If there was one thing on which their friends agreed, it was that Arlene McGraw and Harry Murphy would never get married. Ask them about marriage and they would shrug their shoulders:

“Why bother? It’s a meaningless ritual.”

One night, Arleen and Harry were taking a stroll in downtown Boston. They wandered around for hours, and at midnight, they meandered onto a deserted boulevard. Across the street, one solitary light beckoned.

“Come on, Harry,” said Arleen.

She pulled him toward the golden light, emanating softly from a tiny shop. Illuminated in the store window was a dress so magnificent they both stared at it, transfixed.

“Did you ever see such a beautiful dress?” gasped Arleen.

“You know, Arleen,” said Harry, “if you ever wore a dress like that, I’d have to marry you.”

At that moment, the shop door swung open. A scrawny old woman, a cigarette dangling from her mouth, impatiently waved them inside.

“I understand you’re getting married,” she said. “Come in.”

“Try it on,” said the old woman. Arleen stepped into the dress. It fitted perfectly like the slipper on Cinderella’s foot.

“So I guess that’s it,” said Harry, gazing at Arleen in the beautiful wedding dress.

“When should we set the date?”

The next morning, Arleen raced to the dress shop.

“I want that dress,” she told the two young shop girls.

“Okay,” they said. “But you have to try it on first.”

“I don’t need to,” said Arleen. “I was here in the wee hours of the morning, and the older woman let me in.”

“What woman?” asked one of the girls while her friend looked on in amazement.

“There’s never anybody here at night.”

At that precise moment, the phone rang. The very woman who had let Arleen and Harry into the shop after midnight was calling. It turned out the old woman was the owner of the shop and had not been there in years. She had finished sewing the white dress, and she was so thrilled with her creation that she felt compelled to rush to her uptown store and display it in the window. A few minutes later, Arleen and Harry had strolled by.

Two months later, Arleen and Harry got married. Without a doubt, they were the best-dressed couple getting married that day. Arleen couldn’t help wondering: “Without the strange experience of the dress, and the old woman that night, would we ever have married?”

A year later, their friends had gathered to admire their newborn baby, a girl whom Arleen and Harry hoped would someday wear the same wedding dress.

“You know,” said a friend, in-between cooing and making faces at their adorable baby, “I still can’t get over the fact that you two got married. You just don’t seem the marrying type.”

“That’s what we thought too,” said Arleen, “until a golden light led us to the magnificent wedding dress displayed in the window.”

Was it mere coincidence that led Arleen and Harry to the golden light in the window or was it the unseen hand of God’s Providence steering them there? You may think you are the one making the plans, but are you?

—Fr. Hugh Duffy