Maid of Honor Speech for a Childhood Best Friend (Heartfelt, 4 Min)

The speech

Hi, everyone. I'm Pia. I met Winnie on the first day of kindergarten, which was twenty-six years ago, and I've been thinking about how to fit that into four minutes. I can't. So I'm going to tell you two stories, one from when we were five and one from when we were grown up, and they're really the same story.

The first day of kindergarten, I did not want to be there. My mom left, and I sat down in front of my cubby and cried with my whole body, the way only a five-year-old can. Kids walked around me. A teacher said something nice. It didn't help.

Then a girl with very straight bangs sat down next to me. She had two plastic hair clips shaped like strawberries, one on each side. She took one out of her own hair, clipped it into mine, a little crooked, and said, "Now we match. So you have to stay."

I stayed. I have more or less stayed ever since.

Twenty-one years later, I got a job in Spokane, and I was leaving. Winnie drove the moving truck with me for two days because she said I'd fall asleep at the wheel, which was true. She flew home the morning after we got there. That night, alone in an empty apartment, I opened the first box. Taped to the inside of the lid was an envelope. Inside the envelope was the other strawberry clip. She had kept it for twenty-one years. The note said, "Now you have both. That means you have to come back."

I came back two years later. I'd like to say it was for the job. It was mostly the clip.

That's the thing about Winnie. She doesn't argue you out of being scared. She just gives you a reason to stay, and she makes it feel like your idea.

Joanna, I want to tell you about the night I knew about you.

It was Winnie's first show, her pottery, on the walls and shelves of a little café on Ridge. You two had been together about two months. The room filled up, and Winnie, who had made every single thing in that room, disappeared. I found her standing in the back by the coat rack, holding her own coat, looking like she was five years old.

Before I could get there, you did. You didn't tell her she was talented. You didn't pull her out. You took her coat, hung it up, and stood right there next to her by the coat rack, like it was the best spot in the place. After about twenty minutes, she walked out into the room on her own. You just made it so she wasn't standing there alone.

I knew that move. I learned it on the floor of a kindergarten.

So, Joanna, I brought something. This is one of the strawberry clips. I'm keeping the other one, because I'm sentimental and I earned it. But this one is yours now. Now you match. That means you have to stay.

Everyone, please raise your glasses. To Winnie and Joanna. Both of you, stay.

Why it works: One small object, a strawberry hair clip, carries a childhood story and an adult one, and the speech hands it to the bride's wife at the end. The partner's moment is something the speaker recognized because she had been on the other side of it.