Sister of the Bride Speech, Not Maid of Honor (Heartfelt, 3 Minutes)

The speech

Hi, everyone. I'm Folasade, Yetunde's younger sister. Her maid of honor already spoke, and she was wonderful, and I am going to be shorter and probably cry more.

I have to start with something true, which is that for most of our childhood, Yetunde and I did not like each other very much. We shared a bedroom on the second floor of a duplex on Oakmont, and when I was eight and she was twelve, she put a line of blue painter's tape down the middle of the carpet. Her side had the window. My side had the door. She charged me a toll to cross, one dollar a week, which I paid out of my allowance for most of a year before I figured out I could climb over the bed. Our mother left that tape down for six years. I think it was out of spite toward both of us.

We weren't close in high school either. She was four years ahead, and then she was away at college, and then she was a voice on the phone at Christmas. I thought that was just how sisters were for some people.

When I was twenty-four I moved to Columbus for a job, alone, with a car full of boxes and no furniture. The first night I slept on the floor of an empty apartment. I hadn't told anyone how bad it was. I didn't think I had anyone to tell. At nine the next morning somebody knocked, and it was Yetunde. She had driven five and a half hours with an air mattress, a lamp, and a roll of blue painter's tape. She didn't say much. She put one strip across the bedroom doorway and said, "No toll."

We have talked almost every day since. It turns out you can meet your sister when you're both grown up, and find out she's someone you would have picked anyway.

Hattie, I was the first person in the family Yetunde told about you. She called me from a grocery store parking lot and said, "I met someone who reads the instructions." I didn't understand that until I watched you put together our mother's new bookshelf without one leftover screw. You are patient with her, and you are patient with all of us, which is a bigger job. And I've seen how she slows down when you walk into a room, how she laughs with her whole face. She didn't do that when we were kids. She does it now.

So please, everyone, raise your glass. To Yetunde and Hattie. No tolls, ever.

Why it works: It admits the sisters weren't close, which makes the turn believable, and one object, a roll of blue tape, carries the story from the bedroom to the toast. Hattie is welcomed with a thing the sister actually watched her do.