On the surface, it doesn’t seem like it would be a big deal, right? I mean, you say bride, you think ‘bridesmaids’.  What wedding photographer doesn’t have a plethora of pictures of a girl in white, smiling, with five other women of varying ages in a terrifying shade of coral, looking less happy? If you’re the bride, you’re meant to be surrounded by loads of female extras being feminine and cooing about appearance and hair and The Dress and flowers – that’s what the media show. But I had a big issue when it came to my bridesmaids. I have a lot of friends and they are’t all female, and lots of them are in different groups and some are in different countries. In the end, I have a family member (stepsister), my best mate (who lives in South Korea) and a bridesman.

Yup, that’s right. I’ve known Dan since I was 18 and he knows me almost as well as my fiancé, so screw it, he’s in my bridal party. I have a bridesman.  There are actually some great sides to this. For one thing, like my fiancé, he doesn’t drink, so he’ll be very helpful in negotiating the family tensions on the day when it comes to the group photographs. For another, he’s great at calming me down and getting me to remember to have some perspective. And he’s funny and can cheer me up when I’m stressed and grumpy.

Needless to say, my mother does not approve. ‘Why can’t he be part of Future Husband’s party?’ she wailed. It is seemingly ‘not done’ to have men in your wedding entourage if you’re a woman, I imagine because of women not having male friends in the same way in the old days, because, tradition implies, that would surely lead to romance.  (Although I have in fact slept with him. I am not revealing this fact to my mother.) A couple of other people have joked ‘Oh, in a dress?’ and I’ve just stared at them until they stop with their gender stereotyping.

The idea of just having your female friends is a lovely one but a little outdated when you a) know what sex is and don’t need your married friends telling you before your wedding night, and b) regularly talk to men without the worry that someone will see you and call you a strumpet. We’ve moved on as a society, haven’t we? It’s nicely balanced by the fact that Future Husband chose his sister as his best man. I love that our wedding party is made up of a mix of men and women on both sides.

It’s also nice to have an additional excuse for extra parties. I’ve always said I would have a Cock Party as well as a Hen Do. Future Husband is having a Doe Night as well as a Stag Do. Fine, we’ll segregate by gender but by god we’ll have both. It shakes it up from the normal alternative of one single party we could throw, but also means that I’m not just hanging out in a female-only group.

It’s not even that I’ve set out to be ‘controversial’ (my mother, yet again), it’s just that I couldn’t see how I could organise my wedding and not be non-gender biased. We have too many friends, male and female, to simply be that abrupt and schismatic.

• Lizzie is getting married in 2013 and has already planned roughly 5,748 weddings in her head. You can find more of her musings, wedding-themed reviews and rantings at Wedding Belles UK.

There are desperately predictable pickings over at Our Favourite Chemist, “feminine” monstrosities at the shop now sadly departed from the high street – although with this sort of blatant sexism, perhaps good riddance? These include the despressing Christmas staple of “girl” versions of items once considered gender neutral but now given the familiar make-over of normal is for men, pink is for women. Even the world of silly gadgets is not immune to this disease – pink, fluffy, heart covered, plushie, watered down and washed up doo-dads of every Barbie-filled nightmare haunt the screen.

Because otherwise women wouldn't know they were allowed to play computer games.

I’ve selected the girly items to avoid over-linking, but the ones for men are just as bad, though less eye-gougingly pastel. Department stores like Debenhams and Selfridges dole out the standard patter of perfume, chocolates, underwear, jewellery, handbags and ungents. (Expensive) stuff to eat and (expensive) stuff to wear. That’s what women want, clearly.

Now before anyone begins with the “But I am a woman and I like flowers/scent/bags/this maribou feather hat and gloves combo”. Yes. That is fine. Good. Carry on. There is nothing wrong with individuals liking things that are traditionally ascribed to their gender. Wearing pink does not make you a Bad Feminist (TM). But there is a whole heap wrong with assuming that someone must like those things because they are a woman. And that is just what is happening on the High Street right now. Millions of people are walking around choosing gifts sold to them under these headlines.

These are tropes so ingrained that it seems almost part of our social furniture. Girls get X and Boys get Y. Even at this time of goodwill to all, we seem unable to shake the idea that gender is biologically constructed and that our chromosomes deliver different desires so that shopping arcade Santas can conveniently wrap it all up in cis-tastic cerise and cyan. I appreciate that it is useful for businesses to be able to categorise gifts into different areas for ease of shopping, but this gendered nonsense has to stop. Not only is it reductive and ridiculous, it also makes the present less special, less unique to that supposedly unique person in your life because it’s just the same as what half of the population is supposed to want. Fortunately, for all of you frantic shoppers out there who unlike me probably have a family larger than four (yup, it’s just me, my parents and my brother) there is a solution. You could do what the biggest Christmas retailer has done and just browse by category. That’s right, Amazon, in a stroke of genius, have divided their goods up according to the type of item. Not For Girls or For Boys but, you know, For People. Who like things.

So I’ll be buying from them this year. And I suggest you do too.