About two weeks before John's wedding, I called his best man and brother, Chris, to ask him if he needed any help with his Best Man speech. Chris said he hadn't started working on the speech, but that if he needed me to look at something, he'd let me know.
The Wednesday before the wedding, I left Chris a message, asking him how things were going with the speech. I didn't hear back so I assumed things were going OK.
The night before the rehearsal dinner I got a call from Chris. He had a bit of writer's block and was well on his way to losing his mind. We talked for a little bit about what he was thinking and he had some good ideas. I gave him some gag ideas but I could tell that wasn't what he was looking for.
But at about 2:30am, he had a break through.
The speech was very well received at the reception and I got his permission to share this with you.
Chris' Best Man Speech
Hi everyone, I'm Chris, John's brother. I want to thank all of you for coming. I also would like to assure you that I am indeed the best man, and not the ring bearer.
Some of you know that John and I are very close as brothers--our parents passed away when we were very young and we pretty much raised ourselves. Now it's true that we had a lot of help from our friends, who also essentially moved in with us. You can imagine then that two teenage boys being "raised" by other teenage boys -- things are going to fall through the cracks. Our neighbors likened this whole situation to living next door to a den of wolves--that is a gross and malign misrepresentation -- we regard you more like a pack of dingoes, and you were delightful company.
Since John and Bekah have met, this has all played out like a Disney fairy tale...no, no, not the one with the dwarves...ok yes that one, but...the one where the beautiful, cultured princess falls in love with the scruffy, uncouth man-boy living in a cabin somewhere and on the way to falling madly in love, sees fit to re-introduce him to those quotidian preambles of adult normality like eating off plates that aren't made of paper, silverware that’s actually metal, or -- what is...an oven. (I share some of the blame here too...Doug reminded me the other day that the oven at our house in Lancaster had not functioned properly for 10 years...we were informed of this by the NEW owners. Brett, again we are terribly sorry and we had no idea that family of raccoons was living in there)
Bekah, you've found a wonderful husband to grow old with--John, you've found a great girl you can grow UP with. I'm sure the two of you will create all new deeply embarrassing, traumatizing adventures to add to the catalog of our family lore --none of which you can ever ever publicly talk about.
Oh, speaking of that John, there's a nice lady from Wal-mart's toddler's department who's waiting to speak with you after the reception.
So I'm proud to welcome you Bekah into the family as a younger sister/den mother (not that there's anything weird about that). And thank you both, and Bekah's parents, for making this a wonderful celebration.
2 comments:
Strong work on Chris' behalf, pretty near perfect. I have only had to do that task once and I didn't do it well. I still obsess about it, it has been nearly thirty years.
Chris shouldn't lose any sleep over this one.
Agreed. It sounded even better being read. Of course, he was weeping and sobbing the whole time so it was hard to catch what he was saying. I think I caught the Disney part.
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