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Any soap wedding episode which dawns with the line "It's going to be a perfect day" from one of the intended is demanding trouble.

But Shortland Street's union between lesbian lovelies Jay and Maia went off with barely a hitch. It was a disconcerting performance from the genre which has made major trauma at the altar an art form.

The ceremony joining Jay and Maia in the eyes of the law, if not the Lord, was as almost as tasteful and discreet as the subdued nuptials between Prince Charles and his once illicit lady love, Camilla Parker Bowles.

The similarities were striking from the quiet pastel frocks, to the classical music, to the gaps in the crowd where disapproving family members should have been, plus the girls' very own bunch of protesters.

Even these Christian church members, decked out in white T-shirts sporting the church logo "Serenity", were on the pallid side.

They came across more as slightly upset, new-age Jeanette Fitzsimons' supporters than angry God-botherers.

The Destiny Church could have taught these preservers of family values something about projecting outrage and power dressing.

Such a pathetic protest would have merely been fuel in the tank to your good old-fashioned lesbians, the sort who were proud to be dykes on bikes.

Your traditional boilersuit and crewcut wimmin were made of much sterner stuff than modern-day soap-opera gay girlies.

Instead of threatening to give the placard wavers a good kicking, Jay and Maia were going to run in fright. It wasn't until Mum reminded them what brave girls they were, that they decided to go ahead. Talk about wavering commitment.

The anti-gay marriage crusaders were good for something, however, finally putting a bit of pep in the storyline of bad girl Claire's boring liaison with a chaste member of the Squares'n'Prayers brigade. Hopefully she'll give the saintly Baxter the boot and start losing her self-respect again, pronto.

Meanwhile, the testosterone party at the wedding were allowed only a small amount of macho muttering in the background.

"She's cute enough, she should be able to get a man," opined blokey Eti about one of the alternative sexual lifestylers. At last, someone to balance out all those love hearts, pink and white balloons and Valentine's Day sentimentality.

True, there were the minor bits of trouble floating rounds the edges: that present Maia commissioned for Jay must certainly backfire. And grumpy old Yvonne and Ian managed a bit of squabbling at the reception.

But all up, the wedding had you longing for the good ol' days of Gay Lynn.

Who would've thought a gay wedding would be so lacking in flamboyance? Among the guests, for example, only one fairy with wings was allowed to briefly leap in and out of frame, like some poor lost boy from the glory days of the Hero Parade.

Meanwhile, it was up to the heterosexuals to get drunk and behave badly.

But despite Tanya and Vinnie's best effort to steal their thunder, the lesbian lovebirds' bliss went uninterrupted.

Oh well, there's still the honeymoon: time yet for tears before bedtime.