The footballers came in two by two, hurrah, hurrah.

A bumper weekend beckons for watchers of WAGS and their sponsors, aka fiancés. For, a mere fortnight after the word WAG (an abbreviation for the sport’s “wives and girlfriends”) entered the OED, Britain is lining up for the most WAGtastic festivities of all time.

Not one, not two, not three, but four Premiership footballing couples will be tying the knot this weekend: Liverpool captain Steven Gerrard and former nail technician Alex Curran; Chelsea captain John Terry and one-time beautician Toni Poole; Manchester United midfielder Michael Carrick and Pilates instructor Lisa Roughead; and Manchester United captain Gary Neville and his student bride-to-be Emma Hadfield.

The four will do the deed at a range of venues from a Bolton bolthole to Blenheim Palace, at an estimated cost of well over £3 million between them. It is safe to say that there is little chance of any of the WAGS turning up in an M&S frock, while cheese and pineapple sticks are unlikely to be on the menu.

Still, £3 million is small beer to mark that moving rite of passage when a WAG upgrades from arm candy to the woman who gets the swag should all go pear shaped in life’s game of two halves (not least should she herself be the pear-shaped object in question).

Meanwhile, the salivating public can roll its eyes while feasting them on a magnificently garish spectacle. For the many for whom football is a fashion parade with a little light running after the ball attached, the beautiful game will never have been more beautiful: for which read gloriously, humdingingly, rubberneckingly naff.

The tradition of June brides apart, why this weekend? These sporting romances may have been written in the stars, but the timing of their nuptials is considerably more prosaic. The oracle on such matters, Kirsty Mouatt, editor of new! magazine explains: “This is the ideal weekend for a WAG wedding, after the football season has ended and the weather is starting to heat up. If they get married now they can go off and have a nice long honeymoon before their partners are expected to be back for pre-season training.”

The Platonic form of WAG weddings - back when WAG was but an acronym waiting to happen – was, of course, the historic Beckham nuptials in 1999. Mr and Mrs Posh enjoyed a famously tasteful affair featuring a Robin Hood theme, crimson thrones, a “royal” crest, and a fondant sculpt of bride and groom naked atop their cake. More recently, semi-professional bride and sometime actress Elizabeth Hurley set a high bar when it came to wedding-as-self-aggrandisement, enjoying what seemed like several months’ worth of festivities.

The WAGS, however, can be relied upon to rise to the occasion(s).

Terry and Poole have cunningly secured the wedding planner to both Hurley and the Beckhams, Peregrine Armstrong-Jones, who may or may not have been responsible for the pair’s innovative snakeskin invitation envelope. Equally cunningly, they marry today rather than this most over-squeezed Saturday, at Oxfordshire’s Blenheim Palace, ancestral home of Sir Winston Churchill.

The happy couple met while the groom was pursuing his YTS football training scheme.

The bride - known as one of the more sophisticated WAGS, if this is not too oxymoronic a concept - is thought to be marrying in Vera Wang. Her intended is believed to have chosen a cream Richard James suit. The Chelsea captain has ignored the universal derision that greeted Liverpool's appearance in cream Armani whistles before their 1996 Cup Final defeat against Manchester United.