What wedding dress?

According to those pesky all-pink-and-white wedding magazines and their never-ending glossy pages of checkbox-packed lists it is now officially time to start looking for my wedding dress.

Not only have they told me this but they've also screeched (not literally of course, that's just how I imagine they speak) that this is "the fun part" and that there will be "literally hundreds to choose from".

Is it wrong that this terrifies me? Anything that's lauded as "fun" sets me on edge anyway (it's what people say about karaoke and I hate karaoke) but it's the sheer range of choices that I know I am about to be presented with that really has me breaking out in a cold sweat.

I tend to make decisions fairly rashly it has to be said. If someone calls with a last-minute invite I'm there in a flash, I take on large work projects without knowing fully what's involved and I normally buy clothes on impulse on unplanned Tuesday afternoon pre-drinking shopping sprees. Making a premeditated purchase after scouring magazines and websites and visiting numerous boutiques to try endless options is not very, well, me.

Which leads me to my other problem. What kind of dress is "me"? There are strapless and halterneck, scoop neck and square neck, cap sleeves and cape-sleeved, knee-length and floor-length, off-white and almost-white, retro and cutting-edge, informal and formal...the list goes on and my head starts spinning. I tend to think of myself as someone who's reasonably up on fashion but this is a whole new world, one with its own language and rules and which until now has remained totally off my radar.

So, how will I know what to choose? Will I even end up in the right shops? And most importantly, is it likely to be any fun? I guess I'm about to find out...

Hedonism v hiking: what is a honeymoon?

Doug and I have just got back from a three-week trip to Peru which, before flying out, had been labelled a "holiday". We arrived on the Tuesday and by the Friday (and our third pre-6am wake-up call in a row) this was no longer a word I was able to utter without a wry laugh to myself (yes, some people thought I was a loon but that's the beauty of travel, the next day they were gone).

Having abandoned all hopes of lazing, lounging or generally sleeping in past 9am, by the time we began the Inca Trail I was enjoying my "trip" and getting into the swing of every-other-day relocations by bus, train or plane and the resulting almost-alcohol-free early nights.

So imagine my surprise when one couple in our walking group casually unveiled the H word. Yes, they were on honeymoon. In a tent. Wearing thermals. Carrying walking poles. I was aghast.

Now I should qualify that I don't believe in fly 'n' flop travel and won't be sunning myself in the Maldives for a week post-wedding while someone brings me cocktails and fans me with palm leaves. However, I do think that a honeymoon should be relaxing, at least a bit luxurious and generally focused on romance rather than roughing it.

Planning a wedding is a full-time job which, more often than not, has to be fitted around an existing full-time job, it's stressful, involves mothers and mother-in-laws and usually results in at least one minor break-down at some stage. Therefore, surely recuperation should be the name of the game when it comes to boarding that first flight as Mr and Mrs?

But perhaps I'm barking up the wrong tree. With travel increasingly accessible (and affordable) most brides and grooms have seen a fair portion of the world, be it together or separately, before the wedding – so is the honeymoon actually about exploring thusfar-undiscovered territory together? Is adventure more important than battery-recharging?

The average honeymoon now costs £3,860 which seems like a hell of a lot of money to spend on a trip which simply involves being horizontal (whether on a sun lounger or, ahem, elsewhere) so are there actually thousands of couples heading off on similarly adventurous honeymoons? And if so, why do we never hear about them? Every wedding magazine I've picked up in the last six months has focused on sun, sand and sea destinations usually found in either the Caribbean or the Indian Ocean. They are so samey and so obviously irrelevant to me that I actually skip the travel pages – and I'm someone who subscribes to at least five monthly travel mags.

Personally I'm planning a honeymoon which falls nicely between the two extremes: there won't be any hiking but there will be adventure, and although I don't intend to spend every waking moment on a sun lounger, we will be sitting on a beach, cocktails in hand, at least for the first day. Planning the honeymoon is every bit as personal as planning the wedding, and it requires exactly the same level of research, organisation and consideration – so why is it so often an afterthought, shoved to the back of the bridal magazines and relegated to last-minute decisions and pin-the-tail-on-the-map randomness?

Perhaps it's only this important to me. Am I the only bride pouring over travel guides and world maps just as much as dress advertising and floral arrangements? Or has the humble honeymoon become almost as important as the wedding?