The love story behind the dress Glennon Doyle Melton wore to marry her wife.

Abby Wambach is a former professional soccer player who has represented the US at the Olympics and in FIFA World Cups, and is regarded as one of the greatest female football players of all time.

Glennon Doyle Melton is self-described Christian mummy blogger, the author of books such as Love Warrior and Carry on, Warrior and the creator of online religious parenting community Momastery.

In May, the pair were married.

On Saturday, Glennon has detailed the love story behind her wedding dress on Instagram after looking and looking, and not finding “the right dress”.

“The gowns I tried on made me look less like a grown-up bride and more like a tooth-fairy. I resigned myself to wearing a sundress from my closet,” she wrote.

A post shared by Glennon Doyle (@glennondoyle) on Oct 6, 2017 at 12:54pm PDT

“Then three weeks before the wedding, [my] sister sent me a website and said, ‘This is how I imagine you on your wedding day.’ I clicked over and my heart stopped. The dresses were elegant, light, romantic and ethereal. They were also handmade by an outrageously talented Israeli designer named Liz Martinez & had to be ordered months in advance.'”

Doyle Melton wrote she had resigned herself to one day wearing the gown – perhaps at the couple’s five year anniversary – but not on her wedding day. They were “magical dresses”, but the wedding was in three weeks. They simply wouldn’t have time.

“Two days later [my] sister called and said, ‘I emailed the designer. I told her all about you, how hard you’ve fought for this day… how badly I want you to be able to walk toward your bride in one of her gowns. A woman named Melissa wrote back from Israel immediately.

“She said she had just finished reading Love Warrior for the second time and the book was giving her hope and strength; that Love Warrior was loving her to life. She wants their art to love you back. Her team wants to make you a gown. They want you to walk toward Abby and your new life carrying with you all of their gratitude and love.’

A post shared by Mary Wambach (@abbywambach) on May 15, 2017 at 11:40am PDT

“I told Melissa and Liz that I loved their art and trusted them – to please choose any gown for me.”

Putting her fate in the hands of a designer she had never met to create her wedding dress, within two weeks the gown had arrived at her home. “It was stunning,” she wrote.

“Knowing that a woman’s hands crafted this art of a gown for me as an act of gratitude for the art I had crafted for her in Love Warrior was a sacred part of my most sacred day.

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A post shared by Glennon Doyle (@glennondoyle) on May 15, 2017 at 11:40am PDT

A post shared by Glennon Doyle (@glennondoyle) on May 17, 2017 at 7:06pm PDT

“The team at Liz Martinez Bridal never asked me for a thing. Not a penny or a post. They just wanted to love another sister through their art and there’s not much I respect more than that.

“Thank you to Liz Martinez and Melissa, for wrapping me in love and support on my wedding day. You are artists and friends and I am so grateful.”

Doyle Melton rose to fame as a Christian mummy blogger who wrote with candour about family life. As a recovering bulimic and alcoholic who became sober before she had children, Doyle Melton realised, three children into her marriage, her husband was addicted to pornography and having sex with strangers.

After the couple worked on rebuilding their marriage, and reached a place where they felt they were afloat, she wrote a book about it called Love Warrior. And then, just a month before it was due out, she announced the couple had split.

Over a year on, Love Warrior is a bestseller, and Doyle Melton re-married. In a beautiful, beautiful dress.

Everything you never knew about mummy bloggers courtesy of Holly Wainright, author of The Mummy Bloggers.