Grieving Mom Honors Late Daughter in Wedding Photo

— -- A grieving mom found the best way to honor her late daughter's memory: incorporating her into a wedding day photo.

"[The photographer] told me to imagine I was holding her face and leaning in and giving her a kiss," Amanda Crowe Free of Port Allen, Louisiana, told ABC News. "I could see that being something [my daughter] did if she was really here with me. Not having her there was very difficult, but the butterflies and the picture made me feel like she was there.

"It brings about a happiness that nobody can understand unless they lost a child," Free added. "Nobody ever wants their child to be forgotten. I've cried so much in the last two years of my life and honestly, I don’t know how I still have tears left to cry. It’s just the price I have to pay for loving my baby so much."

Free, 33, said her daughter, Azalee, died in November 2013 from neuroblastoma, a type of cancer. Azalee was six years old.

"You can never prepare yourself for the loss of a child," she said. "I went through a dark place with anger from my baby being gone. She was my best friend. She knew me and we did everything together. She loved me, I loved her and I miss that very much. Everyone she came in contact with absolutely fell in love with her."

Prior to her Dec. 13 nuptials, Free said a friend of hers came up with the idea to honor Azalee's memory by incorporating her into a wedding photo.

Free's photographer, Ashley Frantz, said she wasn't confident about taking on the project at first.

"I was just learning Photoshop and it's such a tender subject, I didn't want to offend her or mess anything up," Frantz of Lake Charles, Louisiana, told ABC News. "I was going to try and find a photographer friend to try and do it, but I knew how much it meant to her, so I studied for hours and learned how."

Free said a family member had the photo of her and Azalee printed on a canvas as a wedding gift.