Maid of Honor Speech for a Best Friend Since School (Funny, 4 Minutes)

The speech

Hi, everyone. I'm Sidonie, the maid of honor. Verity and I met in sixth grade at Fairmont Middle School, in the back row of Mrs. Hadley's science class, where she corrected my spelling of "volcano" before she told me her name. We have been best friends for the twenty years since, and she has been correcting my spelling the whole time.

I want to tell you about the tater tots.

In eighth grade, the cafeteria took tater tots off the menu. Most of us complained for a day and moved on. Verity went home, typed up a petition on her dad's computer, printed forty copies, and handed me a clipboard. My job was to collect signatures from the seventh graders. I lost the clipboard by Wednesday. I never told her that. I am telling her now.

She got 312 signatures without me. She asked for a meeting with the principal, Mr. Ostrow, and she showed up with a folder. The folder had the signatures, a cost comparison she had worked out with her mom, and a one-page letter that ended with the sentence, "I am happy to discuss this at your convenience." She was thirteen. The tater tots came back in March. There was no announcement. They were just there one day, and Verity ate hers very slowly, looking at nobody.

That is Verity. She does not get louder when she wants something. She gets a folder. And she has done this for everyone in this room at some point. Your lease, your return at the store that said no returns, the hospital bill with the wrong code on it. If you have ever handed her a problem, you know she comes back with a folder, and you know it works.

Here is the thing about living next to that for twenty years. I assumed the man she married would have to be somebody who could win an argument with her, and I had never met anyone who could, so I was worried.

Then I met Lorcan. The first time the three of us had dinner, at the Thai place on Carver Street, Verity started building a case for why the restaurant should move us to a better table. Lorcan listened to the whole thing. Then he said, "Or we could just like this table." And she laughed. She did not argue. She laughed, and she ate her noodles, and she let the table be fine.

I have watched that happen maybe a hundred times since. He does not beat her. He is the only person I have ever seen make her put the folder down, because with him, nothing needs winning. She is still the person who gets the tater tots back. She just comes home to someone who was never keeping score.

Lorcan, you got the best one. I have the clipboard records to prove it, or I would, if I could find them. Thank you for making my friend laugh at a bad table. You are stuck with me too, and I do not type petitions, so there is no appeal.

Everybody, glasses up. To Verity and Lorcan. May the tater tots always come back.

Why it works: One story from eighth grade shows exactly who the bride is, the laughs land on the speaker, and the groom gets credit for something the speaker actually watched at dinner.