Before I start, I want to put a rumour to bed. The groom is not up here giving his own best man speech. He did suggest it.
I'm Dec, Finn's identical twin, older by nine minutes. For nine whole minutes this family knew peace. We should all take a moment for that.
I cut hair for a living. I've been cutting Finn's since we were fifteen, which takes a certain nerve when his head is also your head. Every mistake I made walked into the kitchen the next morning and ate cereal across from me. My early work is all over the family albums. I'd apologise, but Mum laminated them.
Being identical is a strange job. Teachers had a system for us. Anything good was Finn. Anything broken, they sent us both home. One school report skipped names altogether and just said 'they are a handful'. We were ten, and we'd already been merged into a single legal entity.
So at fifteen, Finn decided he was done being half of something. He wanted his own look. He locked himself in the bathroom with a box of supermarket bleach, and forty minutes later my brother walked out the colour of a tennis ball. School photos were that Thursday.
He begged me to fix it. I'd been cutting hair for about a month, and I'll be honest, I made it worse in a brand new direction. So we did the only thing left. We shaved the lot off. Then I did mine as well, so on photo day he wouldn't be stood there on his own. Two bald fifteen-year-olds, grinning like it was a plan. Mum cried in the car park. The photographer charged us for one portrait and told us to share it.
It goes both ways, mind. When my shop flooded two winters back, Finn turned up at six the next morning with a wet vac and bacon rolls. He stayed the week. Told me work had given him the time off. They had not. I found that out in August, from his boss, at a barbecue, and I'm telling everyone now because he never will.
Then Robyn arrived. People always ask how she tells us apart, and her answer is better than the question. She says Finn smiles a second before he speaks, like he's already heard the joke. She had us solved inside a week. I've got customers of ten years who still call me Finn, and this woman cracked it in seven days. The first time she came round for dinner, she watched the two of us finish each other's sentences for an hour, then asked, very politely, if we ever finish our own. Finn went quiet for the first time in living memory. I'd have married her myself on the spot, but she can tell us apart, so there's no fooling her, and apparently she prefers the smug one.
Robyn, you're getting the better one. I can say that with a straight face because it's also a compliment to me. But look what you've done. There were two of us, interchangeable for thirty-three years, and you walked in and made one of us particular. He's calmer around you. Better dressed too, which I resent, because people keep asking if I've let myself go.
Finn. We've shared a face all our lives, and today is the first day it's done more for you than it ever did for me. Look at you. Happiest I've ever seen that face, on either of us.
Right, everyone on your feet and glasses up. Finn has spent thirty-three years sharing a portrait with me, and as of today he's officially upgraded.
To Finn and Robyn.
Spoken by Dec, 33, a barber from Nottingham and the groom's identical twin, older by nine minutes. 614 words.