Sister of the Groom Speech, a Few Words (Funny, About 3.5 Minutes)

The speech

Hi, everyone. I'm Octavia, Percival's older sister. I am not the maid of honor, I did not plan anything, and nobody checked this speech, which tells you how much this family trusts me. Solveig asked me to say a few words. I'm going to do that, and then I'm going to sit down before anyone has a chance to take the microphone back.

When Percival was eleven, he started keeping a notebook. A green composition book, the marbled kind, and in it he rated every meal he ate. Out of ten. With notes. The diner on Route 9 got a seven for pancakes and a four for the bathroom. Our aunt's Thanksgiving got a six, with the comment "turkey dry, pie strong, would return." Our mother's kitchen, where he ate roughly six thousand meals, averaged a five and a half, and the notes said things like "service slow" and "portions inconsistent." Mom found the notebook when he was thirteen. She still brings it up. She brought it up this morning.

Here's the thing about the notebook, though. He was never mean in it, and he was never wrong. If Percival gave something a four, it was a four. He gave his own birthday party a seven one year because the cake was from a box, and he was the one who had picked the box. He has always been like that. He is the fairest person I know, about everything, including himself, and it makes him the person you call when you want the truth and not the nice version.

He kept the notebook going for twenty years. Different books, same system. Then Solveig came along, and about a month in, I asked him what she had scored. He got very quiet. Then he said, "I stopped. I kept giving everything a ten and it was ruining the system."

That's the whole speech, really. The most honest person I know ran out of honest ways to say how good things had gotten, and gave up the thing he'd been doing since he was eleven rather than fudge a number.

Solveig, I've watched him with you for three years now, and I'd like to put something on the record, since he can't. He laughs more. He calls Mom back. He went to a restaurant last month and didn't tell anyone what he thought of it, and I did not know that was possible. You are good for him in a way you can see from across a room, and I'm glad it's you, because you also don't put up with him, and somebody in this family needed to take a shift.

Everybody, glasses up. To Percival and Solveig. Ten out of ten. The system's fine.

Why it works: One running detail, the rating notebook, carries the laughs and then the turn. The teasing is about the speaker and the family, and the bride is addressed with things the sister actually saw.