I'm not losing a daughter, I'm gaining a son. Right?

I've just returned from Greta Garbo's flat, where she and her sister and I have been spending time reminiscing over school experiences, family laughs and upsets, and trading insults. In typical GG fashion, she had spent the day unwisely, not eating, and fashioning an eclectic menagerie of animals out of lumps of potato-starch-packing. She made me a frog with a pink nose. Her lounge table was covered in Lush products from a gift pack, and she was in her pyjamas and so, so young.

Tomorrow she is going to marry her love, a wonderful young man who we respect and care for a great deal. I felt I should have imparted much wisdom but in my normal tied-up manner I couldn't bring myself to do much more than joke and poke at her, telling her that not only did we like him a great deal, we liked him more than we liked her, and that we would want to keep him if they ever divorced. I've saved the profound things, the things that will make me cry, for my speech at the reception tomorrow night.

I don't remember the night before my first wedding. I remember the morning, getting ready, leaving the flat with my home-made dress and my five-months-pregnant stomach. Pregnant with GG - this precious little baby who woke up the resilience in me that had lain dormant until that point. The little baby who helped me birth the adult I needed to become. My wedding then was a backyard affair with salads and cold meat and bemused relatives who treated us like kids at a birthday party. This will be the full bridezilla catastrophe and I must say, I'm kind of looking forward to it.