Maid of honor speech examples

Good evening, everybody. I'm Brianna, and I was Sofia's college roommate at UT for four years, which means I have seen things. Don't worry, Sofia. I'm only going to tell them about some of them.

We were put together in a dorm on the first day of freshman year. I showed up with two suitcases. Sofia showed up with her mom, her dad, both grandparents, three aunts and a cooler of tamales. By the end of move-in day, her Tía Rosa had rearranged my side of the room and told me I needed a better lamp. She was right. I bought the lamp.

Sofia is an accountant, and she was an accountant long before anyone paid her to be one. In our junior year we shared a tiny apartment off Riverside, and she ran our household budget on a spreadsheet with color-coded tabs. If I bought a breakfast taco, I had to log the breakfast taco. At the end of every month she'd send me a summary with a chart. I'm fairly sure I'm the only person in Texas who has had a pie chart made about her queso habit.

She's also the least outdoorsy person I've ever met. For her twenty-fifth birthday, a group of us rented a cabin near Wimberley so we could float the river. Sofia brought a folding chair, a hat the size of a patio umbrella and a novel. She spent the whole afternoon in the shallow part, reading, while the rest of us floated past her. Every time we came back round, she'd look up and ask if we'd reapplied our sunscreen.

Then she met Diego. He was playing kickball with our friend Marisol's team, and he fell over trying to catch a ball that Sofia kicked. She told me later that she liked him because he laughed about it before anyone else did. Diego, I've seen you do that a hundred times since. You've even learned to love a spreadsheet. And last summer you got her into a kayak on Lady Bird Lake, which I didn't think anyone could do. I have the photo to prove it.

Sofia, you've kept track of me since the day we met. I'm so happy you've found someone who keeps track of you.

So everyone, please raise your glasses to Sofia and Diego.

Hi, everyone. I'm Hannah, Grace's big sister. Thank you all for being here, and a special thank-you to Tyler's parents, Linda and Wayne, for the rehearsal dinner last night and for making us all feel so welcome.

Grace and I grew up in a house on a gravel road outside Asheville, with a creek at the bottom of the yard and a tire swing that our dad hung from a tree that was, looking back, far too close to the creek. I was the careful one. Grace was the one who swung out as far as she could go, let go, and landed in the water in her church clothes. Mom would stand on the porch shaking her head, and Dad would be laughing too hard to help.

When Dad died, Grace was sixteen. I was away at college in Chapel Hill, and I wasn't home as much as I should have been. Grace was. She learned to cook his chicken and dumplings so Mom wouldn't have to. She drove Mom to every appointment and still made the honor roll. I didn't really understand what she'd carried until years later, and I've never properly thanked her for it. So, Grace, thank you.

It won't surprise anyone that she became a nurse. She works nights on a cardiac unit in Charlotte, and when she talks about her patients she remembers every one of their names.

Grace met Tyler at a friend's cookout in Matthews. She called me on the drive home and said, "I met a firefighter who makes his own barbecue sauce, and I think I might be in trouble." Tyler, what I've noticed about you is that you look after her without making a fuss about it. When she comes home from a night shift, there's coffee made and the dog has been walked. When she needs to talk, you listen, and when she needs to sleep, you take the dog to your parents' house. That's the kind of care she's always given everyone else, and it means so much to see her getting it back.

Dad would have loved you, Tyler. He'd have wanted to argue with you about barbecue sauce, and then he'd have asked for the recipe.

So please raise your glasses to my little sister and her husband. To Grace and Tyler.

Hi, everyone. I'm Nicole, and I've been Ashley's best friend since seventh grade, when she sat next to me in Spanish and asked to borrow a pen. I never got the pen back. I got a best friend instead, so I think it worked out.

Ashley and I spent every summer of high school working at the same ice cream stand in Seaside Heights. She was the fastest scooper on the boardwalk, and she knew half the regulars by their order. If you came in twice, she'd have your cone ready before you got to the window. Our boss used to say she was the only reason anyone came back after Labor Day.

That's still what she's like. She remembers everything about the people she loves, and she shows up for all of them. She drove down from Hoboken the night my grandma went into the hospital, and she sat with me in the waiting room until two in the morning. She brought snacks and a blanket from her car, and she didn't once check the time.

Kevin, you're the first guy she's dated who remembered her order. Mint chocolate chip in a cup, with rainbow sprinkles. I knew right then you were paying attention. I've watched you two together for four years now, and you make each other laugh every single day.

So please raise your glasses to Ashley and Kevin.

Hello, everyone. I'm Eli, and I'm Rachel's man of honor, which is a title I've been using on every form I've filled out for the past six months. I'd like to thank Rachel and Simone for asking me, and Simone's sister Nadia, who has been a joy to plan things with and who I'm told has a much better speech coming up.

Rachel and I met at a bookstore on Hawthorne when we were both twenty-two. I worked in fiction and she worked in the kids' section, and on her first day she rearranged the picture books by the color of their spines. Our manager told her to put them back in alphabetical order. She did, and then she made a little rainbow display by the door instead. It sold more books in a week than the section had sold in a month.

That's Rachel. She sees how something could look better, and then she quietly makes it happen. She's designed the logo for half the food carts in Portland, and she did the invitations for this wedding, which I'm sure you all noticed.

She's also the most loyal friend I have. When I came out to my parents, I was twenty-four and very nervous about it. Rachel drove me to Salem, waited in a coffee shop for three hours and then drove me home, and she didn't make me talk about it until I was ready. My mom now sends her a card every Christmas.

Rachel met Simone when she was hired to design the menus for Simone's bakery on Division Street. She came home from the first meeting with a box of cardamom buns and a slightly dazed look on her face. The menus took four months, which is about three and a half months longer than Rachel has ever taken on a menu.

Simone, you bring out a calmer, happier Rachel than I've ever known. You get up at four in the morning to bake, and you still stay up to watch terrible reality shows with her. You two make each other laugh, and you look after each other in a hundred small ways.

So would you all please raise your glasses to Rachel and Simone.