Gozitan weddings tend to be quite an intense affair. Very frilly. Very American-like. You can’t be Gozitan and, say, get married without a wedding planner.

If you’re forced at gun point to star in a pre- or post- wedding video, please laugh and try to act in love...- Kristina Chetcuti

And the wedding planner will take care of minute details such as announcing with grand pomp the arrival of the couple at the wedding hall. He will also give directions to all the guests to stand about in a certain manner while waving goodbye to the honeymooners.

So it’s only natural that they take to the Las Vegas tradition of ‘Trash the Dress’ like duck to water. TTD is a style of wedding photography which makes an ‘artwork’ out of contrasting elegant clothing with odd locations such as city streets, rooftops, garbage dumps… whatever makes you tick.

A TTD video made-in-Gozo was the talk of town last week when Daphne Caruana Galizia uploaded a link to one of them on her blog. We tittered and we cringed as we watched the groom take off his wedding outfit – everything except his socks – and mock-frolic on the sand, then plunge in the sea with his new wife to ‘trash the dress’.

These pre-wedding acts are no news really. They started off over 20 years ago, as pre-wedding photo sessions where we’d have a couple at Għajn Tuffieħa beach looking pensively at the horizon and the groom-to-be gazing at his future wife while she looks away into the distance (andvice-versa).

Slowly, slowly the shoots metamorphosed into video with a Bryan Adams soundtrack. So we had the couple walking on the beach – still Għajn Tuffieħa; the couple engaging in a spot of slow-motion running; the couple standing at opposite ends of the beach and then running into each other’s arms; the boyfriend attempting to twirl his lady around; and then the ending with the couple drawing a heart in the sand. You’ve seen one, you’ve seen them all – very public displays of romantic cliché. But over the years the competition got stiffer.Pre-wedding videos started getting their very own creative storyline, as a Youtube search can attest.

Take Maroushka’s and Dione’s video. The couple gets out of the car to take a stroll down a countryside lane. “This is the perfect occasion to wear my eight-inch heels,” Maroushka must have thought that morning. Alas, the path is rocky. She has to hold her on to her fiancé’s arm for dear life until they reach the safety of a bench. There, they sit and he proposes. He flashes a smile.

The silver-capped tooth sparkles as he gives her the ring box. Cue close-up shot of… his thumb ring. Cut. Close up onto her sharpened, varnished nails. Cut. Close up on to the groom’s goatee, which looks like it has been neatly clawed by those nails. She accepts, I think, because then he tries to lift her up, in slow motion.

On to the next video, by Classic Image Studios. This one starts off, as you do, with a close up shot of the car wheel. Then the steering wheel. Then the wheel rim, the car bonnet, car boot and front wheel again. Finally we see the fiancée and her cleavage. She arrives, parks, gets out of car, wobbles on heels to the rocky beach.

The groom is, in the meantime, driving his car. His arrives, and parks next to his lady’s car. Gets out and… strokes her car. He takes ages to get to the beach. The girl gets out a Catherine Cookson book. She opens it. She packs it away. She gets out her camera. She switches it on. She switches it off.

Oops, she forgets to pack it away. Fiancé strides in shot, picks camera up and hands it to her. They look at each other. They gaze into nowhere for a long time. He strokes her arm (less fondly than the car). They kiss, uncertainly.

So what’s all this? It’s gone beyond the romantic cheese factor. Couples want to star in their own movie and post it online for all to see. But they’re so taken up by posing that they forget the real reason behind it, which I suppose would be to show the world how much they love each other. The sad truth is that these videos have only one common element: none of the couples ever look in love. Quite the opposite, I’d say.

Therefore, there are three important lessons to be learnt here.

1. Grooms – take your socks off before you frolic on the beach, but even more importantly, take them off when frolicking in bed.

2. Brides – heels are not for the beach or the countryside.

3. Both – if you’re forced at gun point to star in a pre- or post- wedding video, please laugh and try to act in love... and don’t post in online.