1. I hope he drives you crazy in all the best ways – butterflies in your stomach and desire so intense it’s distracting.

2. I hope he challenges and inspires you to try new things because he wants to share them with you, not because he thinks he’s better than you.

3. I hope you find yourself smiling for no reason at all when you’re driving down the highway and your mind is flooded with thoughts of him.

4. I hope you find it difficult to stay mad at each other.

5. I hope you find a love that shows you that it doesn’t have to be hard to be real.

6. I hope there are days when he feels like he might not be good enough for you, and I hope he makes you want to be a better person.

7. I hope you know that he can’t fix you when you have torn yourself apart.

8. I hope you pick someone who makes you laugh every day, just because he needs to see your smile light up the room (even on the hard days – especially on the hard days).

9. I hope you find a love that makes you relate to every obnoxious and cheesy ballad on the radio.

10. I hope you pick someone who accepts our relationship (notice I didn’t say “friendship” – that really doesn’t do it justice). I hope he understands that you have two families – your blood and us: the first people you got drunk with; the girls you ran to when your first love left you; the girls whose hands you hold in crowded bars and on the way to funerals; the ones who know your insides, even the dark corners.

11. I hope when he sees you walk down the aisle, he looks at you like you can’t possibly be real.

12. I hope he knows he needs our seal of approval just as much as he needs your father’s.

13. I hope he sleeps on the couch when I show up at your house in the middle of the night because I need to feel like I’m not as alone as I actually am.

14. I hope you feel comfortable ordering a double bacon cheeseburger when you’re out to eat with him, and that you fart in front of him at least once before you marry him (Leigha, I’m talking to you).

15. I hope you fall in love with someone who knows your eyes aren’t simply “blue”, rather they’re July sky blue masked in stormy gray clouds – muted, but thunderous – and when you cry, somehow they get lighter, softer.

16. I hope you don’t forget that you are an individual before you are a partner. There will always be things you have to work through by yourself.

17. I hope you pick someone who’s turned on by you when you’re drinking Bud Light in a basement, when you’re sipping red wine in a snug black dress, and when you’re struggling through the last stretch of your daily jog.

18. I hope you’ll always get starry-eyed at each other, even when you’re bored out of your minds and you think maybe everything exciting has already happened. It hasn’t.

19. I hope you pick someone who doesn’t look away when you cry, even though you really are an ugly crier.

20. I hope you fall in love with someone who calls you beautiful, but not more often than he calls you smart and funny and graceful and strong.

21. I hope he doesn’t try to box you into one definition of a lady; I hope you don’t do that to yourself.

22. I hope you find a love that sets your soul on fire, but doesn’t burn you to the ground.

23. I hope you never have to doubt that he wants you back, because you deserve to wake up each morning being sure of at least this: you are loved; you are somebody’s one and only.