Maid of Honor Speech Examples

"Sophie and I have been friends since we were seven years old. In that time, I have watched her do approximately one thousand things I promised never to put in a speech. This is not that speech.

What I will tell you is this: Sophie is the person I have called first, every time, for twenty-two years. The flat tire at midnight. The job offer I didn't know whether to take. The Thursday evenings when nothing dramatic was happening but I just needed to hear her voice.

When she told me about Daniel, she used a word she doesn't use lightly: safe. 'He makes me feel safe,' she said. For someone as self-sufficient as Sophie, that is not a small thing. That is the whole thing.

To Sophie and Daniel. May every year feel as certain as this one looks."

"I have been trying to find the right words for Emma since I first started thinking about this speech. And what I keep coming back to is not a story. It is an image.

It is 2am on a Thursday in the fall of our junior year, and we are sitting on the kitchen floor of our apartment eating cereal because neither of us could sleep. She was going through something hard. She didn't need me to fix it. She just needed someone there. I have thought about that night more than she knows, because I realized then what kind of person she was: the kind who lets people in, even when she'd be fine without them.

That quality -- the choice to be open when she could be closed -- is the same quality that brought Ryan into her life and kept him there. She chose to let him in too. And watching her be loved by someone who understands that about her has been one of the great joys of my life.

To Emma and Ryan."

"I met Claire when we were both pretending to be more confident than we were. We were twenty-two. It was freshman week of grad school. She had a better plan than I did, and she let me follow along.

Twelve years later, I am still following along. She moved across the country. I visited so often I started getting mail at her address. She found James. I decided to like him, which took about forty-five minutes and has since become one of my best decisions.

James: she is the most loyal person I know. The most perceptive. The most allergic to nonsense. You already know all of this. But I want to say it in front of everyone, because it's worth saying: you got a good one.

Claire: I love you. Go live it.

To Claire and James."

"When Rachel and I were in college, we had a rule: if either of us ever thought we'd found the right person, the other one had to meet them within thirty days. No exceptions.

She broke this rule with David. She waited three months. When I finally confronted her about it, she said, 'I wasn't ready to share him yet.' I have never heard her say anything like that about anyone. I have been thinking about it ever since.

There are people you keep for yourself because they are precious and you're afraid of what other people will think. And there are people you keep for yourself because they are precious and you just want to hold it a little longer before the world gets to weigh in.

David, she wanted to hold it longer. That is my favorite thing I know about what you are to her.

Here's to the person she was finally ready to share. To Rachel and David."

"I have known Maya since we were nine years old. I knew her before she knew herself. I was there for the phases. The awkward ones. The ones she'd prefer I not describe in detail.

What I want to tell you, because I think it's the truest thing I can say, is that she has always been who she is. The kindness was always there. The laugh was always there. The stubbornness, absolutely always there.

What changed was that she found someone who understood which parts were worth arguing with and which parts were worth letting win. Noah, in my professional opinion, having observed both of you for the last two years: you have the ratios exactly right.

To Maya, who I have loved since we were nine. And to Noah, who gets the best version of her -- though I have to say, I am extremely fond of all the earlier ones too.

Please raise your glasses."

"I am not going to tell you that Grace is my best friend. I am going to tell you something more specific: she is the person who makes me want to be better.

Not in a pressured way. Not because she asks anything of me. But because she moves through the world with a kind of quiet integrity that I find myself trying to match. She does the right thing when it would be easy not to. She shows up. She tells the truth.

I was not surprised when she found someone who does the same things. I was relieved.

Liam: take good care of her. I know you will. I've watched you do it already.

Grace: it is the privilege of my life to be called your maid of honor. That is the whole speech, really. Everything else was just context.

To Grace and Liam."