Ben Weston, 31, lives at Gateshead Quayside and is a presenter on Century FM. In seven months time, he is getting married at Witton Gilbert, Durham. In the second of a regular series from a groom's eye view, he bemoans the differences between men and women

GIRLS are from Venus and men are from Mars, or so the ancient saying goes. I've never really got the gist of this rather bizarre observation, as girls are more likely to come from a far flung and as yet undiscovered planet called "ooh, is that a shoe shop?" and men clearly hail from the planet "no, your bum doesn't look big in that, now can we please go?" Presumably both planets are orbited by moons which are called Hollyoaks and Top Gear respectively.

Never is the gulf between the sexes more obvious than when a wedding is afoot, and mine is no exception. You may remember in my last column I was telling you how far away my wedding was. The date, May 31 next year, was clearly ages away, a small dot on the horizon, a far off pedalo bobbing on the Sea Of Denial. But now it's not quite so far away. Already shopkeepers across the land are getting ready to dust off their copies of Wonderful Christmas Time by Paul McCartney and before you know it next year will be upon us. Come in, pedalo number 11, your time is up.

So we push on with the planning and my opinions are sought on all kinds of things, but as every man will know, I might as well write my responses down in Egyptian hieroglyphics for all the difference it makes.

Should we have a venue or a marquee? A venue, I said, most definitely. So we're having a marquee. What kind of wedding cake, fruit or sponge? I hate fruit, I said, so sponge please. So fruit won the day. Presents or ask for money from the guests? Oh, definitely money, said I, then we can buy what we like. So presents it is then. If I'm ever famous enough to be pictured posing at home in pages of Hello magazine you'll recognise my kitchen from its 18 toasters and nine juicers.

The one thing that I am digging my heels in over is the wedding transport. Most wedding cars are white Rolls-Royces from the 1970s, and everybody knows the only people who drive about in white Rolls-Royces from the 1970s are scrap metal dealers and used car salesmen. The wedding car at the last wedding I went to looked older than the church, and it comes to something when the church roof is in better nick than that of the car in which you arrive. I'm sorry, but I don't want to turn up at my wedding looking like some sort of over-dressed Arthur Daley.

It's a well-known fact that girls don't know much about cars, which is why wedding cars are so awful. Girls describe cars by their characteristics rather than their names and the fineries are often, well, a bit lost on any car that isn't a Clio or a Mini. For example, I'm currently dreaming of a BMW 535d Sport, a very quick and capable saloon car, which if your car recognition skills aren't quite up to scratch is the big BMW with the headlights that look a bit like Mr Spock's eyes. Yes, that one. So upon showing a picture of the aforementioned £45,000 dream machine to one of our female newsreaders the only thing she could find to say was that it "looked a bit like a family car".

I give up. When's the next rocket to Mars?

* Ben Weston co-presents Scott and Ben's Big Breakfast on Century FM every weekday between 6am and 9am.