When Amber Davis was diagnosed with a rare and terminal form of cervical cancer in 2014, she knew she would never get the chance to see her little girl, Nora, walk down the aisle.
So before her passing, Davis reached out to childhood friend and photographer Heidi Spillane and arranged to take photos of Nora in her wedding dress in the same location where she and her husband, Derek, wed in Statesville, NC.
“A couple of months after her diagnosis she sent me a photo of a little girl in her mom’s wedding dress and she said she wanted to do this for Nora,” Spillane told Global News. “Nora is her only girl. She was just all about primping and pampering that little girl … All she cared about was being a really good mom and making sure her kids had the best possible life they could have.”
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Davis was diagnosed with neuroendocrine carcinoma cervical cancer. She endured daily cancer treatments and brain surgery, which forced the family to delay the photo shoot.
And on July 28, 2015 Davis – a mother of three – passed away at the age of 27.
She never got to see her wish come true.
But thanks to her husband, mother, sister and Spillane, the photo shoot did finally happen in October, and Nora – now four years old – got to wear her mother’s wedding dress at last.
“I really thought that day (of the photo shoot) was going to be heavy for me and it was driving over,” Spillane recalls. “But as soon as I walked in and saw Nora standing on a chair with the dress on, her hair done the same way her mother had it done and looking in the mirror, she was so happy and beaming with pride. You couldn’t help but feel emotional so I went with that.”
It was obvious Nora felt like a princess.
“She was in this beautiful dress and it was her mom’s and she felt amazing,” Spillane says. “I praised her and told her how pretty she was and how much she looked like her mom. I told her just how proud her mom would have been of her.”
And it’s a sight Spillane knows Davis would have given anything to see.
“I know that she would have just loved it,” Spillane says. “And she would have loved to see that their story has been spread so much and just getting to see so much attention on her baby.”
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