Rule #404.25-3: Not a Waifu follower if it's an accurate representation of your IRL wife.  (Wife-oooh?) sorry

Decided I was going to make my better half of 17 years into a Skyrim follower and fell down the rabbit hole.  After many hours of trial and error, I finally honed in on an accurate representation.  Here's 50/50 opacity mod/photo layers.

"That looks like Mom"  - My 12 yr old

On to the mod...

ABOUT


"Merrilee" is a standalone follower built with her own CBBE Physics body.  Everything was created with accuracy to the real person in mind.  She's not some giant-eyed, anime looking thing with plastic skin --not that there's anything wrong with that.  Even the slight asymmetries were carefully done (like a slightly leftward leaning nose.)

There is a Forsworn/Conjuration theme to the entire mod which revolves around a journal based quest.  It begins when you recruit Merrilee and take her journal, in which you'll find directions to the custom dungeon and another journal that will lead you to a secret area where all the cool stuff is. 

Note: You'll not need off the charts conjuration skill but you will need a good amount of starting mana to take advantage of what you find.

I'll put hints below but I highly recommend doing the quest from the journals.  Not only are they full of neat backstory and drama, you'll recognize many mod items and people from the pages and the overall experience will be as designed.  I've written novel length stories --this ain't that.  They're about the length of the longer vanilla journals.

DETAILS
Name: Merrilee Forge-Sage
Race: Nord
Age: 42
Location: Old Hroldan
Body: CBBE Physics
Head: Vector Plexus High-Poly 
Weight: 100
Voice: Young Eager
Essential
Wont trigger traps or effect stealth
Marriageable: yes, in the game only
No scripts
Added cell: 000JSMerrileesSecret
Actor Form ID: 02000D74  Ref: 220073c5 (in my game anyway)


SPELLS & PERKS
Candlelight
Custom Spell for conjuring journal character WARNING: If you have a follower mod that allows multiple followers (of course you do), this spell, especially if you cast it in parallel with Merrilee, can lead to up to 10 extra actors running around (per my testing).  This can cause issues if you have a bunch of followers already.

Perks:  One handed powerhouse.  Conjuration enough to cast one of the custom spells.  Archery Perks. Flame mage perks though I removed Flames as a spell b/c she would just burn people and not cast the summon.

ARMOR & WEAPONS
Armor: Just a vanilla asset, outfit studio mashup I thought looked good for the character.  Increases one-handed skill.  CAUTION: If you are playing as a male (of course you aren't), the armor does not have a male model.  You will have a lovely transparent body.
It's called Reachwoman's armor in the game not Reachperson.

Weapons:  Reachwoman's Dragon axe (yes you can take this if you are male) and Merrilee's rose are vanilla models and textures but set to high damage and the mod's flagship summoning spell respectively.

Note: Merrilee is set to have a default outfit (Merchant).  If you take her armor she will revert to that.  The body is not a nevernude body, however.  I'm not going to tell you what you can and can't do.  I ain't your papa and it's all just 1's and 0's.

COMPATABILITY
As I said above.  You might have too many people doing too many things with all the summoning and raising of dead going on.  It should depend on your system.  I have a --not terribly stable--VR instance with 5 winged followers and all the physics and it locked up.  I dismissed 2 followers and it was fine.  Your mileage may vary.  
As far as messing with other mods, it shouldn't.  The only world edit is a small trapdoor in an inconspicuous place.  I suppose if another mod dumps a mountain there, it would not be compatible.
CAUTION: If you go about changing her hair (wigs and such or in Racemenu) you might notice not all hairs are compatible and the forehead may become a 5-head.
I don't know why, but possibly I created her facial features with that hair and didn't notice they were a bit low.  Also deflating the default "Mars Attacks" head to match reality makes some hairs show a gap from the temple to the hair.

INSTALLATION & REQUIREMENTS
Install with a mod manager or manual like normal.  No overwrite priorities noted.
I checked the Skyrim.esm and Update.esm boxes in the CK when I made the .esp.  Not even the DLC is required.  (mostly because I still can't get CK to let me open multiple masters.  I've tried the .ini fixes to no avail.  If anyone has any other ideas let me know in the comments)

There are no requirements. Below is only for the included preset and bodyslide
If you plan on using the preset included in the other files, you'll need this stuff:

• Racemenu
• VectorPlexus High Poly head v1.4 (off site)
• KS Hairdos SSE
• Hvergelmir brows and SG Eyebrows for High Poly Head which requires the SG brow optional file from UNP
• Improved Eyes Skyrim
  

If you want to use the included bodyslide file you'll need CBBE and Bodyslide.

EDIT:  There might be a *slight* difference between the instance where I run Expressive Facegen Morphs and my clean vanilla test instance.  Therefore, I recommend having it but it's not required.

Also Botox makes the other characters look much better though not required.

Recommend an ENB that makes things dark.

Credits
For Merilee I used the assets listed above, specifically: Sunset Glow for hair, #3 Brown for eyes, and #26 Brow as well as Mature Skin and Expressive Facegen Morphs

For screenshot clothes and jewelry other than my armor, I used Apachii Divine Elegance Store.
ENB: Thanks to Boris for the binaries, of course and Silent Horizons for the great preset.

Thanks to TheFaceSculptor for directing me to this great comprehensive guide How to Edit and Create Standalone Custom Followers - Waifu Edition

Thanks to my wife for putting up with my BS.