Dying dad walks 11-year-old daughter down the aisle

An 11-year-old California girl recently experienced the best day of her life when her terminally ill father walked her down the aisle at a mock wedding.

Josie Zetz was accompanied by Jim Zetz, 62, who has pancreatic cancer and is not expected to live long enough to see his daughter wed.

The young girl was surprised with the mock wedding while at school. The special day was also intended as a birthday gift.

"She was a little bit overwhelmed when her mom picked her up from school and told her," Lindsey Villatoro, the photographer who captured the day on video, tells Huffington Post. "She just needed a moment. Later, she said, 'This is the best day of my life.' She was very glad and excited to have these moments."

Josie's emotions were certainly caught on camera, as many of the snaps show her eyes welled up with tears.

"Down the road, this will mean a lot to her," Jim tells Press-Enterprise. "She will always remember it."

Villatoro specializes in photography that captures seriously ill people while they live their remaining days.

"The goal when I do these things is to preserve that person. Most people focus on the death and not the beauty of that person, who they were and the memories that they leave," she says.

While Villatoro doesn't normally offer mock weddings and videos for her clients, the idea dawned on her after she was invited to take photographs at the Zetz household and she met Josie.

"One day (you) wake up and realize you’re given the opportunity to change someone’s life for the better. You get an idea, don’t think twice and run with it," she writes in the video's description.

Josie isn't the first lucky girl to experience a mock wedding in honour of her terminally ill father.

Last year, a 10-year-old Missouri girl stood beside her bedridden father in a mock ceremony at a hospital.

And both Rachel Wolf and Sarah Nagy experienced their own separate mock weddings with their dying fathers present.