Short Groom Speech: 3 Full Examples to His Bride

I have been told by several people today that a groom's speech should be short, and by several others that it should be heartfelt, and I want everyone to know I have chosen to ignore exactly one of those instructions. I will let you work out which.

For anyone I haven't cornered yet, I'm Marcus. I survey land for a living, which means I am professionally qualified to tell you exactly where everything is and absolutely nothing about why it matters. Today I'm going to try the other way round.

First, the thank yous, and I'll be quick because there is wine going warm. To both our mums, who did the heavy lifting on this wedding while pretending it was no trouble, thank you. To everyone who travelled to be here, some of you a very long way, it means more than I can say standing up. And to my new in-laws, thank you for raising the best thing that has ever happened to me, and for not asking too many questions about my prospects early on.

Now. How I met Joss. My bike had been making a noise for about a month, the kind of noise you decide is character rather than a problem, and one Saturday the gears finally gave up halfway up a hill. I wheeled it into the nearest shop, fully expecting to be patronised, and instead a woman took one look, told me I had been riding it in completely the wrong gear for what sounded like years, and fixed in four minutes a thing I had been ignoring since March. I asked her out mostly so she would stop being right at me. Reader, it did not stop. It has never once stopped.

That is the thing about Joss. She sees what is actually wrong, not what you have decided to believe about it, and she tells you plainly and then she helps you fix it. She does it with bikes and she does it with people. She has done it with me more times than my pride will let me list here.

What I did not expect, that day in the shop, was how easy she would be to be around. I am a person who overthinks a text message for an hour. Joss walks into a room and the volume in my head just turns down. I did not know that was something another person could do until she did it. I have spent two years quietly hoping she would not notice she was overqualified for me, and now it is in writing and witnessed, so it is too late.

Joss, I am not going to embarrass either of us with a list of your qualities, because we would be here past midnight and you would correct my facts. I will say this. You make me braver than I am on my own, and calmer than I have ever been, and I have no idea how you manage both at once. I stopped trying to understand it. I just married it.

I told you I'd keep one of those promises. I haven't been short. But I have meant every word, and I am told meaning it covers a multitude of overruns.

Will you all do me the honour of standing. Raise your glasses to my wife, the only person who could find what was wrong with me in four minutes and decide to keep me anyway. To Joss.

Good evening, everyone. I want to start by being honest with you, because Steph would know if I wasn't. I have rewritten this speech eleven times, and Steph has read four of those versions and improved all of them, so technically she has written most of her own toast. Anything good in the next few minutes is hers. Anything that lands badly is the part I snuck back in.

For those I haven't met, I'm Danny. I'm a nurse, I work nights more often than is reasonable, and I am very used to being the calmest person in a chaotic room. Today is the first day in a long time that has not been true, and I'm leaning into it.

Quick thank yous before I get to the good part. To our parents, thank you for everything that got us here, the obvious things and the thousand quiet ones. To our friends who flew in, some of you across actual oceans, we see you and we love you for it. And to Steph's family, thank you for letting me in so completely that I forgot to be nervous around you, which for me is basically a medical event.

Here is how it happened. There is a cafe in Fitzroy that prints the hard Saturday crossword on the back of the menu, and I had been losing to the same one for three weekends running. Same corner. Same four clues. I was so close to throwing the menu across the room when a woman at the next table leaned over, read it upside down, and filled in the entire corner in about forty seconds in my own pen. Then she handed the pen back and said, sorry, I couldn't watch any longer. That was Steph. I bought her a coffee to make her stay and I have been buying the coffees ever since.

That is Steph in one moment. She is cleverer than you, she knows it, and somehow it never once feels like losing. It feels like being let in on something. In two years I have watched her win every argument we have ever had on the facts, and I have never minded, because she is also the first to laugh when she is being ridiculous, and she gives me the pen back when it matters.

What the crossword did not tell me was the rest of her. The version of Steph who texts the friend nobody else remembered to check on. Who sat with me at three in the morning after the worst shift of my career and did not try to fix it, just stayed. I deal with people on the hardest day of their lives for a living, and I came home and learned what real steadiness looks like from her. That is not a thing I expected to learn at this age, from a woman who beat me to four clues on a menu.

Steph, you are the smartest person I know and the kindest, and the genuinely annoying thing is that you would argue with the first half of that sentence and let the second half stand. I am not going to talk you out of it tonight. I just want everyone here to know I know.

I have gone slightly over time, which Steph predicted in the margin of draft seven. She was right. She is usually right. I have decided to spend the rest of my life being cheerfully, hopelessly wrong next to her.

Everyone, on your feet please, glasses up. To the woman who filled in the corner I never could. To my wife. To Steph.

I cook for a living, so for years my version of saying I love someone has been putting a plate in front of them and watching their face. Tonight nobody handed me a plate. They handed me a microphone. This is much harder, and I'd like that noted before I start.

For anyone I haven't fed yet, I'm Theo. I own a small place on the north side, I have burned myself in more or less every spot a person can, and I am happiest standing at a stove at the exact moment everyone else has gone home. So the fact that I'd rather be here, holding this, tells you something I'm about to spend five minutes trying to explain.

The fast part first. To my mom, who put me on a stool next to her stove before I could see over it, thank you for the whole of it. To everyone who came tonight, a lot of you closed your own kitchens or took the day off to be here, and I know what that costs. And to Nadia's parents, thank you for trusting your daughter to a man whose business hours are objectively insane.

Here is how I knew. Nadia and I had been seeing each other a few weeks, casual, both pretending it was casual, and we were at a diner at one in the morning after my shift. I ordered fries. She ordered nothing, said she wasn't hungry, and then proceeded to eat roughly two thirds of my fries while telling me about her day. I have cooked for thousands of strangers. I have never once felt about a clean plate the way I felt watching her eat off mine like she'd always been allowed to. I ordered a second plate just to keep her there longer. I have been ordering the second plate ever since.

That is the thing about Nadia. She takes what's mine like it was always half hers, and the staggering part is that she's right, and I'm relieved. I spent a long time being a person who gave food away and kept everything else. She walked in and quietly helped herself to the rest of me, and I let her, and it is the best decision I never actually got to make.

What the fries didn't tell me was how she shows up. The night my walk-in died and I thought I'd lose the restaurant, Nadia was there at dawn in rubber gloves, no questions, ruining a good coat. She does not give you advice you didn't ask for. She gives you her hands. In a city full of people with opinions, I married the one who just starts helping.

Nadia, I am not a man with a lot of words, you knew that when you took the job. So I'll keep this plain. You are the best thing I have ever made room for. You make the loud parts of my life quieter and the quiet parts worth coming home to, and I am going to spend the rest of it trying to keep your plate full. Yours and mine. I gave up telling them apart.

Would everyone please stand and raise a glass. To the woman who ate my fries and stayed, who I'd hand the last plate to every single time. To my wife. To Nadia.