Man of Honor Speech, the Bride's Best Friend (Heartfelt, 3.5 Minutes)

The speech

Hi, everyone. I'm Percival, the man of honor. Delphi tried "bridesman" for a week, then "best person," and then she looked at me and said, "You're the man of honor. Don't make it weird." So I won't.

Delphi and I met at nineteen, working the four a.m. shift at a bakery on Linden Street, and I want to tell you about the jar.

About two months in, I was at her apartment and noticed a mason jar on the windowsill, full of folded slips of paper, with "Good Days" written on the lid in marker. I asked what it was. She said that when she was sixteen she'd had a bad year, the kind you don't put in a speech, and she had started writing down one good thing every night, however small, and dropping it in the jar. On the bad nights she'd pull a few out and read them. She had done it every night for three years. She said it like it was nothing. Like everyone did that.

Four years later, I had my own bad year. I'm not going to put it in a speech either. But I'll tell you that one night in February, Delphi came up the three flights to my place, and she didn't bring food, and she didn't say much. She put an empty jar on my table, and a pen, and a stack of slips cut from a cereal box, and she said, "Start with today. There's something." And she left.

I sat there a long time. The first slip I wrote said "Delphi came over." It's still at the bottom of the jar, and the jar is still on my table, and there are nine years of slips in it now.

That's who she is. She doesn't tell you it's going to be okay. She hands you the jar.

So I paid attention when Solveig showed up, because Delphi doesn't let the jar out of the house, and about a dozen visits into that first year, I noticed it had moved. It was on the kitchen table. Out in the open, where two people could get to it. I never asked. I didn't have to.

Solveig, I've read a few of her slips over the years, because she lets me, and I'm going to tell you one thing and then stop. About two weeks after she met you, one of them said, "Solveig laughed at the bus thing." That's it. That's the whole slip. I don't know what the bus thing is. I do know she has been writing your name down ever since. Thank you for being the person who gets written down.

Everybody, please stand with me. To Delphi and Solveig. Put it in the jar.

Why it works: One object, the jar, runs through the whole speech: her story, his story, the turn, and the toast. The title question gets one line. The word to the partner is a single slip of paper the speaker actually read.