JUST when you thought the shelves couldn't take yet another wedding magazine. All those blushing brides... expensive dresses... mothers' hats. There surely is a limit. Well, yes, there probably is - which is why the cover of the latest wedding magazine features a groom and best man, cigars and champagne bottles and a distinct air of drunken revelry.
The name's a bit of a give-away too. Stag and Groom. Yes, it's a wedding magazine for men.
Traditionally, the groom's main contribution to the wedding has begun and ended with turning up on the day, wearing what he was told, having invited who he was told, and leaving all the arrangements to his bride and her mother.
Not any more. Weddings being such incredibly fancy affairs these days involving serious sums of money - £25,000 is the latest estimate - that you can see why no possible avenue of profit will be left unexplored.
And money is a recurring theme through this magazine. "Men are getting married later in life. The average age of a bridegroom is 31, which means prospective husbands are getting landed with more and more of the cost of the wedding," writes editor Dominic Bliss justifying the new magazine. "When you're picking up the tab, you want to know exactly what's going on."
And just in case you were still worried that worrying about weddings was all a bit girly, they've got the right image for you. "Look upon this magazine as a wedding toolkit, a manual with step-by-step instructions."
Which means lots of toys for the boys.
True, there are lots of rather beautiful young men modelling rather beautiful suits. But the real action comes under the heading of "Reclaim the wedding list". Forget the china, the towels and the cordless kettles, instead, they say, try asking for an Apple iMac, a £900 digital camera, a robot vacuum cleaner, games consoles, a sea scooter or a 50in plasma TV.
And you thought you were marrying a grown-up?
And you just know that when the headline says: "The beginning of a beautiful relationship", that it's going to be about classic cars.
Then there's the stag night. Oops, no sorry, the stag weekend. No, sorry again - it's now called "the stag event" - and begins to look suspiciously like a man's only reason for getting married. Perish the thought. Whatever it is, the planning of it takes up a very large chunk of this magazine. Nice to know where his priorities lie.
But in among all this rampant consumerism there are a few really useful nuggets. A particularly good one is all about the speeches - practically a step-by-step, line-by-line guide for men who can bellow cheerfully across a crowded bar but go completely tongue-tied in polite company.
So will men buy this magazine for themselves? Of course not. Will their brides-to-be buy it for them? Quite possibly - if only to get them more interested in the wedding arrangements.
But if you're buying a copy for your groom, here's a tip - keep the bit about the speeches and rip out all the pages to do with cars, video games and far-flung drunken stag events.
After all, you don't want him to get any daft ideas that it's his wedding too.
* Stag and Groom, the wedding manual for men £4.
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