A mere fortnight after the word WAG entered the Oxford English Dictionary, Britain is witnessing the most WAGtastic festivities of all time.

Not one, not two, not three, but four Premiership and England footballing couples will be tying the knot this weekend: the Liverpool captain Steven Gerrard and the former nail technician Alex Curran; the Chelsea and England captain John Terry and the one-time beautician Toni Poole; the Manchester United midfielder Michael Carrick and the Pilates instructor Lisa Roughead; and the United captain Gary Neville and the student Emma Hadfield.

The unions will be solemnised at a range of venues from a Bolton bolt-hole to Blenheim Palace, at an estimated cost of well over £3 million between them. There appears to be little chance of any of the WAGS turning up in an M&S frock, and cheese and pineapple sticks are unlikely to be available.

Still, £3 million is small beer to mark that moving rite of passage when a WAG – the term is an abbreviation for football wives and girlfriend – upgrades from arm candy to the woman who gets the swag should all be less than victorious in life’s game of two halves. Meanwhile, the salivating public can roll its eyes while feasting them on a magnificently garish spectacle. For the many for whom football is a fashion parade with a little light running after the ball attached, the beautiful game will never have been more beautiful: for which read gloriously, rubberneckingly naff.

The tradition of June brides apart, why this weekend? Kirsty Mouatt, the editor of new! magazine, explains: “This is the ideal weekend for a WAG wedding, after the football season has ended and the weather is starting to heat up. If they get married now they can go off and have a nice long honeymoon before their partners are expected to be back for preseason training.”

The WAG wedding par excellence – before the acronym was even coined – was, of course, the historic Beckham nuptials in 1999. Mr and Mrs Posh enjoyed a famously tasteful affair featuring a Robin Hood theme, crimson thrones, a “royal” crest, and a fondant sculpt of bride and groom naked atop their cake. More recently, the semi-professional bride and sometime actress Elizabeth Hurley set a high bar when it came to wedding-as-self-aggrandisement, enjoying what seemed like several months’ worth of festivities.

The WAGs will no doubt be equal to the challenge. Terry and Miss Poole have cunningly secured the wedding planner to both Hurley and the Beckhams, Peregrine Armstrong-Jones, who may or may not have been responsible for the pair’s innovative snakeskin invitation envelope. Equally cunningly, they married yesterday rather than this most oversqueezed Saturday, at Blenheim Palace, the Oxfordshire ancestral home of Sir Winston Churchill.

The happy couple met while the groom was pursuing his YTS football training scheme. The bride – known as one of the more sophisticated WAGs – is thought to be marrying in Vera Wang. Her intended is believed to have chosen a cream Richard James suit, despite the derision when Liverpool appeared in cream Armani before their 1996 Cup Final defeat against Manchester United.

The pair have requested Harrods vouchers as gifts and are reported to have struck an exclusive deal with OK! magazine to the tune of £1 million (by coincidence, the sum the event is reputed to have cost). Lionel Richie is rumoured to be performing, and Roman Abramovich is expected to bless the couple with his presence, together with a honeymoon on his yacht. Other guests should include Terry’s Chelsea colleague Frank Lampard and attendant WAG Elen Rives; and Ashley and Cheryl Cole.

Gerrard and Curran will also grace the pages of OK!, and are predicted to play host to the glitziest guests with a three-day party at Cliveden, Berkshire, celebrated birthplace of the Profumo scandal. The celebrations, likely to cost the odd £750,000, will include supper at the Roux brothers’ Waterside Inn and an innovative private golf tournament.

Rumours regarding Curran’s dress abound, and it has been variously reported as being the work of Dior, Balenciaga, and the Lebanese designer Ellie Saab, whose trademark is to bespeckle her frocks with diamonds. All that the bride has confirmed is that, following fittings in Paris, she is “dead pleased” with her attire. Naturally, she will juxtapose her white number with a burnished teak tan.

The guests – featuring Liverpool stars, former as well as current, such as Michael Owen, Danny Murphy, Peter Crouch and Robbie Fowler, will party until the wee small hours, entertained by no less a luminary than Take That’s Gary Barlow on the piano.

The Tyne and Wear teen sweethearts Carrick and Miss Roughead will preside over the most touchingly low-key celebration, albeit that this is still expected to produce a bill of £500,000. They will marry at a church near Melton Mowbray, with a reception at Stapleford Hall. Frustratingly, these down-to-earth Geordies appear considerably more interested in cementing their union than in securing media headlines. Entertainment is to be provided by the bride’s brother’s band. The Tottenham striker Jermain Defoe and Carly Lucker, Joe Cole’s resident WAG, are expected to attend.

In contrast to this rather lacklustre display, Neville and Hadfield will be keeping the WAG flag flying with what is predicted to be the most exorbitant bash, at £1 million and-counting – no more than one would expect from the Beckhams’ best man. A ceremony at Manchester Cathedral will be followed by a stay-at-home do – albeit that home is a recently renovated £6 million estate in Bolton said to rival the much-vaunted Beckingham Palace. So desperate were the couple to show it off to family and friends that Neville employed 200 workmen around the clock to pummel it into a fit state.

Size is important and Neville can claim the weekend’s largest marquee, in addition to being reputed to have spent a cool £170,000 on his intended’s engagement ring, compared with Gerrard’s positively miserly £30,000. Once again, Vera Wang is expected to have taken responsibility for the dress, which will be set off by a decorous motif of red, white and black (Manchester United’s colours).

Neville’s close ally David Beckham is not expected to attend due to training commitments at Real Madrid, but may be represented by his Posh inamorata.

If such a punishing bout of glitz is exhausting merely to contemplate, one can only imagine the logistical nightmare for those attending. Indeed, the weekend has long been regarded as the ultimate etiquette nightmare for the footballing fraternity.

In a case of (really colossal) hand-bags at dawn, the Manchester United and England striker Wayne Rooney and his colleen Coleen McLoughlin have been under particular pressure: they are believed to have been invited to all four dos. The pair are rumoured to have opted for the Terry v Poole, and Neville v Hadfield playoffs, plus a late barbecue-based appearance at Carrick v Roughead.

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