Heartfelt Best Man Speech for a Cousin: 3 Full Examples

There is a rope swing over the lake at my grandparents' place in Michigan, and the summer we were ten, Nathan went first because he always went first. He swung out and let go at the top, and he hung in the air for what felt like a full second before he hit the water flat on his back. He came up gasping. I asked if he was alright. He wheezed. Then he grinned and said, your turn, and you should lean back less than I did. That was Nathan at ten. Already taking the hit so the rest of us would land softer.

We were born five weeks apart, which our grandmother decided made us a pair for life. Every July both our families drove out to the lake and left us there until our skin went brown and our mothers stopped recognising our voices on the phone. I'm Reese. I grow gardens for a living now, which means I spend my days thinking about what takes years to come good, and I cannot think of a better way to describe the man standing next to me.

Here is what those summers taught me about my cousin. He waits for people. When my bike chain came off on the gravel road, he was already half a mile ahead, and he turned around without being asked and walked back. When I was scared to jump off the high rocks, he sat on the edge with me until I was ready, and he never once made me feel slow. He has been doing that his whole life. He is the cousin who texts you the morning of a hard day to say nothing important, just so his name is on your screen when you wake up.

Then Hannah came to the lake. The first morning, our grandmother handed her a bucket and told her they were picking blueberries, which in our family is less an invitation and more an audition. Hannah went out alone into the bushes with a woman she had met an hour earlier. They came back two hours later, both of them sunburnt, talking like they had known each other for thirty years. My grandmother has handed that bucket to a lot of people. She has never once stayed out there the full two hours.

Hannah, I want to tell you something I have watched happen slowly. Nathan has spent his whole life making sure everyone else got there safely. You are the first person I have ever seen do that for him. When his dad was in the hospital last spring, I drove up expecting to hold things together the way our family does, badly, in a waiting room, pretending to read a poster. You were already there. You had been there for two days. You had a list of his medications and a flask of decent coffee, and you had quietly become the person the nurses spoke to. None of us will forget that.

Nathan, you taught me how to swim, how to drive a boat, and how to take a bad landing without complaining about it. I cannot teach you a single thing about marriage that you did not teach me first about being family. So I will just say this. Keep waiting for each other. When one of you swings out too far, and you will, be the one already turning around on the gravel road.

Everybody, lift your glasses. To Nathan and Hannah. May the water always come up to meet you, and may you never have to jump alone.

My name is Niamh, and I have been waiting twenty years to embarrass Eoin in a room he cannot leave. I am told heartfelt is the brief, so I will behave, but I want it on record that I had options.

Eoin and I were raised two farms apart in Connemara, which in that part of the world counts as next door. Our mothers are sisters, and every summer of my childhood ended the same way, the two families bringing in the hay together before the weather turned, all of us in the one field racing the rain. I was small and useless and mostly in the way. Eoin was three years older and built like a gate, and his job, decided by nobody and obeyed by everyone, was to carry whatever was too heavy for the rest of us. He carried bales. He carried the little ones on his shoulders when they got tired. One year he carried me a full mile home on his back after I came off a wall and twisted my ankle, and he did not put me down once, and he never told a soul I had been crying.

That is the thing about my cousin that I most want this room to know. He carries things, and he does it quietly, and he would hate that I am saying it out loud. I am a children's nurse now, and I have learned that the people worth trusting are not the ones who tell you they are strong. They are the ones who simply pick up the heavy end and start walking. Eoin has been picking up the heavy end since before he could drive.

I need to tell you about my first year of nursing, and then I will get us back to something with more laughing in it. I had moved to Dublin, knew almost nobody, and I was working nights on a children's ward, which is a job that follows you home in the dark. I rang Eoin one evening in a bad state and could not even say why. He listened for about a minute, then announced he was coming up, and he did, every fortnight for the whole of that winter. A farmer who hates the city drove three hours each way to sit in my tiny flat and complain about the parking, just so I would have somebody to make dinner for. He never once called it what it was. He is not a man for speeches, which is a wonderful quality in a best man and I am aware of the irony. He just kept turning up until the ward stopped following me home.

Then Saoirse arrived, and the whole family exhaled. The first time he brought her west, my mother put her straight to work in the kitchen, which is how you know you have been accepted and also slightly punished. Saoirse rolled up her sleeves and got on with it. By the end of the night she was telling my mother she was peeling the spuds wrong, and my mother, who has never taken a note from anyone, laughed and handed her the peeler.

Saoirse, you have done something I did not think was possible. You found the one person who has carried everyone else his whole life, and you started carrying him. I have watched you do it. He stands lighter beside you. I have known him thirty-one years, and I have never seen him stand so light.

Eoin, you are the brother I was lucky enough to be born near. Go and carry each other now, the way you carried all of us through that field every summer. And let her take the heavy end sometimes. You have earned the rest.

Will you all stand, please, and raise your glasses. To Eoin and Saoirse. May the rain always hold off until the hay is in.

I taught Marcus to drive in a paddock outside Gawler when he was sixteen, in my dad's old ute, the one with the gearstick that fought back. I am his cousin Theo, older by six years, which in our family made me less a relative and more a free and badly qualified driving instructor. We did three Sunday afternoons in that paddock. He stalled it forty times. On the fortieth he got it rolling in first gear. He looked across at me, very pleased with himself, and drove us straight into the only tree for half a kilometre. Slowly. With great care. We were both fine. The tree survived. Marcus turned to me and said, in your face, we moved. He was not wrong. We had moved.

I have thought about that afternoon a lot, because it is the whole man in one go. Marcus does not give up on a thing just because it is going badly. He keeps his foot on it, gently, until it goes. I am a carpenter, so I notice who has patience and who does not, and my cousin has the kind you cannot teach an apprentice. He will sand the same edge for an hour to get it right and never once swear at it.

We grew up across the road from each other in the northern suburbs, and I was the older cousin he followed around, which I now understand was a responsibility I treated with all the seriousness of a teenager, which is to say none. But here is what I want to say properly. A few years back I lost my job. The whole site shut down with two days' notice, and I went very quiet about it, the way blokes in my family are trained to do from birth. I did not tell anyone how bad it had got. Marcus worked it out anyway. He started turning up on Saturdays with a slab and a list of jobs around my place that did not really need doing, fences that were fine, a deck that could have waited a year. He never once called it what it was. He just made sure I had somewhere to be and someone to be there with, every week, until I was back on my feet. The younger cousin, looking after the older one. I have never properly thanked him for it. So, here, in front of everyone, where he cannot tell me to stop. Thank you.

Then Mara came along, and the first time he brought her to a family barbecue, my mum tested her the only way she knows how, by offering her seconds she did not want and watching closely to see if she was polite about it. Mara took the seconds, ate every bite, and then asked for the recipe. My mother has been quoting that recipe request at family events ever since. She thinks Mara hung the moon.

Mara, you are getting a man who keeps his foot gently on the things that matter until they come good. He will never give up on you, not on the worst day, not on the hardest year. I have the receipts. And I have watched you do the same for him, which is the only thing I have ever wanted for him.

Marcus, you are the little cousin I taught to drive, and somewhere along the way you became the man I learned how to be steady from. Go gently. Keep your foot on it. And mate, this time, watch out for the tree.

Glasses up, everyone. To Marcus and Mara. First gear at last, and the open road ahead.