Sir Thomas Legg is getting married on Friday, so MPs will probably be organising a whip-round this week to buy him, say, a toaster or perhaps an ornamental duck house. If anybody doesn’t feel able to contribute, the happy couple will quite understand. MPs are naturally feeling the pinch after Legg ordered them to pay back some of their more lavish expenses claims.

The lucky bride is Margaret Wakelin-Saint. You might have seen her picture in the newspapers last week, thrust unwillingly into the spotlight beside Legg and looking slightly bewildered at the attention. Still, now is her chance. Fame is fleeting, Margaret (can I call you Margaret?). You should just have enough time to sign an exclusive deal with OK! magazine to cover the cost of the buffet and nibbles.

What unfortunate timing. Judging by the way Legg scuttled from the television cameras last week, he is a retiring sort of chap. The wedding will now be rather more public than he might have liked. So the couple will be kicking themselves for missing the obvious opportunity to wed quietly, without attracting undue attention. They should have joined the ceremony held by the Rev Sun Myung Moon, leader of what he calls the Unification Church and what everybody else calls the Moonies. Twenty thousand couples were joined in Moonie matrimony on Wednesday; one more would have been neither here nor there.

Inspired, perhaps, by the work of Cilla Black in uniting couples that have barely met, Moon loves a wedding. And you have to hand it to him. Organising the big day for one couple is tough enough. Imagine 20,000 brides’ mothers who’ve all discovered they’re wearing the same hat; 20,000 best men who’ve just slept with one of the bridesmaids for a bet.

Moon made his name in 1982 by organising a mass wedding for more than 2,000 couples in New York, his first outside Korea. He gathered his followers in a hotel ballroom, and then apparently matched them at random.

As a newly married Moonie, there were strict instructions about what you might get up to on your wedding night. Straight after the ceremony, they had to go back to their hotel rooms and beat each other on the bottom with large sticks to drive out the devil. Once they were sure the devil had left, perhaps beating their bottoms a couple more times to be absolutely sure, they were then allowed to follow the strict Moonie procedure for sexual intercourse: first the bride on top, then the groom.

I learnt all this from a Channel 4 documentary a couple of years ago, when somebody had the bright idea of interviewing couples from that 1982 wedding to see how many were celebrating their 25th anniversary. They found one, an American called Forrest Wright and his dour Dutch bride, Anna. Both seemed downcast and miserable and were staying together for the sake of their teenage son. “I love my wife,” said Forrest, “in the same way as I love my dog.” Forrest thought this was a compliment.

Does that remind you of anything? I do hope not. But there are marriages that end up this way without any help from the Moonies. And about 45% of British marriages end in divorce. So are Moonie weddings the outward show of a sinister cult, or just as good as a simple register office do?

The couples who married in 1982 had mixed motives. Some thought they were changing the world. Some were just lonely. Some weren’t too sure about their Moonie mate; others were lovestruck. At least there wasn’t a fight at the reception, and none of the brides was embarrassed when her waters broke at the altar.

The church claims it has modernised since those early days. Last week’s couples had all known each other for a few months and had met “several times” before the big day. From a culture in which a man and woman can meet for the first time at a dance and then make love in the car park on the way home, who are we to poke fun?

And I’ll bet you can marry a Moonie for much less than £21,000. That’s the average price of a UK wedding these days, if you believe what you read in The Daily Telegraph. If you believe the Mirror, it’s about £15,000 (although readers of the Daily Sport can get it all done for a bag of chips and a can of Special Brew).

What are the future Mr and Mrs Average spending all that money on? For £21,000, I’d expect the bride to be given away by George Clooney. I’ve been married twice and the total cost was nowhere near £21,000 (even though a bank manager once accused me of being a hopeless spendthrift).

The first wedding was conventionally lavish — church do, loads of guests, morning dress, reception, country hotel, honeymoon in Italy. The reception was held in my headmistress mother-in-law’s school hall, where my sisters-in-law did the catering.

The second was in Idaho, where we had to drive for miles past fields of potatoes to get a wedding licence. We got married in a romantic ski lodge setting with three guests, having taken half a day off from our holiday.

I thought our simple ceremony was romantic, but I’m well aware it might appear cheapskate. After the ceremony, we trooped off to a fancy hotel restaurant. On the way to our table, a fellow diner with a thick Brooklyn accent leapt to his feet. “Congratulations, congratulations,” he said, slapping me on the back. “Let me have a look at the ring.” He looked at the ring.

“My God,” he said to me, shaking his head and booming in a voice that carried across the entire restaurant. “Is this all you got her?”

Whichever way you marry, there’ll always be somebody who doesn’t think you’re doing the right thing, whether it’s the dress, the ring or even the bride or groom. Maybe a mass Moonie wedding is not so odd after all.

Jeremy Clarkson is away

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