Maid of Honor Speech for a Younger Sister (Funny, 3.5 Minutes)

The speech

Hi, everyone. I'm Stella, Daisy's older sister. Three years older, which in our house meant a three-year head start on everything, and Daisy spent her whole childhood trying to close the gap by doing exactly what I did, about four minutes after I did it.

I got bangs in fourth grade. Daisy got bangs the next day. She cut them herself, in the downstairs bathroom, with the kitchen scissors. They were shorter on one side, and she wore them to school with total confidence. My mom still has the photo on the fridge, so if you're at the house later, look for the little girl who appears to be squinting at a tilted horizon.

I joined the swim team. She joined the swim team. She was six. She could not, strictly speaking, swim. She held the wall for an entire season and told people she was doing laps, slowly.

But the big one was restaurants. From about age seven to sixteen, Daisy did not order her own food. The waiter would get to her, she would look across the table at me, and she would say, "I'll have whatever Stella's having." Nine years. She ate a lot of chicken fingers she didn't want. When I went through a phase of ordering the soup to seem mature, she ordered the soup. She hated the soup. She ate the soup.

I used to change my order at the last second to trap her. She would change hers right back. It was the most competitive thing that ever happened in our family, and nobody else at the table knew it was going on.

Somewhere in high school, she stopped. She grew out the bangs and took up the cello, which I could never play, and she got very good at it. She turned into her own person. Honestly, she turned into someone I copy now. I have stolen her taste in books and at least two of her jackets.

So here is how I knew about Tad.

The first time Daisy brought him to a family dinner, it was a little Italian place near her apartment. The waiter came around. Tad ordered the mushroom risotto. The waiter turned to Daisy, and she closed her menu, looked across the table at him, and said, "I'll have what he's having."

I put my fork down. Twenty years, and I'd been replaced in one sentence.

Then the waiter came back and said the kitchen only had one risotto left. Tad didn't even pause. He said, "She'll have it," picked up the menu again, and ordered the first thing he saw, which was the soup. He ate the whole bowl. He never mentioned it. Daisy didn't notice. I did.

Tad, I'm officially handing the job over. It mostly involves chicken fingers, and you've already passed the soup test.

Everybody, glasses up. To Daisy and Tad. I'll have what they're having.

Why it works: The copying is a running joke with one specific habit at its center, and it pays off when the speaker watches her sister copy someone else for the first time. The groom wins her over with one quiet thing he did at dinner.