Father’s Letter to Daughter With Down Syndrome on Her Wedding Day

Most dads know how to puff out their chests, hold back the tears and cough away any sign of emotion, especially when it comes to tearjerker moments like their daughter’s wedding.

For Cincinnati father of two, Paul Daugherty, he found another way to capture his feelings after walking his 25-year-old daughter down the isle in June this year “” and it had nothing to do with a wedding speech!

The sports columnist wrote his daughter an essay, describing how proud he was and that, despite being diagnosed with Down syndrome at birth, she had shunned all negative complications to become an independent and loved woman.

“In two hours, you will take the walk of a lifetime, a stroll made more memorable by what you’ve achieved to get to this day,” Daugherty writes.

“I don’t know what the odds are of a woman born with Down syndrome marrying the love of her life. I only know you’ve beaten them.”

He describes nervously waiting downstairs as his wife preps their daughter for her big day, detailing the intricacy of her gown to the red lipstick, adding explanation marks (!) to further demonstrate his daughter’s effervescent gift of making other’s smile.

“Your hair is coiled perfectly above your slender neck. Your bejeweled dress “my bling,” you called it attracts every glimmer of late afternoon sunshine pouring through the window. Your makeup that red lipstick somehow improves upon a beauty that has grown since the day you were born. Your smile is blooming and everlasting,” he wrote.

“I am outside, beneath the window, staring up. We live for moments such as these, when hopes and dreams intersect at a sweet spot in time. When everything we’ve always imagined arrives and assumes a perfect clarity. Bliss is possible. I know this now, standing beneath that window.”

Daugherty goes on to tell his daughter how he worried for her at school, whether she would make friends or be bullied. He said he cried on night when Jillian was 12 and she declared, “I don’t have any friends”, but that he shouldn’t have and knows that now.

“You’re a natural when it comes to socialising. They called you The Mayor in elementary school, for your ability to engage everyone. You danced on the junior varsity dance team in high school. You spent four years attending college classes and made lifelong impressions on everyone you met,” he writes.

“Do you remember all the stuff they said you’d never do, Jills? You wouldn’t ride a two-wheeler or play sports. You wouldn’t go to college. You certainly wouldn’t get married. Now”¦ look at you.”

His final sentences are reserved for her new husband, Ryan, who he met a decade before when a young man walked to the door wearing a suit to ask his daughter to the Homecoming.

“I would tell you to give your fiancé, Ryan, your whole heart, but that would be stating the obvious. I would tell you to be kind to him and gentle with him. But you do that already, with everyone you know. I would wish for you a lifetime of friendship and mutual respect, but you two have been together a decade already, so the respect and friendship already are apparent,” he writes.

“Now, you and Ryan are taking a different walk together. It’s a new challenge, but it’s no more daunting for you than anyone else. Given who you are, it might be less so. Happiness comes easily to you. As does your ability to make happiness for others.

“I see you now. The prep work has been done, the door swings open. My little girl, all in white, crossing the threshold of yet another conquered dream. I stand breathless and transfixed, utterly in the moment. “You look beautiful” is the best I can do.

“Jillian thanks me. “I’ll always be your little girl” is what she says then.

“Yes, you will,” I manage. Time to go, I say. We have a walk to make.”

*WIPES TEARS*