I've been married twice but I HATE the whole bridal thing.

Sofia Vergara isn’t having bridesmaids at her wedding. She says she couldn’t choose between her massive coterie of cousins and best friends.

In my case, I didn’t want to choose bridesmaids because I honestly lack the bridal gene. In other words, I am not – and have never been – interested in the whole BRIDE thing.

The dress. The ridiculous stress of ‘perfect’ makeup and hair. The bridezilla reception planning. Calling it The Big Day actually gets on my nerves (there are many more bigger and better days, including a really good music festival). I never cut pictures from magazines in lieu of the event. In the same way my teenage sons don’t notice dirty dishes in the sink, bridal shops are and always have been invisible to me. It may as well be an empty space.

Why? I just don’t get it. Who wants to wear tulle? It’s not the '80s. Who wants to be stared at by dozens of near-strangers dying to share their opinion on whatever dress you do choose to wear? Does anyone stay sober enough to notice the flower arrangement anyway? And the food. It’s never what you really want is it? It’s not easy feeding 100 people all at once.

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Even a small wedding sends the bride into a spin, as though no other day would ever match this one. Ever. And of course, it will. It is not at all an indicator of how successful the marriage will be and never has been. So why bother with the stress and the cost? Why morph into an idiotic woman you don’t even recognise?

This is not something I admit to many people. Only one other woman of my era has ever agreed on the few occasions I have ever dared to bring it up.

Click through the gallery below for unseen pictures from Prince Charles and Princess Diana's wedding.

I know they will say it’s because it’s such a big moment, getting married. That you do it for your family and friends. It’s a celebration. That you only get to do it once (I’ve done it twice, thank you very much).

But I suspect it’s such a big deal because we’ve all been fed the story that this is what women are supposed to do. That if we don’t want a ‘proper’ wedding, with the bad food, the cringey band or heaven forbid, a DJ, the mind-numbing speeches, the cheesy waltz.

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If we don’t turn into the protagonist in a bad American rom-com (à la My Best friend’s Wedding) then we are letting the female team down. We are meant to squeal when we find our favourite dress on sale. We are meant to force our bridesmaids to spend countless hundreds on mani-pedis, champagne, daggy hairstyles and ankle-slicing stilletos.

It’s not that I didn’t want to get married. I wanted a wedding of some sort. But did I have to be a bride? And let’s not forget, the word bridesmaid is well and truly outmoded.

In fact, now that I’ve said that, I’d much prefer a maid. And not just on my wedding day.

Now that would be something to celebrate.

Do you lack the 'bridal gene'? Let us know in the comments...