Joint Thank-You Speech From the Couple (Heartfelt, 3 Minutes)

The speech

Raffi: Good evening, everyone. We decided to do this together because every time one of us tried to write it alone, we ended up asking the other one what we actually thought.

Lulu: First, thank you for coming. Some of you drove four hours. Some of you flew in from Beirut, which is a lot farther. Raffi's parents got here on Wednesday and have been cooking for us ever since, and I'd like the record to show I have not had to make a single meal in three days.

Raffi: And thank you to Lulu's mom, who drove a rented van full of folding chairs across two counties yesterday morning because the rental company sent the wrong ones. She did not tell us until it was done.

Lulu: Thank you to Jude, who married us today and only practiced the vows about forty times. And to Birdie, who did every one of these flowers in her garage.

Raffi: Now we each get one story. Lulu made me go first. Two winters ago, my flight home from a work trip got canceled, and I was stuck in the Omaha airport at two in the morning. Everything was closed. I called Lulu, mostly to complain. She stayed on the phone with me for an hour and a half and read me, out loud, the entire menu of the diner near our apartment. Every item. Then she said, "Pick one. That's where we're going when you land." I picked the pancakes. She was standing outside that diner at nine the next morning. That's her. She gives you somewhere to get to.

Lulu: When I met Raffi, my apartment had a porch step that wobbled. I mentioned it once, on our third date, as a joke. I'd been stepping over it for a year. Two Saturdays later, he showed up at my door with a level and his father's old toolbox, the green metal one, and spent the whole afternoon on his knees fixing a step on a building he didn't live in. He didn't make a big deal about it. He just wanted it to be steady when I came home.

Raffi: It was a very bad step.

Lulu: It's a very good step now.

Raffi: So, would everyone raise a glass with us. To our families, and to all of you, for getting us here.

Lulu: To somewhere to get to.

Raffi: And a steady step when you get there.

Why it works: The thank-yous are specific enough to mean something, and each partner tells a story the other probably didn't know they'd noticed. The toast ties both stories together in one line.