Now that Twelfth Night is past and the Christmas decorations have been torn down and packed away, it’s time to take stock of the annual ‘Engagement Season’.

Of course people do get engaged right around the year, and Valentines Day always produces the other major spike in the calendar, but the Christmas and New Year period never fails to produce a flurry of engagement announcements.

A quick trawl through the gossip columns confirms that this Christmas was a vintage engagement season for celebs.

And in fact the season started early with plenty of pre-Christmas speculation re. The Big One: Prince William and Kate Middleton. No confirmation of that one yet, but that doesn’t mean it didn’t happen…

Others have been more forthcoming. They include:

– Piers Morgan and Celia Walden, who are planning a summer wedding in England.

– Robbie Williams and Ayda Field, who aren’t hanging around: they’re getting married on Valentines Day!

– Russell Brand and Katy Perry, who got engaged on New Year’s Eve in Jaipur India and hope to tie the knot in the next six months. Katy ‘tweeted’ the photo (right) of the two of them with the Taj Mahal, with the comment “He built this for me…”.

So now the wedding planning begins in earnest, with dates and venues and budgets and guest lists to consider.

Some Christmas engagements will lead to a wedding this summer (very few will manage to get everything together for this Spring or even earlier à la Robbie & Ayda). Others will be thinking about dates in 2011 rather than 2010.

If you’ve got engaged over the Christmas & New Year period then congratulations! You can leave a comment below if you want to tell us and the rest of the world about it.

And if you need (a) a bespoke diamond engagement ring, or (b) some fabulous diamond jewellery for your wedding, then please get in touch with us here at diamondthrills and we’ll be very happy to talk to you about your requirements.