This Saturday, June 20 was supposed to be a landmark day in my life.

It should have been the day that our only son, Sean, married his fiancee, Hannah, and if you are a parent you will understand that few times in your life can be as special as the one on which your son or daughter ties the knot.

As you can probably guess, that mother of all gatecrashers, Covid-19, has put paid to that. For now.

It became clear, weeks ago, that the big day would have to be postponed.

For a short while it was rescheduled to August 7, but continuing uncertainty and the possibility that family members who are shielded would not be able to attend made even that date untenable.

The bride was also finding that she couldn’t have everything the way she had planned it, and if a girl can’t have things just right on her wedding day, then you have to think again.

So now the whole thing has been put back nearly a whole year - to June 19, 2021.

The only good thing about it is it has given my wife 364 extra days to find the perfect dress she has been searching for for months, and more time to fret about losing enough pounds to fit into it.

When you gear up for months for something as big (and expensive) as a wedding, it’s hard not to be disappointed, so of course it’s a shame.

But let’s put this into perspective. It’s only postponed.

Understanding the difference between cancelling events and postponing them has been an important psychological aspect of the lockdown (for those of us who stuck with it), and I think it has been key to people’s ability (or inability) to get through it.

Some people make the mistake of thinking ‘cancelled’ and ‘postponed’ are interchangeable, but there is a world of difference.

If you cancel something, it will never take place, whereas a postponement is merely putting it off until a later date. So as soon as the lockdown began, our family decided that, wherever possible, we would look upon everything we were missing out on as a postponement, rather than a cancellation.

The wedding? It will come round eventually. Those holidays we booked? We’ll still go on every one.

Socialising with friends and family? They’re still in the diary.

And because there will be so much catching up to do, we will not only look forward to doing all the things we always enjoyed, just like before - but do them more often.

Our reasoning has always been that half the pleasure of anything you enjoy is the anticipation, so it hasn’t been so difficult to adapt to having to look a little further ahead.

After all - at the risk of sounding old - my generation was brought up not to expect anything good to happen instantly.

Others are not so lucky. One of the symptoms of modern life is those people who have become accustomed to the instant gratification of having everything they want, and having it now.

I hope, for their sakes, that the last few weeks will have given them enough time to think about what really makes people happy and contented and safe.

So the wedding is delayed, but compared with all the pressures, pain and heartbreaks that Covid-19 has brought to some families, we are counting our blessings.

Just in case we needed a final perspective: when I Googled to find out how many weddings have been called off this summer, the estimate was 64,000 - ironically, the same number of excess deaths in the UK so far.