Friday 20th August

After a couple of busy, early mornings, it's nice to have a bit of a lie-in today. K gets up and potters around with breakfast and I stay in bed reading more of Stewart Lee's addictive How I Escaped My Certain Fate – which is less a standard memoir and more of an analysis of Lee's distinctive and studious approach to stand-up comedy, focussing in particular on his return from self-imposed comedy exile between around 2001 and 2005. It also includes three annotated transcripts of his three stand-up shows from the period, which I'd recommend to anyone interested in the craft of comedy; something Lee is clearly obsessed with. It's also interesting, having recently read Richard Herring's How Not to Grow Up, to see Herring written about from the other side of the erstwhile double act. Spending the morning immersing myself in the world of stand-up is, quite apart from anything else, certainly putting me in the mood for my trip to Edinburgh this time next week – and I'm mentally taking notes of a few names to look out for when I find myself at the Fringe box office.

I eventually put the book down and get up to start the day. K and I, feeling that we've probably seen enough to know what we want to do regarding the wedding venue, decide to take a deep breath and get the whole shebang booked. After a bit of procrastinating in front of the telly, I finally muster the wherewithal to pick up the phone and call both the venue and the registrar – at which point I find out just how ridiculously quick and easy it is to book a wedding ceremony. By an odd coincidence, the date that we have in mind is exactly one year today - 20th August 2011. I pass this on to the nice lady at Chettle House and that's it, we're in. I then call the North Dorset registrar and after handing over a couple of basic details we're in there too. With little fanfare, the one-year countdown has begun. I wander back downstairs to tell K, everything feeling slightly surreal, and celebrate by playing a bit of Super Mario Kart on the Wii with her little brother. I can't think of a better (or more fundamentally childish) way to move on from probably the most grown-up thing I've ever done.

It's odd to think that, back when I first played Mario Kart on the SNES in around 1994, or when I sold my SNES to buy Super Mario Kart 64 in 1998-or-so (back when N64 cartridges cost £50!) that I'd still be happily lobbing green and red shells at anthropomorphic mushrooms on the day I booked my own wedding ceremony. But here we are.

The next order of business this afternoon is the second leg of our holiday: driving down to Cornwall to visit Matt and Ellie. This will be the first time we've been to see them since their wedding – and I'm looking forward to a chilled-out, boozy weekend in the depths of the countryside. The weather is looking pretty crap, as it has for much of August, so we'll likely be spending the majority of our time indoors – which suits me just fine.

We borrow K's parents' car and head off at around 2pm, aiming to arrive in Cornwall when Ellie finishes work. The journey goes smoothly, despite the complete lack of visibility over the moors as we enter the county, and we stop at the large Morrison's in Tavistock to stock up on booze and some gifts for our hosts. By the time we get to their amazing riverside cottage just outside the village of Gunnislake, the clouds are making it seem like a slightly wintery night-time – so we huddle in their cosy living-room and get involved in a few stubby beers and a couple of bottles of wine.

With the busy day and relatively long drive having taken it out of us, we don't last very long into the evening, but it's nice chatting about wedding-day and honeymoon plans with a couple who have recently been through it all and have some invaluable advice to offer. As one of K's bridesmaids (along with her twin sister, who has also joined us in Cornwall), Ellie is pleasingly eager to take part in all stages of the planning, which I know makes K enormously happy. We retire to bed shortly after midnight, a little wedding-ed out but looking forward to all the crazy plans the next 365 days will bring.