The idea to marry myself came to me in January last year, when I was at work one day. Three weeks before, on Christmas Eve, I had received a text message from my boyfriend of five and a half years: “I can’t do this any more, it’s over,” it said. I was a 42-year-old with two children and I had already been divorced twice. It was devastating and left me in a funk, unable to eat, sleep or smile.

My ex used to say to me: “You can get married, darling, but it won’t be to me.” It suddenly struck me that he was right. I could get married - to myself.

While it’s not legal to marry yourself in any country, I’d read that growing numbers of people were having symbolic ceremonies to celebrate their single status.

An American woman named Linda Barker was the first person to do it, in 1993, but I became interested in ‘sologamy’ after watching a TV interview with Sophie Tanner. Her situation resonated with me: after a bad relationship, she wrote a novel about a sologamist called Happily. By the end of writing, she was so enamoured with the concept – and herself – that she decided to have a solo-wedding in Brighton in May 2015.