Rebecca Barry: Wedding alarm bells starting to ring

If getting married is to adopt a new identity (Mrs, married, perhaps a new surname), accepting a proposal is to adopt a non-identity.

You personify a telephone when you're ordering a pizza on a Saturday night. Or the person who's meant to be manning the phone lines but is trapped in the loo: engaged.

You become the centre of alarming attention. Strangers grab your hand to study the hardware, some insist on trying it on in the street, over a drain, into which rain is dribbling from a puddle that has just swept a pebble into oblivion, much like your previous identity, on the cusp of being washed into the whirlpool of commitment ... I do want to get married, you say to yourself. I do I do I do.

More than 22,000 Kiwis will utter those words (or their more wary equivalent "probably") this year. After a steady decline in weddings since the 1970s, weddings are on the rise again.

This despite us staring down the barrel of a thousand Brad and Jens and a few less Tiger not-yet-outta-the-Woods.

Then there are this year's matrimonial victims: Kate and Sam, Jim and Jenny, Sandra and Jesse.

Why do we still do it? Is it a yearning for the comforts of old? A desperate clutch for stability in recessionary times? Fashion?

There exists a very real virus that spreads from couple to couple, until each member of a friendship group has been afflicted. A guy gets hitched, his mates feel the pressure to do the same. Let's just hope the virus doesn't mutate into a new strain starting with D.

The choice is not something I can explain without venturing into gushy-wushy territory, coupled with a desire for what my parents have and a gut feeling that this is the best course of action with the best candidate in the reality show that is my life. As romantic as that sounds.

And like the contestants on the show, you have to play the character everyone expects by faithfully answering the questions no matter how often they're asked.

So when's the wedding? How many kids do you want? What will you be doing on August 7, 2032?

Adjectives become more loaded than the guy who falls down the stairs at the reception.

An engagement ring isn't meant to be "cute", although I can see what the woman who called it that was getting at - she had the Sky Tower on her finger.

How dare you ask to see my ring, I felt like saying; that part of one's anatomy is covered for a reason.

You become a "to-be", a soul in limbo, about to become something else, something presumably bigger, better, more important, sellotaped by deed poll on to another human's lineage.

And of course it's all very exciting and there's no other place I'd rather be than this odd phase of prenuptial purgatory, but suddenly I have to come up with answers to a raft of other queries I didn't know existed.

Like, when will you send out save-the-dates - apparently pre-invitations or fridge magnets with your face on it, which might also act as a deterrent to lay off the sweet stuff.

Next time someone asks, they'll get a save-the-date for a garden weeding. No gifts please, just secateurs.

"What's the theme of your wedding?" asked the co-ordinator at one of a handful of prospective wedding venues. Love, actually. Puppy dogs and sunshine. Movie stars from the 80s.

She looked annoyed. "No, I mean, what do you want at your wedding?" Definitely some food. As long as it's not borrowed or blue.

Then comes the world of bridal couture. I don't want to stand within half a metre of these snow-white creations for fear my breath might stain them.

Or try them on in case I don't want to take them off. Or I won't be able to choose one and will be forced to wear three dresses, one of which is so cumbersome it must be operated by a small child.

Which isn't to say I'm not looking forward to an exciting year of planning and weeping joyously until my friends do the same that it's finally over, and making endless decisions as to the wedding's obligatory theme (Star Wars), colours (all of 'em), music (Carmina Burana).

But somehow I couldn't bring myself to attend the Bridal Expo on Sunday. I'm not sure why.