Maid of Honor Speech When You Barely Know the Groom (3.5 Minutes)

The speech

Hi, everyone. I'm Imani. Dee and I lived across the hall from each other freshman year, which means I've known her through two majors, one haircut we don't discuss, and every apartment she has ever lived in. In 2019 I helped carry a couch up four flights of stairs for her. That couch is in their living room now. Callum, you're welcome.

I need to be honest about something. I have met Callum three times. I live in Denver, they live in Baltimore, and the last two years have mostly been phone calls. So I'm not going to stand up here and pretend I have twenty years of stories about him. What I have is three meetings and about four hundred phone calls with Dee, and I think that's enough.

The first time I met Callum was at a barbecue. He was at the grill, which in my experience is where men go to avoid conversation. Except he wasn't avoiding it. He'd made Dee a plate before she even got in line, and there were no onions on it, because Dee picks out onions like they've personally wronged her. They'd been dating six weeks. I've known her twelve years and I still forget the onions.

The second time, my flight home got cancelled, and he drove forty minutes at eleven at night to pick up a person he'd met once. Then he asked if I'd eaten. I hadn't. He'd brought a sandwich. No onions. I don't think he even noticed he'd done it.

The third time was last night at the rehearsal, and all I did was watch him watch her. He looks at her the way you look at someone you're still a little surprised to have.

But here's what actually convinced me. For two years, every phone call with Dee had a part where she told me something Callum did. Never big things. He learned her mom's lasagna. He keeps gas in her car, because she will drive on empty out of pure stubbornness. He remembered the name of her childhood cat. You don't hear about someone four hundred times by accident. You hear about him because he's become part of every day.

So, Callum, I don't know you well yet. I'd like to. But I know Dee better than almost anyone, and I know what she sounds like when she's happy, because I've been listening to it down the phone for two years.

Please raise your glasses. To Dee and Callum. And to the next four hundred phone calls, which I hope are about where to put the couch.

Why it works: Admitting up front that she barely knows him buys the room's trust. She uses the three meetings she actually had, threads one small detail through all of them, and ends by turning the distance into the proof: she's heard about him on every phone call.