"I won't have to organise a drunk and debauched hen night though, will I?"

She reassured me. She knows me too well to ask me to do such a thing. She is, after all, my closest sister; both in age and in attitude. We have had spooky, twin-like experiences in the past: independently buying Bath buns on the same day (Bath buns not being an everyday sort of purchase); dying our hair red on the same weekend whilst in different countries and then there was that occasion where we were "taping the charts" on a Sunday night (that's growing up in the eighties for ya) in separate rooms. We started taping the new single by Sting but, halfway through, we both decided independently that we didn't like it, stopped and rewound our tapes in readiness to tape over it.

It both was and wasn't a surprise when, last week, she tentatively asked me to be her bridesmaid. I had already congratulated her on her engagement with the comment that, despite being an old cynic about weddings, I had become a little teary on reading her news. And no, they weren't tears of laughter at the fact that her partner proposed via a note attached to their dog's collar. On the contrary, I was delighted by the originality.

She was concerned that my cynicism would prevent me from accepting her offer. Having discussed with her on numerous occasions those wedding elements which make us both froth at the mouth and having received her assurance that there would be no wedding list (for example), I reassured her that I wouldn't be cynical about *her* wedding.

I think perhaps that being a bridesmaid will actually be preferable to being a bride in my case. I get to wear a posh frock, but without having to be the centre of attention.

And so, in a year-or-so's time, I will be a bridesmaid for the first time at the tender age of 35.

That should give me just enough time to decide what to wear...