Maid of Honor Speech for a Sister-in-Law: 3 Heartfelt Examples

Hi, everyone. I'm Kara, Wes's older sister. When Lauren asked me to be her maid of honor, I made her say it twice, because maids of honor are usually best friends from college, and I'm the groom's sister. She said her friends would survive it. She wanted family standing next to her. So here I am, in the good spot, trying to deserve it.

You need some background on my brother. Wes is a man of few words. Maybe forty a day, and he budgets them. Growing up I was his translator. A teacher would ask him something, he'd look at me, and I'd say what he meant. I did it at birthday parties. I did it once at the DMV, and I maintain it saved everyone an hour.

Here's the thing about quiet people, though. They have tells. Wes hums when he's happy. He doesn't know he does it. Low, no real tune, like a refrigerator that loves you. When we were kids I could stand in the hallway and know what kind of day he'd had before I ever saw his face.

The first Thanksgiving he brought Lauren home, I was ready for her. I had questions prepared. Years of older-sister casework behind them. Then after dinner I walked past the kitchen, and the two of them were in there doing dishes, and Wes was humming. Lauren wasn't even talking. She was drying the same pan for whole minutes, standing next to him like the dishes were the entire plan for the evening. I went back to the den and put my questions away.

I figured she was good for him. What I didn't see coming was what she would be for the rest of us. Three years ago I moved out of a house and a marriage in the same week, and I told everyone I had it handled. That was a lie I was very committed to. Saturday morning, seven a.m., Lauren was on my porch with coffee and a roll of packing tape. She labeled boxes by room and drove the truck herself. When I finally cried at the storage unit, she stood in that parking lot and let me, no advice, no hurry. And she never told Wes. Not that weekend, not ever. I found out by accident a year later. She hadn't done it to impress anyone. As far as Lauren was concerned, I was already hers to look after.

I grew up with one quiet brother and no sister at all. I used to think that was just the hand I'd been dealt. So I want you to know what it's like to get handed a sister at thirty-four, fully grown. Funny, punctual, better at parallel parking than anyone born into this family. It feels like a clerical error in my favor, and I've decided not to report it.

Wes. You don't have to say anything tonight. You never did. The way you've looked at her all day is the most I've ever heard you say.

Lauren. You came to that Thanksgiving as a guest, and you haven't been one for a single day since. I'm done saying sister-in-law after tonight. Too many syllables. Sister is shorter, and it's the truth.

Everyone, please stand and raise your glasses. To Lauren and Wes. And Lauren, anytime you wonder how he's doing, you know how to check. Just listen. He'll be humming.

Evening, everyone. I'm Bronwen, Tilly's sister-in-law. Eight years ago I married her brother Gareth, which turns out to be the long way around to becoming somebody's maid of honour. I'd recommend it. Long hours, but the Sundays are catered.

I met Tilly when I was the new girlfriend at Sunday roast. If you've never been the new person at the Pritchard table, I can't fully prepare you. There are eleven of them and one conversation, and the conversation has been running since 1987. I sat there clutching my fork, laughing two beats behind every joke, certain I'd be dropped in the next round of cuts.

Then I broke the gravy boat. Not a gravy boat. Nan's gravy boat, which had survived a house move, forty Christmases and the Blitz, depending on who's telling it. The room went silent. Eleven faces turned. And from the far end of the table, a girl I'd known for two hours said, oh thank God for that, I glued it back together in 2009 and I've been waiting for it to go. It had never been glued. I found that out years later. She took the blame for a stranger because the stranger looked ready to cry into the roast potatoes. Tilly had decided, somewhere between the beef and the pudding, that I was staying.

That's her particular brand of kindness. It prefers to work undercover.

When my mum died, two years into our marriage, I went quiet on everyone. Grief makes you strange, and I was strange. People sent flowers for a fortnight and then life carried on, which is fair. Life does. Tilly didn't send flowers. She sent me a photo of her breakfast. Toast, a bit burnt. No message, nothing to answer. Next morning, porridge. Every morning for more than a year, a photo of that day's breakfast, a small door left open in case that was the day I could walk through it. One spring morning I sent back a photo of mine, and my phone rang inside the minute, and we talked for two hours about nothing and never once mentioned the system. My mum would have adored her. That's the truest thing I'll manage tonight.

