Ben Weston, 31, lives at Gateshead Quayside and is a presenter on Century FM. In ten months time, he is getting married in a Marquee at a farm near Witton Gilbert, Durham.

In the first of a regular series from a groom's eye view, he admits to being vastly under prepared.

MY wedding is almost a year away. Around ten months to be exact. To most people, that's a fairly long time. By then, this year's X Factor contestants will be well on their way to earning their second star at a McDonald's Drive Thru, Louis Walsh will probably have been fired again, and very possibly global warming will have given Gateshead the kind of climate you'd normally experience in Kuwait City.

In fact, in that time, just to give you a bloke's perspective on things, the Boeing factory in Seattle will have built 30 737's, the Nissan factory in Sunderland will have churned out another 400,000 cars, and Apple will have made its 50 zillionth iPod. The Earth will have completely travelled around the sun, another Christmas will have come and gone, and I still won't have figured out how to wrap presents without them looking as though I'd asked Stevie Wonder to help.

In other words, May 31, 2008, the big day, is still ages away. I'll only concern myself with it about a week before, but that's because I'm me. I leave everything to the last minute. In fact, I'm lucky to be getting married at all because the night before our first ever romantic break (to Vienna as it happens), I lost my passport. Well, strictly speaking, I didn't actually lose it, as I didn't really know where it was in the first place, despite reassuring my girlfriend Sally that I'd simply put it somewhere safe. So safe, in fact, that we spent a weekend at the Hilton Heathrow - which, with its highly central position to all the runways I'd definitely recommend by the way, as you don't need an early morning wake up call to rouse you from sleeping, just a pair of ears.

But, I digress. So, because I'm a man I don't understand how the selection of a wedding dress becomes more important than world peace, or that the colour of the bridesmaids' dresses is a decision that needs to be run past more people than a referendum on the euro. Even the tiniest things, like the choice of first song at the disco, become agonising decisions.

I now know how John F Kennedy felt during the Cuban missile crisis in 1962. "Well Mr President, the Russians are sending some nuclear missiles on a ship to Cuba. We could stop them by force, but it might spark off World War Three and blow up the whole planet. Oh yes, and should it be Simply The Best or Nobody Does it Better to open up the disco?"

Fortunately for JFK, and the human race as a whole, the Cuban Missile crisis ended peacefully. Sadly just one year later, a rather ill-advised open-top limo ride through Dallas didn't end quite so well as the President was driven past the grassy knoll and into history. Just one year on from his triumph at staring down some grumpy old men in Moscow. One year. I've only got ten months. Actually, it isn't that long is it?

* Ben presents shows on Century FM on weekday afternoons between 2pm and 6pm, from 6-10am on Saturdays and from 1-4pm on Sundays.