It’s the early hours of Sunday morning, and I am being kicked awake. I’m lying on an unfamiliar bathroom floor. It’s dark and disorientating. The kicking continues.

I am told to get off the floor, stop being naked, and get into a more suitable place for sleeping. I still don’t know where I am.

The next morning, over a hearty hotel breakfast, I venture the opinion that it was a good night.

I had eventually woken up in a bed, and in a state of appropriate night-wear. I vaguely remembered getting into that bed, but requiring some assistance to stop the room rotating. Putting my forehead on the bathroom sink seemed the best option, followed by a quick lie down on the en-suite bathroom floor.

Well, it’s not surprising, really. I don’t get out much, these days. This was the occasion of my friend’s wedding, at which I was doing the best man honours. Actually, it was his second wedding, and I was being his best man for the second time.

Weddings are funny things. They are a passport to a sudden relaxation of normal rules. Drink is available and flowing freely at hours of the day that you wouldn’t normally start on the hard stuff, but because you’re at a wedding you think it’s okay to fill your boots.

Well, maybe that’s just me.

Weddings also make you go all misty- eyed and romantic. Here come the happy couple, embarking upon life’s rich and sometimes tempestuous journey together. And then we start to look at our own journeys through life.

And... hmm. Perhaps, just perhaps, I could have handled some things a bit better. All that advice I gave to the happy couple in my speech, maybe I should take some of it myself.

I resolve to be a better married person, right there and then, as I sit down after giving my speech. I will be more attentive and stuff like that.

Right after this next drink. Or the next one. And, before you know it, I’m sitting on the edge of the bath in a hotel room, my forehead on the cool porcelain sink, thinking that it would be a great idea if I was to lie down on the floor, completely naked, just for a couple of minutes.

And then I’m being kicked awake and suddenly I realise that my opportunities to be that better person, that more attentive husband, have probably slipped by me – for this night at least.

Maybe you can’t teach an old dog new tricks. Or maybe that’s what us old dogs say because we think we can’t change our ways, when we know we really can.

Weddings are funny things, like I said. They’re not real life. They’re a strange little bubble in time where normal rules don’t apply... until the next morning. But while the bride and groom walk away with a toaster and fistful of M&S vouchers, perhaps we – and by that I mean me – can bring back a whole lot more.