My wedding plans

I have recently found out about people with a learning disability and about the issue of forced marriage. I have also found out how people with a learning disability are affected by this. I believe that all people with a learning disability should be able to choose who they marry, if they want to get married.

Luckily for me, I have been together with my fiancé Mark Lawrence for 9 years and we are very happy together. 4 years ago, we decided to get engaged as we felt that we were at the right stage of our relationship to make decisions about our future together. We have had a long engagement and now we are counting down the months to our Wedding Day in May in 2013. There are only 9 months to go now until our big day!

We are going to have our legal marriage ceremony at a registry office. We are allowed to have 50 people sitting in the ceremony room and then we can have 10 people standing in the conservatory. We will be having a meal followed by a disco. I am looking forward to hearing the speeches, cutting the cake and having our first dance.

Mark and I met with a lady at the registry office a few weeks ago to have our notice of marriage meeting. She asked us lots of questions. At the end of the meeting we signed our notice of marriage form.

A few months ago I went to a wedding fayre to try and get some ideas for our wedding. They had lots of people there talking about photography, transport, entertainment, rings, cakes and table plan ideas. At the end of the day I had a big bag with lots of information to take home and read.

Earlier this year, my best friend Sally and I also went to look in wedding dress shops in our local area. I tried on some different style dresses and veils to see what would suit me. I wanted to have a long white dress with some sparkles on.

At the last shop we went to, I found a lovely dress that I really loved which I have now ordered. I felt like a princess in it!

On our wedding day, my niece Zora will be our flower girl and Sally will be our bridesmaid.

We have also got somebody to do our photos and our flowers. I recently went to New Covent Garden Flower Market to go and look at ideas for flower arrangements. There were lots of pretty flowers there and I chose some different colour flowers that I liked.

We have started to put together a guest list of all of the people that we would like to invite to the wedding. We want to invite our closest family members and friends. Our invitations will be designed. They will be sent out towards the end of January.

Over the next few months we will be making more plans, so we are going to be very busy!