Couple's Thank-You Speech for a Small Wedding (Short, About 2 Minutes)

The speech

Rafferty: We're twelve people in a backyard, so we're going to go around it once. Katarina, it's your backyard. Thank you for saying yes before we'd finished asking, and for mowing it twice this week.

Cosima: The chairs came out of my dad's garage on Thursday. Horatio and my mom, Idony, washed every one of them with a hose, and Mom would like me to mention that it was her idea. Thank you both, for the chairs, and for the thirty years before the chairs.

Rafferty: My mother, Philippa, made the cake, and my brother Jovan drove it ninety miles belted into the passenger seat like a child. Jovan also married us an hour ago, which he got licensed to do online in eleven minutes and took more seriously than anything I've seen him do. Thank you, Mom. Thank you, Jovan.

Cosima: The flowers on the tables are from my sister Guinevere's garden. She cut them at six this morning and told me which ones not to touch. Nikolaj and Evander lent us the tables and the string lights and then stayed to hang them, and Evander, you were right about the extension cord. Mireya, you drove four hours each way for one night, and you're the reason there's a photographer, because you are the photographer. Leander, you've been playing guitar on that step since four o'clock and nobody has asked you to stop, which is the review.

Rafferty: That's everyone. We counted twice. Nobody here is a plus-one. Every one of you is somebody we'd have missed.

Cosima: Everybody, glasses up. To all ten of you, from Cosima and Rafferty. Thank you for fitting in the yard.

Why it works: Ten names in two minutes could be a roll call, but each one is tied to a chair, a cake, or a guitar, so it reads as the story of the day instead.