A Letter to My Daughter, the Week Before Her Wedding

My daughter gets married next week, and I have been sitting with all of it in a way I didn't quite expect.

The excitement is there. So is the bittersweetness. So is this strange, low hum of knowing that something is coming to an end even as something bigger is beginning. If you've been here, you know exactly what I mean. And if you're headed here someday, I want you to know it's okay to feel all of it at once.

I decided the best way I could process any of this was to write her a letter. So that's what I did.

She Was Always Going to Light Up a Room

I keep thinking about a little girl in a green dress with wings.

She was maybe four years old, and she had decided that Tinkerbell was her person. Not just for Halloween, but for the grocery store, for the backyard, for any occasion she could convince me was worth the costume. She wore that thing everywhere with absolute confidence, like of course this is what a person wears to Target. She glowed. She always glowed.

That little girl is getting married next week, and I have no idea where the years went.

I've watched her grow into something I couldn't have drawn a picture of when she was small. She is smart in ways that catch me off guard. She is capable in ways she doesn't even fully see yet. And she still has that same quality she had in the Tinkerbell dress, that thing where she walks into a room and people notice. She carries herself in this world like someone who belongs in it, and I am so proud of her I don't quite have words for it.

She Found Her Prince (I Always Told Her She Would)

I always told both my girls that they'd have to kiss a few frogs before they found their prince. I meant it as a warning, learn along the way, you will know when the right one is there.

And now watching her with the man she's about to marry, I see what it looks like when you find the right one. He is calm where she is spinning. He is steady where she is on fire. He looks at her with this quiet kind of admiration, like he can't quite believe his luck, and she looks at him the same way. The first time I really watched the two of them together, I had this thought: she is exactly where she is meant to be.

That is a gift not every parent gets to feel, and I don't take it lightly.

What I Want Her to Know About Marriage

I wrote her a letter this week. Not advice exactly, just truth from someone who has been married for 27 years and is still figuring it out alongside her person.

This is what I told her:

There will be great days. The milestones, the celebrations, the moments so full you have to stop and breathe them in. There will also be hard days, the kind where you feel like you're not going to find your way through, where the problem feels bigger than both of you. Those days are real and they are coming and that is okay.

But the days worth paying attention to are the ones in between. The ordinary Tuesday nights. The quiet Saturday mornings. The dinners that are nothing special, the inside jokes that don't translate, the small kindnesses nobody sees. Those are the days that make you life partners.

That is where a marriage actually lives.

My husband Andy is my person for all of it, the big and the hard and the in-between, and I would not trade a single ordinary day.

The Thing I Keep Telling Her to Remember

Breathe. Take it all in slowly, because it will go fast and there are so many small moments worth holding onto in the days leading up to it.

And when the flowers are gone and the music stops and everyone goes home, remember what you're actually walking away with. Not the ribbons. Not the gifts. You're walking away with your best friend. The one you can't imagine your life without.

That is the whole point. That is the gift.

To my daughter: I love you more than you know, my little princess. You have been lighting up rooms since you were four years old in a Tinkerbell costume, and I have a feeling you always will.

Are you a mom who has been through this, or are you getting close? I'd love to hear what this season felt like for you. Drop a comment below.