This 4-year-old was married to a 29-year-old man—and her mother has the sweetest reason for it!

A 4-year-old cancer patient from New York marries the man of her dreams—a 29-year-old male nurse who was always by her side through her rough ordeal.

Abby Sayles has been battling Leukemia for a year now and has been undergoing chemotherapy at the Melodies Center for Childhood Cancer and Blood Disorders at Albany Medical Center. Of all the nurses in the said hospital, Abby grew especially close to one male nurse, 29-year-old Matt Hickling, who was always by her side during her stay at the hospital.

Months passed and Abby came to think that Matt was actually her knight in shining armor. She decided to pop the question and ask Matt to ‘marry’ her. But before Abby did that, her mother Renee Sayles gave Matt a heads up and told him about Abby’s intentions beforehand. The following day, Abby asked Matt if he would marry her—and Matt answered with a sweet “yes” that made Abby the happiest 4-year-old alive.

“I had to be hard, to play hard to get, and she was looking right at me with those eyes,” Hickling told interviewers.

The hospital immediately got busy preparing for the wedding—buying several floral bouquets and putting down an aisle of rose petals on the hospital floor. The excited girl ran to her groom as soon as she saw him waiting for her down the aisle. They both sliced the cake, took pictures—and she was ecstatic about it!

“Just a great moment to share with this family and everyone and what they go through from day to day and to have her remember something like this,” said Hickling. “She can look back on it when she’s older and hopefully be really just touched by it.”

Sayles said her daughter has had a few setbacks in her recovery, but that her long-term prognosis is good.