Under twinkling lights at a Malibu ranch, the DJ’s voice rang out: “Can Ryan and his father come to the floor for a special father-and-son dance?” My dad and I stepped out, two men about to share a moment we once thought we’d lost.

I didn’t tell him what song would play. When the first notes of “Butterfly Kisses” by Bob Carlisle rang out, I saw him freeze, recognition flashing in his eyes. He reached for my hand as we met on the dance floor. My throat tightened as I fought back tears. We hadn’t danced together since I was a child. Now we were two men in suits, holding each other in quiet joy.

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He smiled, and for a moment, we were suspended in time, cheek to cheek, as he gently pushed up my glasses to give me butterfly kisses, our eyelashes brushing just like they did when I was a kid.

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“This is one of the happiest days of my life,” he whispered.

I already knew that.

We couldn’t stop hugging. He couldn’t stop twirling me. Through tears, I beamed.

As a trans man, I knew I needed to reclaim this wedding tradition, not by erasing the past, but by reshaping it into something that truly reflects who I am and how far I have come. 

The chorus swelled: “There’s two things I know for sure / She was sent here from Heaven, and she’s daddy’s little girl.” The words hit differently. I knew that we could disregard the pronouns and the feminine themes in the lyrics, changing them in our heads to “boy” instead of “girl,” and “suit” instead of “dress.” The pronouns didn’t matter anymore, because my dad already fully saw me as his son.

I was a son wrapped in a moment with his father to the lullaby of my childhood. But I was also something more. I felt like a prince, and also like the best parts of a princess too: adored, cherished, and at the center of a dream I once imagined. Some of those childhood fantasies, shaped by what I had access to then, were finally coming true. Part of me was still that “little girl” who once craved this moment, long before I had the language to understand myself. But most of me stood there as his son, fully and finally seen. Both truths lived in me at once, and instead of conflict, there was peace.

But this moment almost didn’t happen.

Fifteen years earlier, I came out as transgender at age 14. I was his only “daughter,” the middle child, tucked between two brothers. “Butterfly Kisses” was our song. As a little kid, he’d tuck me in with butterfly kisses on my cheek while dreaming of walking me down the aisle someday. When I came out, those dreams unraveled for him. He didn’t reject me entirely, but he struggled, trapped in toxic ideas of masculinity, unable to see me as his son. 

I wrote about our pain in my 2018 song Daughter:

I didn’t change who I am

I’ve always been a man

Still, it changed your world

But dad, I’ll always stay your little girl 

For years, we stayed in that limbo, together, but not fully understood. Then I had top surgery, and that was a turning point. Something in him shifted. It wasn’t overnight, but he started to see me, not as a daughter lost, but as a son still here. Slowly, we rebuilt. 

Nearly a decade later, I met Stephen. We fell in love fast. A week before he proposed with a “Marry Me” tattoo and a Cartier Love ring, I had a dream that startled me awake.

In the dream, I was dancing with my dad at my wedding to “Butterfly Kisses.” My whole family surrounded us, teary-eyed and smiling. My aunt leaned toward my mom and whispered, “I’m so glad he still did the father-daughter dance for his dad.”

That dream unsettled me in a good way. It brought something to the surface I didn’t even realize I still wanted: not just acceptance, but the connection my dad and I had when I was little. I wanted him to walk me down the aisle. I wanted to share that dance, not as his daughter, but as the man I am now. His child, unconditionally loved.

By the time our wedding day arrived on August 18, 2023, I felt ready. Not just to marry the love of my life, but to reclaim my childhood dream.

So I surprised my dad.

There was no awkwardness. No trying to be someone I’m not. No performance of masculinity from either of us. Just love, plain and simple.

I looked around at my friends and family, at Stephen beaming from the head table, at the twinkling lights around us. Time slowed. I felt like a kid again, safe and seen, but also fully myself, no longer choosing between who I was and who I had become.

That dance healed something. For both of us.

My father and I have come full circle. Today, our relationship isn’t based on gender roles or expectations. It’s based on love, on showing up, on knowing that the bond between a father and child doesn’t have to follow a script, especially one built on gender stereotypes. We wrote our own.

As a little kid, he’d tuck me in with butterfly kisses on my cheek, dreaming of walking me down the aisle someday.

And he did.

And we still got our dance. 

I could never have imagined this moment five years ago. But healing takes time. And love? Love makes it all possible. 

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