Preparing for a wedding can be tricky, even if it’s not yours.
Especially if it’s not yours.
Especially if, to pick a purely and totally hypothetical case, the wedding in question belongs to your daughter, your baby, the one you didn’t just watch grow up, but actually grew up alongside of. The always changing, yet comfortingly consistent part of your adult life.
The preparations are tiring and time consuming. The task oriented part of your brain begins to look forward to the completion your labors, “Just seven weeks to go,” it says.
And the rest of the brain is comforted by the news…until the slower moving emotional part catches on:
That’s when she leaves.
That’s when everything changes.
You remember earlier challenging times: diapers, tantrums, naps, and the fuzzy, unfocused wish for her eventual autonomy.
But as the moment approaches you realize you didn’t mean it. You never meant it.
And you scrape together your sanity for the fifteenth time.
And you play captain to the undisciplined mess of your emotions, calming them with a confident sounding command:
“Steady as she goes boys,
steady as she goes…”
