Juliette

My darling girl — I have been your mother for thirty-one years and I have watched you choose Theo carefully, the way you choose everything carefully. I wanted to give you advice today and then I sat down to write it and realised you have not asked me for any in a long time, and that is the proof. Keep choosing carefully. Keep the table long. Keep room at it for me.

Jules — younger-sister duties dictate that I formally remind you, before you become a Mrs., that you once told me I would never be invited to your wedding because I "had a small face for a wedding". I am now your maid of honour. I won. Also: Theo is the only man I have ever met who actually deserves you, and I am preemptively sorry for the speech.

Jules — I have lived with you in three apartments, two countries, one truly terrible flat in Marylebone with the leaking radiator, and one perfectly fine flat in Lisbon that we left only because you fell in love. You are the easiest person to share a kitchen with on Earth. Theo: lucky man. I take a small commission.

Ree — being your older sister has been thirty years of watching you walk into rooms a little more gracefully than the rest of us, and then watching you make sure everyone in the room felt easy. You are about to start a household. You already know how to start a household. You started ours, quietly, the year Mum was unwell. With all my love, your first roommate.

My dearest Juliette — I am writing this from the kitchen Theo grew up in. I have known him since he was nine and very serious about pears. He is the same boy, still slightly too serious, and I have watched him become softer in your presence over four years. Welcome, my love. There is a place at our table that has been yours for a while now.

My darling — I have been your friend since we were six, hiding under your grandmother's dining table during the long Sunday lunches, deciding what we would name our daughters. (You still owe me "Beatrix". I am keeping a record.) Marriage looks beautiful on you already. So happy I get to be in the front row.

For the bride who once held my hand through a breakup at 2am in a Pret on the Strand: thank you. Theo is a profoundly good man and I have never seen you happier or more yourself. May the long lunches outnumber the short ones. Cannot wait to ugly-cry through your vows.

Jules — the only person I know who can host a dinner for fourteen and still make every single guest feel like the most interesting one in the room. That is not a wedding skill. That is a life skill. You are going to be a remarkable wife and an even more remarkable hostess.

I am the youngest of the bridal party and so it falls to me to say the obvious: the rest of these women are intimidating, and you are the one who made every single one of us feel welcome at this table the day we met you. That is the whole story. Be loved this afternoon. Be loved every afternoon.

My beautiful grand-niece — I am eighty-four and the family agreed I should be carried up the garden steps for the afternoon, which I have refused, because I intend to arrive on my own two feet with a coupe already in my hand. Marriage, in my experience, is mostly about who you want at breakfast. Choose breakfast well. You have.

For Juliette, with whom I have shared exactly one bath (we were five), one university dissertation panic (we were twenty-one), and countless terrible decisions about haircuts (ongoing): cannot wait to see you walk down the aisle. Theo is wonderful. The dress, I am told, is unreal. Bring on the wedding. Bring on the rest of the lunches.