During my own crazed wedding planning, I asked if she’d accompany me to try on racks of flowing, white confections in search of the perfect dress. She said I would love to! Then I asked if she’d be my right-arm (free) planner, accompanying me to numerous fittings and enduring my mind-numbing penchant for long, overly detailed to-do lists that only other obsessed brides understand. She said I’ll be there. The night before my wedding, as the stresses of the week reared their ugly head and I found myself morphing into Bridezilla over the process of wrapping 200 individual squares of Caribbean black cake in tiny boxes with ribbons, I tensely — and, in hindsight, precariously — asked if everyone could pay closer attention to positioning the monogrammed stickers “just so” on the little boxes (it was 11 p.m. and we were less than halfway through the whole ordeal). She cheerfully said no problem.

Years later, when I called her from my car in a hormone-induced panic over morning sickness and the fact that I was at that stage of pregnancy where you just look lumpy and fat … nothing fits … and you feel awful, she said I promise everything will be just fine, this is completely normal. During the next seven months, she took every opportunity to say you look beautiful.

These are just some of the things she said. Being that kind of friend just comes natural to her.
So it’s with the most genuine kind of joy that I write this.

For, after countless hours over the course of too-many-years-to-count helping friends — and friends of friends — find that perfect dress …. After offering her amazing design wisdom to fashion the perfect invitation, host the perfect shower, paint the perfect nursery … After lending more than her share of calming shoulders to cry on when the guy turned out to be a jerk again … After offering to dog-sit, house-sit, babysit for the thousandth time … After sitting vigil and providing comfort as yet another friend suffered the loss of a parent …

After all that, it’s her much-deserved turn in the spotlight.

He asked. And she said yes.