My wife and I recently had the honor of hosting our eldest daughter’s wedding. 

If you haven’t met my wife, you should know that this means she spent months thinking of every detail, working to create a magical evening for our daughter and, now, our son.

Dear reader, when I tell you she succeeded, I do so with tears welling and heart thumping like the backbeat of “Pon de Replay,” which made everyone on the dance floor bounce.

There were custom menus and cocktail napkins, handcrafted invitations and escort cards, white flowers of all shapes and sizes, four-foot topiaries, and ferns galore. Plus the perfect dress, a multi-tiered cake, and dinner for 125.

“Nothing to it,” as my wife would sometimes say with a wry smile.

Throughout the planning, our daughter was a picture of grace combined with just enough grit. Never the bridezilla, always the bride: organized, composed, and smiling her radiant smile. The day of the event she was positively angelic, laughing with me and holding hands as we waited to walk down the aisle.

Her groom was the calm, composed, and brilliant young man we already know him to be. He teared up just a bit when he saw us coming, then spoke clearly and sincerely as he looked into my daughter’s eyes.

The maids of honor, my two other daughters, read poetry and blessings during the ceremony, then they gave a toast together at the reception that brought equal measures of laughter and tears. The best man spoke eloquently, too, and danced voraciously long into the night, which is just what best men should do.

The officiant—a dear friend long known as our daughters’ “fairy godmother”—put together a perfectly personalized ceremony. She deftly combined stories about the bride and groom with inside jokes for the family, traditional vows, and a reference to the 101-year-old veil my daughter wore, which has now graced the heads of 20 brides across five generations.

To say it all feels like a dream is both accurate and inadequate. It’s closer to the truth to say that it feels, to me, like the pinnacle of what life in this world can be—an altitude you can’t reach every day or hope to sustain for long, but an altitude that is real nonetheless.

None of it was a dream. All of it was made of details that real people made happen in order to lift up and celebrate two other people, through rituals as old as time itself as surely as through bouncing to Rihanna on the ballroom floor.

All of it took time and effort and care, from people seen and unseen.

• My wife’s mother, who consulted on the dress, the flowers, the veil, and countless details.
• The groom’s uncle, who opened his repair shop to fix a flat for the groom’s mother.
• The groom’s parents, who shared a traditional Swiss poem to start the rehearsal dinner.
• My other daughter’s boyfriend, who helped me load the ferns into cars in the pouring rain on the morning of the big day.
• My wife’s aunts and uncles, who came for the weekend and hosted a wedding-day brunch.
• All the cousins on both sides, who danced with the couple all night and didn’t want to leave.
• The neighbors who watched our dogs and asked, “What more can we do?”
• The babysitters who kept track of little ones so their parents could participate fully.
• The hair stylist who called her meteorologist friend to find out the forecast and manifest sunshine. And the daughter who purchased a spell on Etsy to ward off the pouring rain. (Whether by spell or meteorology, it worked: the sun came out that afternoon and the skies stayed clear till morning, when the pouring rain promptly resumed.)
• The wedding planner, the florist, the staff, the bartenders, the DJ, the photographer and videographer—all of whom delivered both service and smiles.
• The attendees who came from far and near, dressed in long gowns, tuxedos, and spiffy suits.

Remembering the event, I see sparks of goodness and kindness everywhere. Close friends laughing. Family embracing. Generations connecting in their care for the happy couple. My wife resplendent. Even me, choking back emotions to raise a toast to the deep magic that brought us all together on a Blue Ridge mountainside.

It’s hard not to wish it could last forever, this moment when the world was, for me at least, wholly enchanted—sitting beside my wife in the sun, embracing my brother and remembering our parents, dancing with my daughter in a ballroom wearing a tux, seeing my children as adults who take care of each other. The universe taking over and doing something wonderful, with me there to feel it flow through me.

I’d have to be a fool to think it could last forever.

I’d have to be a bigger fool not to be moved by it.

In that moment, we tapped into something transcendent and transformative. We unlocked the deep magic, the stuff that flows through children’s stories and world religions alike.

Conjured no doubt by all the efforts described above. Channeled no doubt by the ritual and the dancing. Upheld by the collective joy of a renewed and extended family.

I can’t pretend to know exactly what the deep magic is, beyond saying it’s another name for “love,” when we use that word with all its existential meanings.

For some, it’s a manifestation of God or another name for what’s sacred and holy. For others, it’s a way to talk about our human capacity for kindness and goodness, the driving force behind the better angels of our nature.

For me, it’s a mystery I’ve learned to accept and respect, the place where my knowledge ends and the universe takes over and does something wonderful. I can try with all my words to explain it, but at some point I just have to fall silent, accept that I am overawed, and enjoy it.

On the occasion of my daughter’s wedding, the deep magic lifted me up to a pinnacle. My responsibility now is just to share what I could see in that moment.

Sometimes the deep magic prevails, my friends. Most often when we work hard to make it together, then let go and get carried away.