That's £1,695 pounds of festive!!

So today we followed up on yesterdays wedding dress shopping activities, this time heading up toward the mega stores on Oxford Street.

We visited M&S who had a very large, and very reasonably priced selection of both wedding and formal dresses but no joy.

We next stopped in at Selfridges where from the escalator Marielle spied a dress she fancied. We took a closer and encouraging look - style was grand and the colour superb. Everything appeared great.

"Ok?" I asked.

"This one is perfect" Marielle commented while rubbing the fabric and critically examining the style. "Very festive" she concluded.

"Festive?" I asked, playing with the verb. "How festive?"

Marielle, looking at the price tag, suddenly frowned. "It costs one thousand, six hundred and ninety five pounds!"

"Whoa" I agreed. "That's a lot of festive". She carefully replaced The Festive Dress.

Ok, let's stop here.

Of course we could afford The Festive Dress but in yesterdays episode we'd decided not to spend so much money on a dress she'd more than likely only wear once.

Possessions vs. experiences once again. Possessions age, become worn out or obsolete and just clutter up your life. Get too many possessions and you don't own your possessions, your possessions own you.

But spending money on an experience is something completely different. We both feel that experiences are worth spending money on. We're flying to Vegas first class. Staying at one of the best hotels on the strip. That experience is something we can never lose, will never become old, and can never be taken away from us. That experience will last both of us the rest of our lifes. So experiences are clearly worth spending money on. But possessions? No.

Anyhow, the story had a happy ending as we stopped in at Debenhams and Marielle found a perfectly wonderful evening dress to get married in.

It cost only about 5% of the Selfridges offering but will be 1000% more festive.

So the current plan is for her to return to Holland with this dress and get it tailored as needed to improve the fit. Shoes are next on her agenda, but these carry a much lower priority as baby needed the dress first! Also shoes will be much, much cheaper in Amsterdam (sidenote: I've been purchasing my shoes in Amsterdam since 1998, long before I met Marielle and the exact same pair I'd pay £80 for here in London only costs about 40 Euro there - go figure). Finally, with her help I'll find a cumberbund and bow tie for my tux that will better match her dress.

But it was a good, very productive and successful day. Another, one of the few remaining critical path items has been removed from our wedding planner.

We rewarded ourselves with French crepes and smoothies for lunch.