My husband and I have just celebrated our first wedding anniversary. As we hadn’t been together that long before we decided to get married, we’ve now been married for longer than we were boyfriend and girlfriend.

The speed of our nuptials surprised me, not least because I had always been antimarriage in the past. Sure, I liked going to other people’s weddings — admiring the dresses and snaffling the canapés — but I always felt slightly superior, wondering why they had decided to opt for such a ridiculous ritual. We don’t need to be married in society to have a valid relationship. Nobody stops couples living together, buying property together or having children, regardless of marital status. I thought marriage was outdated and silly. Besides, how can you promise to love someone for the rest of your life when you could grow apart in so many different ways? Above all, I felt that marriage was in some way antifeminist.

I said as much to my now husband over dinner on our first date, when the conversation ranged across all the areas you should probably avoid on first dates: faith schools, voting preferences, children’s names, marriage. While I’m pleased that he listened to me rant about these issues, albeit with a twinkle in his eye, I’m also pleased that he didn’t take me so seriously as to believe I would never change my mind.

As our relationship grew, and it became obvious that we were serious about each other, the word marriage kept being mentioned. Despite my feminist instincts, I found the idea strangely attractive. So much so that instead of thinking about whether feminists should believe in marriage, the question I had to ask myself was: is it possible to have a feminist wedding? And I believe that it is.

The first feminist thing about our wedding was the nature of the proposal. I do not believe that men have to propose to women, but neither did I feel comfortable proposing myself. If he had said yes, how would I ever have believed he wanted it as much as me, rather than saying yes to keep me quiet? After many conversations about whether we would get married, and, in fact, after we had provisionally booked our venue, I insisted on a proposal. He duly went away and planned my nonsurprise, popping the question on a hill overlooking our beloved London, followed by a fancy dinner.

Asking my dad for my hand in marriage was not going to happen either. My dad, whom I get on with brilliantly, advises me on many aspects of my life, but I am a grown woman and he does not give me permission to do anything, just as I do not give him permission to do the things he wants to do.

When it came to the nature of the event itself, I was clear that I did not want to be given away — I do not belong to anyone. Obeying was out of the question. Nor did my fiancé and I spend the night apart before the wedding. We already lived together, so, as we were about to make a big public statement, who would be more comforting to be around than each other? We went out for another fancy dinner, walked along the Thames and congratulated ourselves on being so clever. The next morning we got a cab to the register office; we walked into the marriage room along with all our guests and took our seats at the front.

Needless to say, my dress was not white — no symbols of virginal brides for me. And the speeches? Well, there were five. My dad spoke, not for me but to say the things I felt unable to say without crying, like remembering the dead relatives who could not be with us. Then my best woman spoke, then my husband’s best man, then me, and then my husband.

I am not the only advocate of the feminist wedding. Jessica Valenti, an American feminist writer I admire, is getting married this summer. A founder of the feminist website feministing.com, she faced far more criticism than me for deciding to get married. She is definitely not what I term in my book, The Noughtie Girl’s Guide to Feminism, a Fumbie — that is, feminist until matrimony beckons. Fumbies are those women who forget about their feminist ideals the minute they get a ring on their finger and become a simpering bride, given away, obedient and letting men speak for them. Of course, no wedding can be truly feminist. In our own feminist wedding, did my husband and I check that it wasn’t only women making the food, or cleaning up the venue? No, we didn’t. Symbolically, at least, we felt our wedding was as feminist as it could be. Is our marriage as feminist as the wedding? Well, I hang out the washing most often and he tends to mow the grass. We fight over who puts the rubbish out. I write the greetings cards and he gets rid of the bugs. But we have our own names, our own identities and neither of us has more power in the relationship than the other. Our feminist wedding led to a feminist marriage, and, on the day itself,

I remembered the words of a former colleague. She had told me, many times, as I railed against marriage, this nugget of truth: “You won’t want to get married until you meet the man you want to marry.”

The Noughtie Girl’s Guide to Feminism by Ellie Levenson (Oneworld £9.99)

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