In the pre-dawn morning, thirty-six hours before my daughter’s wedding, she enters my bedroom. Her flashlight beam wakes me. Good heavens. Half awake, I wonder, is Tempe looking for a necklace? In the dark bedroom, she whispers, “Marcos’s mother didn’t make it.”

She’s waking me up to tell me the mother of her fiancé died that morning. Marcos’s aunties reached him in the pre-dawn from Toronto General Hospital. His mother’s unexpected death a day and a half before the rehearsal dinner. I can’t believe it. His mother and I planned to do the “mother’s dance” to Van Morrison’s “Sweet Thing” at the wedding reception on the dance floor under a swooping white tent, cocktails, appetizers, plated fancy dinners and servers.

For the past year, my life has been consumed by planning my daughter’s destination wedding festivities here and at a farm estate down the road. The wedding guests flying in from California, Canada, New York, London, and the Mid-West.

In the dark of my bedroom, the thought crossed my mind, “the show must go on,” I am ashamed to admit. And as if she read my thoughts, Tempe said, “Don’t worry about the money.” She had given me my cue, a way to accept the unthinkable.

I stumble after her out to the guest cottage where her soon-to-be-not-to-be-groom, Marcos, sits on the edge of the bed, fielding family and friends’ calls, attempting to book a flight to Toronto.

I hug him. He softly cries.

I sit at the desk and scribble on a yellow pad, “cancel the wedding.” I stare at these words. I am numb. I am moving in an underwater world. Nothing seems real. I walk back into my bedroom and email the wedding caterer. The groom’s mother died this morning. We are canceling the wedding.

Tempe drops Marcos off at the airport. We begin calling the wedding guests, some in Ubers on the way to airports. I cancel the church musicians; we could not cancel the flowers (already cut and in buckets), the desserts, already baked, or the specialty Filipino dishes.

Most of Tempe’s friends were already here; some said they were coming anyway because, ‘you need us.’

The next day, (the intended day of the rehearsal dinner) Tempe and I walk the dogs down Norwood Road. Tempe, sad and teary. Neighbors pull over in their cars, extend condolences. The village has been so very excited about a wedding in the old Norwood church.

Tempe’s phone rings. It’s Marcos.

He’s flying back! He will arrive noon the next day—the wedding day, in time for their wedding!

He tells her when he walked into his mother’s house and saw the dress she had picked out for the wedding, hanging on the door and her shawl, her wedding scrapbook, he knew he would return and they would be married. The sight of his mother’s wedding dress and shawl woke him momentarily from an anguished and numbing grief.

Suddenly the wheels of the wedding roared back to life.

The friends, like fairy godmothers, snipped the flower stems, delicately sorted into large pitchers and vases and smaller blue glass vases. They decorated the old church with huge bright dahlias and candles in the church windows and altar. They fluttered around with brooms, mops, and flowers; they polished the pews, adorned Tempe with flowers, a veil, and bright bouquet.

Now when I look at the photos, I realize that the friends’ husbands set the tables—someone told them the Xmas table cloth had to go—replaced by white tablecloths, taper candles in glass globes. Amazed, I watched the wedding guests stage the celebrations.

Decisions, so many decisions. We shifted the intended rehearsal dinner menu of Chicken Coop fried chicken (Marcos’s favorite) and Filipino dishes, the sweet potato fritters with coconut-braised shrimp, Jackfruit paksiw, ginger pickled red cabbage slaw with the Obe (sweet potato buns) to the wedding reception dinner.  Marcos is Filipino-Canadian and thank god we had not been able to cancel this order.

Because Marcos was not at the rehearsal dinner, we ordered pizza from Vito’s.  Everything upended and shifted. The band said, ‘you’ve paid us, so we’re coming’ and drove from North Carolina and set up on the veranda.

On October 11^th, Tempe and Marcos were married in the historic brick church across the road, a good friend and neighbor officiating. Marcos lay his mother’s shawl across the empty pew.

We threw rose petals and the “naughty nephew” rang the old church bell in the steeple. A cozy sparkly wedding celebration on the grassy terraces, the long white-clothed tables, the music, candles, toasts and speeches. We lit a bonfire, danced late into the night.

Trudy Hale is the Editor-in-Chief of Streetlight Magazine and runs Porches Writing Retreat in Nelson County, Va. You can find out more about her on www.porcheswritingretreat.com.