swap my own wedding day for anything.

Thirtysomething years on we're still together and have never exchanged a cross word. And if you believe that, you'll believe anything.......