Hey Best Friend,

The big day is over. You've married your best friend and the love of your life, and you've waved goodbye to your friends and family to embark on your honeymoon and the beginning of the rest of your life alongside the man God intended you to find and to fall in love with. It's been a long journey to get to this point -- a journey full of heartbreak, self doubt, times when you sold yourself short and lost sight of what a precious individual you truly are, but here we are. You've joined hands legally and spiritually and have entered into a union of matrimony that is anointed by the love of Christ -- the kind of love that many people go their entire lives never finding.

I am so unbelievably ecstatic for you and your new husband as you begin this new chapter together as man and wife, and after saying congratulations, I want to say thank you to you for a few things.

Thank you for being the best bride ever. I know you were both stressed and so nervous, but you were incredibly humble, kind and your usual hilarious self through the whole thing. You made your guests laugh and cry and were so genuinely you, even on what I know was one of the most nerve-wracking days of your life.

Thank you for choosing me. To stand up with you as a bridesmaid on your wedding day was such a huge honor. The day I found out you were engaged, I literally screamed, and to be able to stand beside you with your closest friends and your very-soon-to-be husband and watch your marital union begin was so incredibly humbling. When the photos from the ceremony come out, I'll probably be making very strange, trying-not-to-sob-uncontrollably faces in all of them.

Thank you for choosing him. Thank you for opening your eyes and your heart up to the big-hearted, kind, gentle man of God who you chose to exchange vows with and spend your life with. You have so much love to give, and I am so thankful you chose him to give the love of a wife and soulmate to.

Thank you for showing me what true love looks like. It is so rare in this day and age for two people who say "I love you" to truly carry out what it means to love someone in the Biblical sense -- to honor them, cherish them, exercise patience and forgiveness with them and to be intentional in your words and actions toward and with each other. Thank you for allowing me a close-up look of something that is so much more rich and meaningful than even the love you read about in fairy tales.

Above all, thank you for proving to me that true love comes when you are seeking capital-H Him, not little-H him. You and your husband found each other while deep in the pursuit of Christ, and that is something we should all strive for.

I wish you and your husband the greatest possible lifetime together, and I can't wait to see how your big love gets even bigger from here.

Love,

Your best friend and uber-grateful bridesmaid.