Jasper Hamill is allergic to marriage ... so who better to send to Scotland�s biggest wedding exhibition? With his girlfriend

HILLARY Clinton famously compared marriage to slavery, but based on the record attendance at this year's Scottish Exclusive Wedding Event, woman are all too eager to sell themselves into bondage. In fact, with the average Scottish wedding now costing £20,000, young lovers will be shackled to debt and paying off their big day for years to come.

Despite the brutal financial hit that budding brides and their grooms take, the Scottish Exclusive Wedding Event is bucking the recessionary trend of downsizing and is now one of the largest expos in Scotland, attracting over 125 companies to the Royal Concert Hall in Glasgow yesterday alone. It's also the longest-running event of its kind in Scotland.

Even though gender roles have shifted dramatically in recent decades, wedding days are still very much a female dominion.

Apart from a few down-trodden men, trailing on the heels of their eager partners, most attendees at this "exclusive" marriage event were women looking to make sure their wedding day was as special as it could possibly be, and willing to look at hundreds of dresses, listen to the auditions of five ropey wedding bands and contemplate cakes costing up to a grand.

The recession hasn't ruined Scotland's appetite for weddings, according to organiser Marlene Cunningham, a single, excitable woman with a wild tangle of thick black hair. This is the 16th marriage event she has staged and this time a record number of exhibitors have badgered her for a spot. With about 6000 people expected through the doors, she suggested marriage was as much in vogue as it ever has been.

She said: "Women are more in control of their wedding now and they are more discerning. Because they contribute half of the household income, brides have clear ideas about what they want and know exactly what they're looking for."

Her confidence in the wedding market was such that she decided to "take one step ahead of the doom and gloom" and invest heavily in the latest version of the show.

According to the staff of the many stalls at the show, business is booming. Most reported that the early parts of this year were quiet, but the summer has been busier than ever.

Most companies that cater to the huge wedding industry are small, which may actually make them able to cope better with changing economic circumstances.

I brought two very different 28-year-old women to the event in an effort to help draw back the veil on modern marriage.

The first, my girlfriend, is a bookish, chic and understated English teacher who is, I hope, committed and monogamous. The other, club promoter Fran Eastwood, is a self-described wild child: single, unwilling to settle down and flamboyant in both her sexuality and fashion sense. Both are cynical about marriage, particularly the neatly packaged, commercialised versions on offer at the show.

"I only know one happily married couple," said Eastwood. "But they're swingers. So perhaps that's the key to happiness. I think it's unrealistic to think that people can stay monogamous for ever. In fact, I don't believe in love and monogamy. Weddings are more about showing off your money and being the centre of attention for a day. It's like being the star of your own reality TV show."

Contemplating a wedding cake festooned with suggestively shaped flowers, she added: "Who would ever want to dress in white and spend hundreds of pounds on one of these cakes? If I ever got married, I'd want a cake with skulls on it, a black dress and Slayer as the band."

My girlfriend, who has a calmer outlook on life, said: "To most people of our generation, the sort of marriage on offer at this show is alien. Materialistic weddings just aren't romantic. All the money you spend on a wedding could be spent on holidays or getting a new flat. Why waste it on a wedding?"

Both were scornful of the cheesier aspects of wedding days, something clearly reflected this weekend by a showcase of bands called things like Riffreshing and Funktion Sweet, two of them taking it in turn to bleed the life out of Duffy's already anaemic hit Mercy and another turning Paul Weller's ballad You Do Something To Me into a smoochy mush, punctuated by farting saxophone solos.

These cliches may turn trendy women cold, but weddings are changing to cater to a new generation.

The dress colour that most Scottish brides pick has shifted from pure white to a duller ivory, perhaps reflecting the fact that virgin brides are a rarity at secular weddings. To hammer home this point, sexy brides-to-be are now able to get saucy photos of themselves taken by Beautifully Boudoir, who will either lend women lingerie or let them pose in the nude.

Seona Misumi, who runs Beautifully Boudoir, was standing by a large picture of herself in the buff, knees and arms carefully positioned to preserve her modesty. She explained: "Our pictures are gifts given to husbands by their wives-to-be. We can airbrush them slightly, but we never Photoshop women until they're barely recognisable. Women find our portraits empowering and men love them."

Regardless of changing tastes, couples are still queuing up - and saving up - to tie the knot. Lyndsey Tierney, 25, and her boyfriend Jamie Murphy, 23, are already planning for their own big day in 2011.

She said: "We'll be spending at least £20,000. Spending is a way of making the day special and showing your love."

He said: "I wouldn't have chosen to come here but it's good to be able to consider our choices. There's a lot of pressure to get things right."