So believe me when I say Ed was vetted. I watched him at his first Pritchard roast from the comfortable seats, the way nobody got to watch me. Tilly was mid-story with her hands going like a conductor, because every story she tells needs a wingspan. And Ed, without looking up, without pausing his own conversation, slid her wine glass six inches out of her flight path. When the story landed, he slid it quietly back. He's been doing some version of that for four years. He watches her the way she watches everybody else.

Tilly. People assume I got Gareth and you came along with the package. They have it backwards, love. Plenty of people marry into a family and spend years feeling like a guest. You never let me get through one Sunday of it. You're the great bonus of my marriage, and today I get to stand on your side of everything, in the painful shoes, and say so into a microphone.

Ed. Welcome to the table. You'll never finish a sentence at it again, and somehow you'll miss that whenever life goes quiet. We're very glad it's you.

Could everyone please be upstanding and raise a glass. To Tilly and Ed. And Ed, one piece of family advice. If anything ever smashes, it was already glued.

Hello, everyone. I'm Jacinta, and by the end of tonight I'll be Mel's sister-in-law, because she's marrying my little sister Bonnie. But I was her best friend first. I'd like that minuted. I had ten good years before Bonnie ever got a look in.

Mel and I met at a staff induction in 2016, two terrified new teachers hiding near the biscuits. She'd just moved over from Galway. I asked if she missed Ireland and she said every day, mostly the rain. She called the Adelaide sun a menace. We've eaten lunch together nearly every working day since.

Her family being half a world away, Mel started coming to ours. Christmas first. Within a year she was at my nephew's under-nines presentation night, taking photos like it was the Logies. The first time she walked into my parents' place, she sat down next to Dad and asked what was wrong with his tomatoes, and that was three hours gone. Mum introduces her to telemarketers as our Mel.

Now. My sister Bonnie has one joke. One. She has told it at every family gathering since roughly 2009. It involves an emu, a bakery and a misunderstanding, it runs four minutes, and it has never once worked. We love her anyway. That's the official family position. Then came Christmas 2021. Bonnie launches into the emu joke, the table braces, and Mel laughs so hard she has to put her glass down and leave the room. I sat there holding the pavlova, thinking, nobody laughs at the emu joke. Then I caught my sister watching the door Mel had just gone through. Oh, I thought. Oh no.

I'll be honest about the next bit, because Mel would catch me at anything else. When the two of them sat me down and told me, I smiled the whole way through and then didn't sleep for two nights. Anyone with exactly one sister and exactly one best friend can do that maths. If it ever fell apart, I'd lose them both at once. Mel knew, of course. She turned up at lunch the next day, put my flat white in front of me and said, I loved this family before I loved her, you're not losing a thing. Then we split a brownie and went back to complaining about year nine.

Last winter our dad had a stroke. He's here and he embarrasses easily, so I'll keep it to one thing. His left hand stopped cooperating, and Dad without a deck of cards is a man with nowhere to put his worry. Mel came over every Tuesday and played him at gin rummy, week after week, his cards propped on a book stand, her swearing blind she couldn't see them. The first night he shuffled without dropping the deck, she rang me from her car, and neither of us said anything useful for ten minutes. She was family long before today, whatever the paperwork says. You can't fake Tuesdays.

Bonnie. You spent half your life telling a joke until the right person laughed. I've never been so glad you don't know when to quit. Marriage will suit you.

Mel. Ten years ago I made friends with the scared new teacher from Galway, and it turned out to be the best thing I've ever done for this family. You were my best friend first. From tomorrow you're my sister as well. Fair warning, the upgrade comes with chores.

Everyone, please raise your glasses. To Mel and Bonnie. And Bonnie, love, you can retire the emu joke now. It worked.