'Drawing up the wedding present list…' by Caroline Lashley of The Editor's Office

Your man's proposed, you've said yes, your respective parents are delighted and hopefully you've had that engagement party (if you can afford it). At last, you and your beau have finally set the date for that spring/summer wedding (outside the footy season) and the other diplomatic exercise in family and friends relations is drafting up the wedding gift list.

Ah yes - the list whereby you and your beau have that once in a lifetime opportunity to legitimately call for all things you want in that showcase called your residence. Notice I said residence - most of us have ideas of what we would like our residences to look like - a direct result of all reality TV shows which encourage us all to have the house of our dreams.

Yeah right. How many of us have that house worth a cool £250k in Balham or some other des res area of the UK kitted out with the designer kitchen, bathroom and the sexy boudoir bedroom only seen in those glossy magazines such as "Kitchens, Bathrooms and Bedrooms"? Egyptian cotton towels hanging lazily on the rail, fluffed up with warmth and ripe for use when you finally step out of that power shower in the Manhattan-style loft conversion in trendy Hoxton - oh yes, we'll put those on the list… As too the white gold-rimmed china dining set for eight for those dinner parties with sexy cutlery only found in places talked about by Harpers & Queens magazine, with matching glasses as seen in the best, upmarket restaurants you've only ever dreamed about being seen in….

From the way my now married friends tell it, drafting up that goody list so you start your married life with all the things you could never really afford but hopefully you can once you're hitched is tough: the reason - not all your friends are moneybags… So part of the list is placed at a store like Argos (for those of us with small budgets), another part of it is at Debenhams (for with those with more money) and John Lewis - or something similar/more upmarket - for those of us who enjoy spending and don't have a problem doing so.

But giving people the choice is where it gets dangerous: why? Because no-one wants to look like a cheapskate when it comes to buying those wedding gifts - trust me. When you've spent money on attending the hen/stag night, buying the smart outfit, booking the hotel room (if you've planned to have a weekend away from London/ Birmingham/any other city in the UK), add those travel expenses, and it's an expensive weekend. And like I say, no-one likes to look cheap when buying that wedding gift for the happy couple….

So once that list gets submitted at those stores and everyone's aware that the list is available, you have to be real quick if you don't want/intend to spend a fortune. There have been times when I was so swift with buying those wedding presents (partly because when you're early, you have the most choice) I was often accused of having insider information - well, you've got to use every advantage - and with family weddings, the whole family decides on the collective card and present - an activity charged to me as most times I was the family member most likely to be in the West End and therefore best able to take care of that responsibility.

The good thing about buying your gift from the wedding list (especially with the internet making the process so easy…bliss!) is once you've selected and paid for it, you don't have to do anything else: no mad rush to find appropriate wrapping paper, no carrying the present on public transport or in the car half across London or wherever else the wedding happens to be, and the most you might have to carry on the day - if you're single - is that celebratory card and yourself. Of course, if you've got a partner, it's only good manners for you both to arrive - children, however, are a different matter altogether.

But if you've got a number of weddings to attend in a short timeframe, it can get very expensive indeed - especially if you live in London (because it just is) and you can't bear to wear the same outfit twice and you cannot believe how easy it is to spend a month's wage on wedding gifts and your paraphernalia to look good.

Oh well, I guess it's back to the drawing board with me and my sweetie - we haven't had time to look for a place to live, never mind draft that wedding present list and I know he's got expensive tastes while I'm trying real hard to keep mine under control…and still taking those sneak peaks at the wedding magazines to find out what we can ask for without breaking everybody else's bank when we finally set that date!