A cottage wedding-dress party

I planned to arrive at my cottage wedding in a green cedar-strip canoe. My dad and 
I would paddle up to the bare pink rock that stretches out from our Georgian Bay island like a crooked finger. We’d step out and greet my boyfriend, Nick, and the small clutch of close friends and family gathered there.

I was to be nearly nine months pregnant—with (I imagined) one of those perfect basketball-shaped bellies—fresh and “glowing” in a simple sheath the colour of the sky. Nick and I thought of the wedding, at one of our favourite places on Earth, as 
a celebration of both our love for each other and the wee baby inside.