For years, Mia Chard imagined what her wedding day would feel like without her dad. Her father, Doug Chard, who died in 2018 at age 72 after a long illness, had been one of her closest companions. Mia describes her father as “tough and tender.” Friends often thought he looked intimidating, she says, but he was patient, caring and one of the gentlest people she knew. “I considered him one of my best friends,” Chard, a 43-year-old social worker in Utah, tells TODAY.com. Growing up, her mother, Susana, owned a wedding business. They spent countless hours arranging flowers, decorating venues and helping other couples celebrate milestones, even as Chard wondered whether she would ever have one of her own. “I felt very insecure about my ability to find a partner or have relationships,” she says. She had spent most of her life single, something she spoke about openly online. One of those videos caught the attention of Sam Perez, a 41-year-old film and video editor. He reached out. She responded. Before long, they were building a future together. As she and Perez planned their May 2 wedding, memories of her father seemed woven into nearly every decision. Mia Chard says the photos from her wedding were a sign from her late dad. Courtesy Mia Chard “There was so much of him in everything we were doing,” she says. One choice felt especially important. Her mother hoped one of Chard’s brothers would walk her down the aisle. Her oldest brother was already officiating the ceremony. But Chard couldn’t bring herself to replace the role she had always imagined her father filling. “If it’s not Dad, it’s no one,’” she remembered thinking. “I’ll do it myself.’” See Chard’s TikTok here: A Wedding Memory: My Dad’s Spirit Captured on Film. Before the ceremony, she made sure to bring something that belonged to him: a camera. It was a vintage Rollei film camera her father had purchased in the 1970s. He carried it through different chapters of his life. After his death, Chard began bringing the camera to take photos at birthdays, family gatherings and trips, as “a way to keep him on adventures with us,” she says. She continued using it regularly. On her wedding day, she handed it to one of her brothers and asked him to photograph whatever caught his eye. Then she forgot about it. Nearly a month later, the developed images arrived by email. Chard opened the gallery expecting wedding photographs. Instead, the first image left her stunned. It was a photo of her father and mother together … from an occasion years ago. “And I’m like, ‘What is this?’” As she continued scrolling, she realized something unusual had happened. Images from her wedding day had been overlaid with photographs from a family gathering decades earlier. The older images appeared to date back to her brother’s graduation in 1999. At first, she was disappointed. Then the more she studied the photographs, the harder they were to dismiss as simply damaged film. Family members appeared layered across wedding scenes. In one image, Chard noticed how the overlapping exposures framed her as she walked down the aisle. “It felt meant to be,” she says. “It truly felt meant to be.” For Chard, who admits she has often been skeptical of assigning meaning to unusual events, the experience felt different. She believes in something beyond this life, she says, but she has also lived with doubt. Unlike some family members who speak openly about sensing her father’s presence, Chard says she rarely experiences those moments herself. “There have been instances where I feel like he connects with me through music,” she says. “And I feel like he connects with me through pictures in some ways.” The mystery of the film only deepened that feeling. Chard remembers purchasing new film and believing that was what had been loaded into the camera. Although she had been using the camera for years without incident, Chard says she believed she had loaded a new roll of film several months before the wedding. Instead, when the images were developed, she realized the roll already contained photographs taken decades earlier. “I just can’t explain how in the world that roll of film was in my camera,” she says. Right before Chard stepped down the aisle, she thought about her father. “I wanted him with me,” she says. Weeks later, when she opened the gallery and saw her parents staring back her from the first photograph, she felt she had her answer. “And he was.” In a TikTok video, Chard reflected on the discovery, writing that it felt as though “the one person I had wanted at my wedding was trying to tell me he had been there all along.” She believes her father was “right beside ‘his girl’” as she walked down the aisle. “He’s alive in my memories, he’s alive in my heart,” she wrote. “The man who showed me how to love is alive in every act of love that comes from me.” She ended the post with a simple conclusion: “Of course he made it to my wedding day. I want to believe I have the pictures to prove it.” This story first appeared on TODAY.com. More from TODAY: She Brought Her Late Dad’s Vintage Camera to Her Wedding. The Film Developed With a Surprise After Hundreds of Women Wrote In, ‘Date My Dad’ Bachelor Went on 3 Dates: Watch What Happened! 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