Father of the bride speech examples

When Rosa was seven she wrote a letter of complaint to a cereal company because the toy inside was, and I have kept this letter, "not as advertised and also boring". She signed it with her full name and her age. They sent her four boxes of cereal and a written apology from a man called Gerald.

Good evening, everyone. I'm Anthony, Rosa's father. Thank you all for coming — some of you a very long way, and one of you with a broken foot, which I think we should all acknowledge. And to Marcus's parents, Denise and Ray: thank you for how you have taken our daughter in. It has meant a great deal to us and I do not think we have said so properly.

That letter is the whole of my daughter. Rosa has never in her life assumed that something is simply how it is. She was seven and it did not occur to her that a cereal company was beyond her jurisdiction.

She has been like that ever since, and I would love to tell you it was always convenient. At fifteen she took on her school about the sixth-form dress code and won, which was very impressive and cost me two meetings with a headteacher. At twenty-six she left a job she was extremely good at because they were not doing right by somebody, and she did not have another one lined up, and she never once complained about the six months that followed.

Her mother always said Rosa was born with the assumption that she was allowed. I have thought about that phrase a great deal this week.

Marcus. The first time you came to our house you spent forty minutes talking to Rosa's grandmother about a television programme I know for a fact you do not watch. You did it because she wanted to talk and nobody else was talking to her. I noticed, and I did not say anything about it for two years, and I have never forgotten it.

You are a genuinely kind man. My daughter is a force of nature. I have watched you never once try to slow her down, and that is the thing I was most afraid of and the thing you have never done.

Rosa, you have never needed our permission for anything. You have it anyway, and everything else, always.

Ladies and gentlemen — please stand if you are able, and raise your glasses. To Rosa and Marcus.

Good evening. I'm Bill, Clara's dad, and I have been told I have four minutes, so I am going to use two of them.

Thank you all for being here. To Jonah's parents — thank you for raising a young man who shakes hands like he means it. My father would have liked him enormously.

When Clara was nine she taught herself to swim properly because she had decided the way she was doing it was inefficient. She watched videos. She practised in the shallow end for a month without telling anybody, and then she got in at the deep end one Saturday and swam a length like she had been doing it for years.

I have thought about that a lot over the years, because she has done exactly the same thing about four more times since. She goes away, she works at it quietly, and then she comes back and she can do it. She has never once wanted an audience for the difficult part.

Jonah, you are the first person she has ever let watch the difficult part. I do not think you know how unusual that is. I have known her thirty-one years and I have mostly seen the finished thing.

Clara, my love. You have never made anything about you. Today is, I'm afraid, entirely about you, and you are going to have to sit through it.

Please raise your glasses — to Clara and Jonah.

Good evening, everyone, and thank you for coming. I'm David, Nell's father. To Priya's parents, Anjali and Sunil — thank you for today, and for the welcome you have given my daughter, which has been complete from the first afternoon.

I want to say one thing early and then leave it, because Nell asked me to and because she was right. Her mother would have hated this venue. She would have said it was too formal, she would have told the band to play something with some life in it before the starters were cleared, and she would have been outside within the hour talking to somebody she had just met. She is very much here in that sense, and I suspect several of you are going to hear her voice at some point tonight.

Right. Nell.

When Nell was five she developed a policy of befriending the oldest person in any room. Not children. She would find the oldest person present, sit down next to them, and conduct an interview. At a family wedding she spent an entire afternoon with a great-uncle nobody else had spoken to in years, and he talked about her for the rest of his life.

She still does it. At thirty-four she still finds the person on the edge of the room. It is the single most consistent thing about her and I have never once heard her mention it, because she does not experience it as a quality. She just does it.

Priya. You are the first person I have watched do it back to her. At Christmas, when Nell was quiet and everybody else was busy being cheerful, you noticed and you sat down. I saw it from across the room and I did not say anything, and I have thought about it every week since.

Nell, you have spent your whole life making sure nobody is on their own. Today, everyone in this room is here for you.

Please raise your glasses. To Nell and Priya.