As a rule, weddings are great fun - unless they're yours.

With just five months to go before the Big Party (as I have dubbed my wedding day to make it seem more enjoyable), getting married is starting to feel more like a chore than a celebration.

But throughout the frenzy of never-ending dress fittings and hotel arrangements, I've kept my mind focused on the one thing that really matters.

I'm talking, of course, about the hen night.

Although I'm not really sure what it entails, I've been entertaining dreamy visions of free-flow frozen margaritas, Beyonce's Single Ladies on loud repeat, and - obviously - a line of buff male dancers all dressed up as policemen and firemen.

After all, now that gender equality is a given these days, there's nothing to stop men and women from making equal fools of themselves, right?

Naturally my fiance would have a stag night, too. I accepted that as matter-of-

factly as I assumed that male dancers all came in uniforms.

But the idea of a boys' night out featuring scantily clad girls at a sports pub did seem somewhat cliched and - pardon the pun - 'stag'nant.

My fiance's friends appeared to feel the same way. Since two of them are also getting married soon, they came up with a - well - 'stag'gering idea: Instead of having individual stag nights, the whole group of six friends would go on a stag trip to Cambodia.

It had a unique, adventurous and somewhat nerdy cool ring to it, sort of like a Judd Apatow-Seth Rogen movie.

A bunch of guys, free of their boyfriendly duties for one weekend, embark on what they think will be a riotous road trip, but actually turns out to be a life-

changing experience that transforms them into mature and sensitive human beings.

At least, that was the indulgent thought that ran through my head until I mentioned the stag trip plan to one of my colleagues.

Now, this colleague of mine fancies himself 'wise in the ways of this world'. Once he heard about the stag trip, he became extremely excited.

'That's such a good idea. Girls are so cheap in Cambodia,' he said.

After all, he reasoned, if you're going to a developing country to party like a king, you've got to have a harem.

From his extensive list of harem-related Internet bookmarks, my colleague sent me a link to a Cambodian tourist site. In the section on girls was the alarming line: 'Next to free, it does not get much cheaper'.

This was followed by explicit instructions on how to go about getting these bargain babes and equally explicit suggestions on what to do with them after that.

While I was goggling at all this, my colleague was busy doing calculations. It seems that for the amount of money it takes to persuade six girls (one for each guy) to spend an evening with you in Singapore, you can get 10 times that number in Cambodia.

'60 girls!' he kept saying, over and over again. 'You could fill a whole room with them! Literally! Body-to-body! 60 girls!'

Now he really, really wants to go along too.

I, on the other hand, was beginning to get worried. Was my colleague right? While I had been picturing the stag trip as a younger version of The 40-Year-Old Virgin, had my fiance been imagining Wild Things the whole time?

It is a conundrum every girlfriend faces. On the one hand, you want to be the cool chick who barely bats an eyelid at her man's adolescent shenanigans. But if you have any grip at all on reality, it's impossible not to be a bit anxious.

So, feeling about as cool as a cucumber in a microwave, I called my fiance for reassurance.

'Don't worry, honey,' he said. 'We're just going to hang out and have fun. If my friends all go drinking and looking for girls, I'll stay in the hotel and read my storybook.'

That made me feel much better, but also a bit ashamed.

While I had been focusing on my own fun all this time, my fiance had long worked out that eagerly planning a hen or stag night says something about the kind of wife or husband you're going to be.

So, I have toned down my hen night party plans. And my fiance and his friends have decided to go to Krabi instead, which I am happy to say does not feature in my colleague's collection of 'worldly wise' web links.

Now all I have to do is pack him plenty of storybooks - and maybe slip in a photo or two of me in a policewoman outfit.

This article was first published in The Sunday Times.