“It wasn’t a shotgun wedding. He proposed before Dad got diagnosed. We’d already scheduled the ceremony. We’d rented a large room at the museum. And Dad promised me that he’d make it. He said he’d still be healthy enough. But as the date got closer, he got sicker. And we didn’t want to risk it. So we changed our plans. We moved up the date. We held a tiny ceremony at the registry office. Maybe twenty people came. Dad stayed in bed until it was time to go. But he made it the entire day. He drove me to the wedding in the same car that he’d driven my mum, a green MG Midget. He walked me down the aisle. He gave a speech at the reception. There was no focus on being ill. Or why we moved the wedding. It was just a nice speech. I have a film of it, but I haven’t watched it yet. I think it might be too sad. Dad passed away five months later. My husband and I had a vow renewal recently. It was exactly one year from the planned date of our original wedding. We held it at the same museum. It was the original guest list. There was a lot of soul searching involved. We weren’t sure if it was the right thing to do. We weren’t sure if people would understand, especially because it happened to fall on my dad’s birthday. But it turned out lovely. Really lovely. There was so much Dad in the room, his photos were everywhere. But this day was about us. About our relationship. About showing the world how much we loved each other. About our future. And about moving forward.” (London, England)
