“What's your theme?” asked the florist who will be doing my church flowers, who also doubles as my mum's best friend. Six months ago that kind of question would have been met with an embarrassed silence, a vacant, nonplussed look, very possibly a nervous joke about tarts and vicars. Only, on this occasion, in my new-found spirit of bridal confidence, I came straight out with it: "Countryfied elegance", I replied, in the manner of someone who has inadvertently swallowed a bridal magazine. "Think city meets country." "Very nice," cooed Coralie, without batting an eyelid. "So you want rustic abundance, but with a sophisticated twist?" "Precisely," I said, trying not to catch my sister's eye, for I could tell she was trying hard to suppress a smirk, plus she had a quizzical: "Where the hell did she learn to talk like that?" expression written all over her face.

Alas, I am falling into the trap of brides the world over. Against my better judgment - and to the quiet, yet evident horror of my future husband - I am starting to talk the talk, to grasp this language they call bridalese, and what a curious ideolect it is. Take H2B*. I'd like to think that I'm a reasonably switched-on person, but I don't mind telling you that it took me a good few minutes to work out that it wasn't pencils these brides were banging on about in their online wedding chat rooms (stumbled upon in the name of research, you understand -and not a place for the fainthearted).

Favours are another favourite. Now clearly we're not talking the sexual variety. Favours, as anyone who has ever been to a wedding and had something other than food and wine laid on their table knows, are the tiny, thank-you-for-coming keepsakes by which to remember the happy couple: a box of sugared almonds, a monogrammed candle or bar of organic chocolate, even a jar of homemade honey, as I saw in one magazine the other day (lovely, but who has the time to make and bottle her own honey for each of her guests? It's as much as I can do to make sure there's food on the table on the big day).

And then there's bridal showers (a horrid American invention, not to be encouraged), centrepieces (table flowers, to you and me), wish lists, flower girls, croquembouches, the processional, the recessional, blusher veils, save-the-date cards and a whole slew of other wedding-related words that I had no idea existed before I got engaged. Like the German vocab I learnt at school, I imagine it's a case of "use it or lose it". I'm hoping that by the time I celebrate my first anniversary, I'll have lost it for good.

* Husband to be - but, of course, you knew that.