Confession: "I plan to forcibly fake-tan my groom.”

“Confession: I’m trying to force my groom to fake tan before our wedding.”

For my entire year-long engagement, I’ve been a Zen Bride.

The seating plan drama that everyone warned me about never eventuated; I chose my dress by myself, with no tears or fanfare; and I flat-out refused to diet before the wedding.

Yep, I was firmly in the homemade-bouquet, garterless, last-minute-vows camp of fuss-free bridal bliss.

But now my day is a mere week away now and it’s happened, it’s finally happened: I’ve officially become an Anti-Zen Bride. And the focus of my newfound laser-like bridal focus?

The colour of my groom’s tan.

Here’s how my descent into the depths of this bridal obsession evolved.

With the prospect of 12 hours’ worth continual paparazzi-type photography over the course of the wedding day looming, I finally caved last weekend and spent a solid day doing all the bridal preparation that magazines have been yelling at me to sort out for a year now: Trims! Tone! Scrub! Pluck! Wax! Lunge! I got sucked in to the whole bridal shebang, spending the equivalent of a Bali mini-moon on becoming as blonde and white-teethed and sheeny as Britney Spears circa 1998.

But after all that scrubbing, spraying and squatting, I had a realisation: next to my newly buffed self, my rather pale and unkempt husband-to-be might appear as something of a Peter Doherty to my Kate Moss in our wedding photos.

In other words, I wanted my groom to match my freshly-scrubbed look. And I decided that if I was going to be the colour of walnut as we said our vows, then dammit, my new husband would be too.

And so the proverbial seed was sowed.

Related content: Why you shouldn’t buy a cheap imitation wedding dress online.

The suggestion that my groom should procure a fake tan before the wedding started as a half-joke: after my weekend of grooming, I glanced down at my tanned hand clasping his Casper-coloured forearm and quipped, “you’d better get a tan so we match.”

He nervously chuckled, and we went back to wordlessly watching Jersey Shore. (Or so he thought: I was actually trying to determine if those guys achieved their deep tans solely through solariums, or whether the safety and convenience of a self-tanning lotion was a realistic option.)

The next night, I convinced my partner to spot-test my fake tan on his torso in a quest to convince him of the subtle magic of St Tropez Bronzing Mousse. (“They make them very natural these days,” I reassured him eight or nine times. “Men use them all the time.”)

The next day we ceremoniously inspected the spot and he conceded that no, it wasn’t as orange as he’d feared.

But much to my disappointment, my future husband still refused to succumb to my bridal wishes.

Related content: “The bridal industry is THE most pretentious industry ever.”

“I want to look like myself at the wedding,” he griped.

“You will look like yourself. Just the best version of yourself,” I implored.

“But I don’t even tan on holiday, so it actually won’t look natural at all,” my partner snapped back.

I pointed out that if all went to plan, I would certainly not be looking “natural”; In fact, I’d be looking more like Katherine Heigl’s younger sister than myself. (I mean, when did anyone aim to look natural on their wedding day?)

Then I consulted Google  — and when one study revealed that 13 per cent of grooms had invested in a fake tan for their wedding, my semi-casual interest in “grooming my groom” escalated to a full-blown obsession.

So I tactfully placed a bottle of tanning product on my fiance’s pillow. And when he promptly removed it and went to bed as unslathered as ever, I directly confronted him about the importance of matching tans on our wedding day.

Related content: “I’m an anti-Bridezilla.”

Now, with just days looming before our wedding, we’re officially in a Fake Tan Stand-Off.

On the one side of the tanning booth-shaped chasm in our relationship, he maintains that he has sensitive skin and doesn’t want to risk breaking into flaky welts in the days before the wedding.

Meanwhile, it’s crossed my mind that I could gently rub some lotion onto his unsupecting, prone body as he slumbers beside me. (We wouldn’t even have to tan his whole body – just the face, neck and hands and he’d barely know the difference…)

My fiance maintains that he’ll be mocked by his groomsmen if they find out he’s been tanning.

I insist that his crisp white shirt will look a hell of a lot better against a sunkissed skintone.

Some may say that I need to step veeery sloooowly away from the Bronzing Mousse before I do something I regret.

But I’m not ready to give my bridal obsession up just yet, and I need your advice:

Would your ask your partner to tan before a wedding? Is it ever okay to insist they do?