I Picked Out My Wedding Dress Alone. She Should’ve Been There.

When I finally got married—at 50-something, on a rooftop that smelled like lilacs and champagne—I wore a dress that made strangers stop and stare.

It was perfect.

But she never saw it.

My mother died the year before my wedding.

Not suddenly. Not cleanly. Not in a way that lets you wrap things in meaning or platitudes.

She slipped away after a year of unanswered questions, inconclusive tests, and hospital visits that started to feel like part of my daily commute.

The Canadian health system couldn’t explain it.

Private specialists didn’t help either.

We threw everything we had at it—money, time, connections.

But the answers never came.

Only more appointments. And more waiting.

And in between it all?

Zoom calls.

Brand meetings.

Campaigns that couldn’t be paused.

There’s a special kind of heartbreak in muting yourself on a client call while a nurse walks in with vitals.

Or forwarding deliverables from a hospital cafeteria that smells like burnt coffee and broken hearts.

People talk about “work-life balance” like it’s something you can schedule.

What they don’t talk about is how many women are silently dying inside while answering Slack messages that say,

“Quick question—should this CTA be active voice?”

When she died, everything got louder.

The grief. The inbox. The pressure to keep moving.

Then came the dress fitting.

It was at one of those places in Manhattan. The kind with chandeliers and stylists who whisper when they zip you up.

I stood in the mirror, alone.

No mother. No sisters.

Just a sales associate who said,

“Oh honey… is there someone we can FaceTime?”

And I smiled. Because what else do you do when your grief shows up wearing satin?

I picked the dress myself.

It was beautiful.

And heavy in all the places I didn’t expect.

The wedding, somehow, was magical.

Heavenly, even.

People told me I looked radiant—and I believed them. Because joy can live in the same body as grief.

And sometimes they dance together under fairy lights.

But that day, I learned something important:

Even when the world tells you “this is your moment,”

you’re still carrying the ones who aren’t there to see it.

So here’s to the women who work while they grieve.

Who build campaigns between breakdowns.

Who pick their own damn dress—and still look like royalty.

And just like that, I walked down the aisle.

Wearing a dress she never saw.

But I felt her in every step.

#GriefAndGlamour #WorkingWhileWounded #MotherlessBride #BrandTherapy