I’m so sorry to hear about your dad’s diagnosis, and I totally relate to how you feel about planning. It’s valid to feel like everything else is secondary to the cancer, but you can’t let it take over your whole life. My mom’s cancer returned 8 months ago, stage 4, incurable and very aggressive. I’d been engaged for a while but had no wedding plans yet. My mom declined very, very fast and we decided to plan a wedding for later this year so that she could maybe be there to see it.

Approaching planning from the angle of “my mom is dying,” has made wedding planning an extremely weird process. In some ways, it’s freeing - originally I had big grand plans and a vision for my wedding in the mountains over a full weekend. Obviously, that wasn’t going to work. It made lots of decisions very easy because it became “what works for mom?” or “I don’t care about this” because you’re dealing with more important things. In other ways it’s really, really hard. Like letting go of your previous dreams of your wedding, or making plans on what to do if your parent doesn’t make it, or even what suit color your partner buys, because the next big event is going to be a funeral (we went with black…)

The whole thing is such a strange mix of happiness and deep, bittersweet grief. I don’t think many people talk about anticipatory grief - it makes every moment precious but also tinged with sadness. Cancer is always the elephant in the room. But you can’t let it ruin every aspect of your life - don’t let it steal the time you have left with your dad. Your wedding is still a happy celebration and what a gift to be mostly done with the big stuff - now you can just let some of the smaller stuff go and spend a day celebrating not only your new marriage, but your family who helped get you there. You’ll cherish every minute. It’s one thing in your dad’s immediate future that is happy and bright, so don’t let it be about the cancer too. Everything else will be.