Funny Matron of Honor Speech (About 3 Minutes)

The speech

Good evening. I'm Bess, and I've been Mae's best friend since college. Tonight I'm her matron of honor, which is the title they give you once you're married. I looked it up. It makes me sound like I run a boarding school and confiscate radios.

Because I'm the married one, a few people have asked if I'll be giving marriage advice. I asked my husband, Oren, what I should say. He thought about it for a long time and said, "Tell them where the good parking is." So, Mae and Hank, it's behind the bakery. That's all we've got.

What I actually want to talk about is laminating.

Mae plans. I don't mean she makes a list. I mean that for our road trip after senior year, she handed me a twelve-page itinerary in a binder, and every page was laminated. I asked her why. She said, "In case of weather." We were driving to Michigan in July.

On day three, outside a town with one gas station and a lot of corn, the alternator died. I was ready to cry. Mae opened the binder, flipped past the motels and the restaurants, and turned to a tab labeled "Contingencies." Page nine. It had the number for a tow company in that county. She had looked up tow companies for every county on the route. We were back on the road by four o'clock, and she was completely calm, because in her mind this had already happened and been handled.

That's Mae. She thinks ahead so the rest of us don't have to.

Hank is not a planner. Hank is a man who reads the instructions after he's built the bookshelf, and somehow the bookshelf is fine. He and Mae balance out.

But about a year ago I was at their apartment, and I saw something on the fridge. A card, in Hank's handwriting. "Mae's coffee. Oat milk. Half a sugar. Not the blue mug, it's too heavy." And it was laminated.

He bought a laminator. For her. So that the most important information in the house would survive weather.

Fifteen years of friendship, and that is the first time I've seen somebody plan ahead for her.

Please raise your glasses. To Mae and Hank. Laminated, and good in any weather.

Why it works: The speaker makes fun of her own title instead of the couple, then builds the whole speech around one habit of the bride's. The groom's moment is something he learned to do because of her, so the joke lands as a compliment.