The wedding planner ushered me to the bridal cabin and told me to stand on the deck overlooking the small pond below. I was to turn towards the water, wait for instructions, and not spin around until instructed. This “First Look,” as wedding planners call it, allows the dad (in this case, me) to be the first male to see the bride in her wedding dress. When instructed, I looked at my daughter standing in front of me dressed in all white and prepared for her final moments as a single person. Cameras clicked, and the videographer moved around capturing the moment. This instant, photographed just moments before the big event, signaled the culmination of fourteen months of my wife’s incredible planning. I shed a river of tears the preceding night giving my toast at the rehearsal dinner, so I didn’t immediately break down. Instead, I just admired how beautiful she was on the eve of her wedding. After a few minutes, she handed me a little white box tied neatly with a white ribbon. Inside sat a folded handkerchief wrapped in tissue and embroidered with the words, “Dad, I can’t wait to walk down the aisle with you.” And that did it – more tears.
More than 400 days before, her fiancé pulled me aside at the Hilton hotel bar in Dallas and asked my permission. They dated in graduate school and into their professional careers, were very happy, and the time had come to make the next step, he explained. I happily welcomed him into the family and in no time at all, my wife and daughter began planning the big day. For the next year and a half, mother and daughter scrambled to find the perfect venue, the right dress, flowers, cake, and a wedding planner. I had no responsibility and no authority to make a single decision. I was not consulted, and my input was not considered. When I tried to speak up, I was shut down and told to stay in my lane. My lane was apparently the quiet one where not a word was to be spoken. I was riding the bench and told I was not expected to play in the big game except for walking my daughter down the aisle.
But then, unexpectedly, a few weeks before the wedding, I got called up. Coach (meaning my wife) told me I had a special talent not found among the other wedding attendees and told me to prepare for my shining moment. All my years of flying earned me a spot in the big game. My special assignment was to transport the dress from Louisiana to the North Carolina mountains where the wedding would take place. It seemed a simple assignment – load the dress in the plane and bring it to Asheville, then up the mountain to the hotel in Highlands, North Carolina, and secure it in the hotel room. I understood the importance of the dress, the idea that it symbolizes – the new beginning in the life of the couple and the commencement of a shared journey. This journey is one for the couple and both sets of parents letting their children go. What I did not understand was the weight of my responsibility to ensure the dress arrived unblemished.
A few days before the wedding, my daughter arrived at our house arms stretched above her head, carrying her wedding dress down the hall towards her old bedroom. She laid the dress neatly on her bed and commanded that it not be touched. I marveled that her petite frame could support this load as she walked down the aisle and danced at the reception. She assured me the months of wedding planning also included workouts and strength training for this exact task.
Her bedroom door would remain closed and off-limits until it was time to depart for the wedding, ensuring the dress remained safe from outside influences. My wife and I became custodians and promised its safe arrival, free from wrinkles and unblemished. My daughter and her fiancé would fly commercial to Atlanta and then drive to the mountains so they could catch a departing flight from Atlanta to their honeymoon in Mexico.
I took great pride in preparing the plane for my one assignment. On Sunday, squeezed between Golf’s Open Championship at the Royal Birkdale Golf Club in Southport, England, and before the start of the World Cup finals match between Argentina and Spain, my son and I headed to the hangar to ready the plane. She had to be completely wiped down, degreased, vacuumed and pre-flighted in advance. The regular luggage and other sundries would be packed the night before, and only on trip-day would the dress finally arrive and be gingerly loaded on board.
On the day of departure, under the watchful eye of my wife, my son held the dress flat across his legs in the car on the way to the airport. Exiting the car, my wife had him carry it high over his head straight to the plane. The dress would be loaded last after the other luggage. We were fully packed with multiple hanging bags, duffels, random gift totes, and boxes carrying everything needed for a destination wedding. The wedding dress occupied two passenger seats across from each other, lying as flat as possible. No one was to move in the plane or come close to touching it until we landed in Asheville. It would then need to survive another hour in the car for the trip north into the Appalachian Mountains.
In my flying years, I’ve had several memorable flights with some very prominent passengers. My family, of course, is always at the top of the list of dignitaries. Then there are the business acquaintances, friends, parents, grieving family members headed to funerals, partygoers celebrating a special occasion, and others. No passenger ranks above the other, and all are memorable in their own respects. But some are simply more memorable than others. We all have those vacations, business trips, dropping kids at camp, or kissing them goodbye for that first day of college, that rank above the other routine and mundane excursions. With all the hours in the cockpit and all the flights in my logbook, I never thought an inanimate passenger could stir so much emotion. I had been waiting for this flight since the engagement announcement. Now the day had arrived, and I was a bundle of nerves heading into the cockpit.
Yes, the passenger was just a dress (oh, and my family), but I knew it was more than that. I reminisced about when she first told us she had met someone. We met him for the first time at her graduate program’s graduation. Then, in what seemed like no time at all, I was there when she shopped for wedding dresses and found the ONE. Of course, it did not look at all like the finished product because it would go through months of alterations to get it just right. But nothing prepared me for the “first look.” Suddenly twenty-seven years of memories flooded my brain. I remembered when she was born and every gleeful moment, heartbreak, disappointment, success, and failure in between.
Even though my daughter and her husband live in the same city and even work for our company, the dress symbolized a monumental shift in the relationship. I remembered it from my own wedding 31 years earlier. After the priest announces their marriage, they are a fully unionized couple, officially out of our nest and into their own. They will start their own family, get their own dog, take their own vacations, and slowly slip into their own familial groove. Sure, she may need help periodically, but I won’t be the first one she thinks to ask. Her husband now fills that role. It’s a natural progression, and one every father wants for his daughter – and doesn’t. But wanting it and seeing it play out are two different truths. The first look was actually a first look into the new reality of both of our futures. Her as a wife and my wife and I as in-laws.
There are many monumental firsts in the life of a parent. When the child is born, of course. The first sleepover, a first multi-week camp experience, and dropping a child off in their first college dorm. But for all those experiences, the child returns home. And for me, many of those experiences involved them riding in the co-pilot seat, talking about camp or college. I knew that after our short walk down the church’s center aisle, she would be off on her own path the same way my wife and I started our own life together. She is now his co-pilot navigating their adventures together.
So, a few hours after the first look, we stood in the doorway of the church waiting our turn to walk. She asked me to yank up on the shoulders of her dress because it tended to fall a little. She did not want it to look wrinkled in the middle. I grabbed a fistful of lace fabric from both shoulders and yanked upward as she instructed, not noticing the whole of the congregation looking at us. The parishioners started laughing, the processional music started, and we walked. I was trembling, and she was too – both of us trying not to burst into tears or laughter. Her fiancé waited with his groomsmen and her bridesmaids at the altar as we moved towards them. The audience turned and looked at us – me in my new Tuxedo and her in the beautiful white dress. The one that I escorted safely, still clean, pressed, and without fault, because that was my only job until now. I walked her to the end, shook hands, backed away, and sat down. I successfully completed the only tasks assigned to me. I watched as she smiled, said her vows, and left the church married.
My daughter and her husband left for their honeymoon on Delta from Atlanta, and we headed to Asheville for our trip home. The dress was with us once again, but this time it was stuffed into a hanging bag and thrown in the back of the plane. The bottom half-inch of the seam corroded with a combination of dirt and drink. No longer regaled as special, the dress, like me, knew it had served its purpose and completed the assignment.
My second daughter gets married next year, and since the ceremony is at home, I truly have zero tasks. According to her, I’m a lame-duck dad for this one. I won’t get to fly the dress, but I will get a second look at a first look. I can’t wait.
