Groom's speech examples

I have been told by five separate people this week that I am going to cry during this. I want everyone to know that I have prepared extensively, I practised in the car, and I have no chance whatsoever.

Thank you all for being here. Genuinely — several of you got on planes, two of you rearranged an entire month, and Uncle Ken drove here from Ohio with a dog that was not invited. We see all of it.

To Ana's parents, Elena and Miguel — thank you for today, and for the first evening I ever spent at your table, when I knocked over a glass of red wine and nobody said anything, somebody just brought a cloth. I have thought about that a lot. To my mum and dad, everything I know about showing up for people I learned by watching the two of you do it without ever discussing it.

To our wedding party — you have been extraordinary. Particular thanks to Dev, who has answered his phone at some genuinely antisocial hours this year, and to Bea, who was still fixing something at eleven o'clock last night that none of us will ever know about.

Right. Ana.

Five years ago, on our second date, you told me you did not really like surprises. And then you spent the next five years quietly rearranging my entire life without me noticing until it was finished.

Before I met you I ate the same four meals. I had a wall in my flat I had been meaning to paint for six years. I was, I think, waiting for something without knowing what it was, and I would have kept waiting for a very long time.

You do not wait. That is the thing about you. You see the shape of what should happen and you simply start doing it, and somewhere in the last five years I stopped waiting too. I have a life now, instead of a plan for one.

What I want to say in front of everybody here is this: you have never once made me feel like the version of me you met was the problem. You just made room, and then I grew into it. I do not know how to thank somebody for that, so I am going to spend a long time trying.

Here is my promise, and it is the one I know I will have to work at. I will keep noticing. I will keep noticing the things you do quietly, and I will keep saying them out loud, even when it is inconvenient and even when you tell me to stop.

Everyone — please raise your glasses. To my wife, Ana.

Before we start I want to address something. Several of you have asked whether I wrote my own speech. I did. You will be able to tell.

Thank you all for coming. Thank you especially to everyone who travelled, to my grandmother who is ninety-three and who informed me last night that she intends to still be here at midnight, and to whoever is responsible for the cheese situation, which I have been thinking about all afternoon.

To Sam's parents, Ruth and Gordon — thank you for a beautiful day, and for being extremely gracious about the fact that the first time I met you I called Gordon "sir" eleven times in one evening. To my parents, thank you for everything, and specifically for never once telling me that the band I was in was not going to work out, which was very kind and very expensive.

Now. My wife.

I would like to be clear that I did not deserve this and I was not owed it. I met Sam at a wedding, which is not lost on me, where I was seated at the table furthest from the bar with a group of people who had all known each other since school. Sam came over, sat down, and said "you look like you're being punished." Reader, I was.

Everything good in my life since that afternoon has been downstream of that sentence.

Sam, you have made me braver in about fifteen small ways that nobody in this room would notice. I speak up now. I book the flight. I ask for the thing I want, which I could not do at all before I met you, and which you have never once made a fuss about teaching me.

I am not going to be able to repay that, so instead I am going to spend the rest of my life being extremely annoying about how lucky I am.

Please raise your glasses. To my wife, Sam.

Thank you all for being here. To Ines's parents, and to mine — thank you for today and for everything that made today possible. To our friends, some of whom have travelled a very long way, we will find you individually tonight and thank you properly.

That is the admin, and it is the least interesting part of what I want to say.

Ines. Four years ago I told you I was thinking about applying for something, and instead of telling me it was a good idea, you asked me why I had not applied yet. It was a completely different question and I did not have an answer for it.

You have asked me a version of that question about nine times since, always gently, always at the exact moment I was busy talking myself out of something. I have taken every one of those chances. Not one of them would have happened.

I do not think you know you are doing it. I think you just genuinely cannot understand why a person would not do the thing they want to do.

I want to promise you something in front of everyone. I will ask you back. When you are talking yourself out of something, I will notice, and I will ask you why you have not done it yet.

Everyone — to my wife, Ines.