Just as Delia turned to leave, she snuck a whisper into Nikki’s ear: “This guy’s cuter than the other one.”
Delia’s comment almost again made Nikki chuckle too much, afraid to split her dress open, since it showed that Delia knew her fiancé was different than the guy Nikki was with on that cooking class date.
Once Delia left, Nikki turned to her fiancé, her eyes wide open at the offer they both just accepted. Luke embraced her one final time before their vows. “I can’t believe it, babe. Now, let’s go have the best start we can to the rest of our lives.”
He went to kiss Nikki one final time before they took their spots to walk down the aisle, but Nikki stopped him short.
“Wait,” she asked, “I want to let you know that I’m sorry that you don’t have anyone to walk you down the aisle.” Nikki didn’t have to say the rest, but the fact that he was an orphan with his sole adoptive parent passed away, left him with no family to walk him down the aisle.
“Oh, I found someone, alright,” Luke said with a sly smirk. “We just can’t make this take too long or the retirement home will send out a search party for him.”
Nikki searched her mind for who Luke could be referring to.
“It’s George!” Luke let out cheerfully. “You remember the old man who you finally got to talk several months back?”
“Of course!” Nikki had visited with the folks at the retirement center at least once weekly since then, and obviously knew who George was. She’d seen him open up a lot since their first meeting, but still couldn’t believe that the old guy was ready to actually leave the retirement home.
Luke nodded. “Just … well, I wonder if he thinks there’s a chance that if he’s here, that you’ll want to get married to him. So, if he pulls a stunt or something to try and stand in for me, don’t be surprised.”
Nikki laughed hard again, despite her attempt not to. She knew that Luke was joking, but having known that George always seemed to have his eyes on her made the joke have a sliver of a possibility. Nikki was laughing so hard that she again had to stop herself. “Whew – I told you not to make me laugh, especially not right now, before we walk down the aisle!”
Luke straightened up and kissed her one last time. With an air of excitement in his voice, he said, “Good luck, I love you.”
“I love you, too.”
With that, the couple split off and made their way to their locations to walk down the aisle.
Nikki stood next to her father as the live music began. A couple lines in, her father leaned over and asked: “This musician is really good – where’d you find him?”
“He goes by Guy + Guitar but his real name is John. It’s actually a story by itself about who he is, why he’s here, and how we got him to come play.”
Her father nodded, realizing that there was much more symbolism in parts of his daughter’s wedding than he even recognized.
On the other aisle, Luke put his arm around the old grumpy friend who would be walking him down the aisle. “Thanks again, George, for coming.”
The wrinkles on the man’s face concealed any emotion that he may have wanted to express. But the single teardrop sitting on his cheek said it all. “Your grandma’s here, you know. I can feel it.”
Luke looked down the aisle, his emotions heightened by the old man’s unexpected sentence. Knowing that George had gone months without saying anything to anyone, and now he shared that beautiful sentiment meant everything to the boy who’d grown up just hoping to survive an orphanage.
With the song beginning to be sung, Luke and George walked down the aisle for Luke to take his place on the stand. Luke’s sentiment during the walk was lightened by George’s only statement to him, which he said in his gruff voice with a whisper: “She’s still too pretty for you, you know.”
With that, Luke smiled as he walked ahead of George to take the stand. Luke looked back to glance at George as he went to sit with a caretaker, but then Luke caught a glimpse of Nikki. There she stood - in her wedding gown at the end of the aisle. Just the sight of his beautiful bride standing there made Luke instinctively say to himself, “I know she is.”
The music continued as John began singing the chorus while playing the guitar: “I wanna grow old with you / I wanna grow old with you / no matter what you do / no I don’t lie / I’ll be by your side and you next to mine / I wanna grow old with you, my love.”
This was the cue. Nikki and her father began to walk down the aisle as all guests stood for her entrance. A radiant smile beamed from Nikki’s face as she took the walk which she’d dreamt of taking her entire life. On the walk down, she noticed faces of many people in attendance whom she’d catered for during the last couple of years, having returned to now celebrate her wedding day. But, really, the only person she saw was Luke. He stood handsomely waiting at the end of the aisle, looking at her like he had, indeed, won the lottery.
At the end of the aisle, Nikki turned and embraced her father, who was now also tearing up. “I love you. You make us so proud,” he said before going to sit next to his wife. Nikki then winked at her mother before turning to face the man of her dreams.
On the stage, they took each other’s hands. The officiator spoke, but little of the words were actually registered by either of them until he asked for their rings to be exchanged with their vows.
Luke took the ring and put it on Nikki’s finger, bearing his heart to her afterward:
“Nikki, this ring is a token of my unwavering love to you. I didn’t write down my vows because I never learned to write in the orphanage.”
It was an inside joke between them, but the audience recognized his tone as joking and chuckled along lightly. Nikki loved not only how he had been able to find healing since his childhood there, but that his humor, which she’d fallen in love with, was showing in his vows.
“Nikki, to say I love you would not be enough - but, yet, also somehow is enough. Because you’ve taught me what love is. I see it in your eyes, I taste it in your passion for cooking, and I feel it in everything that you do. You have a love for life that’s inspiring, and it’s a love which inspires me to want to be a better man and to truly cherish each moment of life. But more importantly, it’s a love which I can’t imagine living without.
I met you on a day when I lost the only person in my life who had ever been there for me,” Luke paused, tears now falling down both his and Nikki’s cheeks at the thought of having lost his adoptive mother. “But on that same day, I met you – the person I’d be spending the rest of my life with. On the day I met you, I asked you if you believed in fate. I didn’t know then if I did, but I do now. I know I was meant to find you. And now, for the rest of our lives, I’m going to make sure that I give you the love that you deserve. I love you, and I always will. Thank you for making me believe in love. And thank you for making me the luckiest man in the world.”
Through the tears, Nikki saw that shine in Luke’s eyes which she fell in love with that night so many months ago under the stars. Seeing that light in Luke’s eyes was the only thing giving her the strength to make it through her emotional tears as she pulled out her ring to give to Luke.