Wedding gels

For bride Catrina, it's not so much walking down the aisle as pulling a very heavy weight down the aisle. Her wedding dress is so big and heavy it must be like wearing an outfit decorated with bags of sugar.

This "mother of all wedding dresses" cost an awful lot of money. No one's saying exactly how much, but the bill runs into thousands of pounds, on account of the 5,000 crystals sewn into the bodice and dozens of underlayers of skirt.

I just hope she didn't overhear anybody saying she resembled one of those fancy toilet roll holders.

Getting Catrina and her dress through doors and into the wedding limo is like a scene from a comedy film. And she can't even have a drink on the way to the church bacause, as a traveller bride, she has to be sober as she drags herself down the aisle.

She's one of five teenage brides featured in a programme that tells us getting married is going out of fashion. Thirty years ago more than 100,000 girls got married every year. This year just 4,000 teenage brides will tie the knot.

They are all willing brides, even Ayisha, who got engaged when she was ten. Her fiance missed the engagement party as he was serving in the Pakistani army.

He arrives for the wedding - she's now 18 - on her last day at school. He was chosen for her by her parents and, when she was 16, had a traditional wedding in Pakistan. Now they're getting wed in this country and become a proper married couple. She's going to university to train to be a doctor and he's going with her to support her and it means he won't have to live with the in-laws.

Ayisha points out that hers was an arranged, not a forced marriage. "I feel my parents made the right decision," she says. "No one forced me to marry at 16. I wanted to."

Naeden, 17, is getting married earlier than she and fiance Ricky planned as she's pregnant with twins. The wedding is a month before they're due. Although he proposed at 15, they envisaged a long engagement. The pregnancy "helped us speed it up".

While Naeden leaves her hen party early, Ricky's stag do continues until dawn. "I don't want to get up," he grizzles as she tries to prise him out of bed on their wedding morning.

"You smell of alcohol, get up and have a bath," she tells him. Not a very promising start really, although the final shots of them as a married-with-children couple look the perfect picture of domestic bliss.

Kayley is 18, her second-hand car dealer husband Phil is 50. They love being the odd couple, although it's meant a rift with her family. They drive around in a hearse - no explanation was offered - and have a coffin for a coffee table. "We never have a day we don't have a laugh," says twice-divorced Phil. I imagine you need a sense of humour to have a coffin in your living room.

She says it's nice to be different, pointing out that her stepdaughter is older than her and Phil is older than his mother-in-law.

They met in church. She was intrigued, thinking: "I want to know more about this guy". He thought she had "a cute arse". That says it all really, doesn't it?

Soldier Nick, 18, has no doubt why he's marrying 17-year-old Lauren. He loves her and wants to spend the rest of his life with her.

Her mother, Julie, is all for it. "It's obvious they're happy," she says. His mother, Emma, thinks they're too young. "But whatever you say, they're going to do it."

By the end, all the couples look happy and contend that they're in it for the long haul. But narrator Pauline Quirke spoils the party by informing us that one in ten teen marriages ends within two years.

Now we can all play a guessing game as to which of the couples will still be together in a few years' time.