Thursday 19th August

After getting up at a slightly more civilised hour than yesterday and taking a brisk walk with the dog, ably wrangled by K's younger brother, we head up to the show field to help with the clear-up. Handed the rather fun rubbish-grabber-robot-claw thing, we are sent to make a round of the remaining tents across the show site, ensuring that any remaining rubbish is piled outside the tents in anticipation of the imminently-arriving bin lorry. It doesn't sound fun - but we have a laugh poking around in the oddly abandoned marquees, trying to get round the site before the dreaded rain returns and the truck arrives. We also spend a little time imagining how the bottom end of the field will look for our wedding reception, getting an idea of the size of the marquee we'll have and brainstorming all the little extras we want to have there on the day.

Today is to be pretty wedding-heavy, as we have booked in to view a couple of potential ceremony venues later in the day. When our clearing-up stint is done, we borrow K's dad's car and head to the nearby village of Shaftesbury (notable for the quaint and picturesque Gold Hill, where the Hovis adverts were filmed despite being amusingly non-Northern) to check out the town hall there. What we find is disappointing - despite the building being quite nice to look at, the inside is small and shabby; and frankly neither of us can imagine getting married and coming down some stairs, squeezing past the Stannah stair lift and walking out into a busy high street on a Saturday afternoon. Accordingly we write off Shaftesbury and the town hall idea, and head back to Gillingham for lunch.

Later, we pick up K's twin sister and head out into the countryside towards Chettle House, a country manor we found online and have an appointment to see this afternoon. We have directions printed from Google Maps, which, while very clever, aren't particularly useful when you're snaking around country lanes with no names – plus we're so far into the wilderness that while all of us have GPS-enabled phones, none of us can get a single bar of phone or data signal. After taking at least three wrong turns, we eventually decide to pull over and dig around in the boot for the road atlas – which turns out not to exist. Luckily, my phone briefly regains signal and I frantically use the GPS to work out where we are.

We finally pull into the tiny village of Chettle around half an hour late and work our way up the hill to the well-hidden Chettle House. The sun comes out just as we arrive, and it's instantly obvious what a great backdrop the house, built in 1710 by Thomas Archer, would make for wedding photos. We wander around the outside before meeting the owner and checking out the nicely-sized licensed rooms. With much to think about, I take a couple of photos and start to get a bit excited about the prospect of hiring it – just as I am sure K is.

Getting as lost as we did (and now realising that the house is far more accessible than we thought) set us back on seeing the second place – but after a forty minute drive to find it we're already fairly sure that this one will be a no. It's not only a long way, it's also down endless single-track lanes into the middle of nowhere; but we decide that we should go ahead and look around if only in the interest of comparison to the house we'd liked. The lady who meets us, along with her incredibly massive and lively lurcher puppy, is implausibly posh – she even says 'yah' with no hint of irony – but her house is, it has to be said, pretty beautiful, and the converted chapel section would definitely be a nice place to get married. Either way, we're not swayed in our decision and we head back to Gillingham still with Chettle House in our minds.

When K and I get a moment to ourselves, we talk seriously about getting this thing booked – we have almost exactly a year to the day we really want, and our research seems to suggest that a lot of places are getting booked up already. It's scary to think that we could have somewhere confirmed before we even go back to London – but it's exciting too.