Short Maid of Honor Speech for Best Friend: 3 Full Examples

When Allie and I were ten, we buried a biscuit tin at the bottom of my mum's garden and swore we'd dig it up when one of us got married. Three weeks ago, we did. I've brought what we found, so nobody relax just yet.

I'm Tess. Allie marched up to me on our first day of school in Bristol and informed me we were going to be best friends. I'd love to tell you the rest of that story, but that was the whole story. Thirty years and counting.

So, the tin. Inside were two friendship bracelets, a lip balm that had turned to soup, a photo of a boy band we've agreed never to name, and one folded sheet of paper titled Requirements for My Future Husband, by Allie, age ten. Ben, I'm so sorry. With the bride's permission, sort of, here it is.

Requirement one. Must own a horse. Ben, do you own a horse? No. Strong start.

Requirement two. Must be a famous footballer. Ben does planning applications for the council. I checked with his mum, and nobody has ever asked him for an autograph. Not once. She seemed sad about it.

Requirement three. Must have really good hair. I'm saying nothing. The photographer can say it for me.

Requirement four, and this is word for word. Must never be boring, or else.

And there it is. Because on paper, Ben, you were a stitch-up. When Allie first told me about you, she said, he does spreadsheets for the council and he's the most interesting man I've ever met, and I quietly booked her an eye test. Then I met you. You taught yourself to make fresh pasta because she mentioned liking it once. At Christmas you beat her nan at cards and refused to apologise, which makes you the bravest man ever to enter that house.

Here's what the tin can't tell you about Allie. Three years ago I had the worst week of my working life. I'm a midwife, and I'll leave it there because it's a wedding. Allie turned up at my door that night with a toothbrush and no questions. She stayed three nights on a sofa that fits no adult human, and for a month afterwards she texted me one stupid joke every morning at six, until the jokes got good again. She'd already done the same the year my dad was in hospital. She'll hate that I've told you, which is precisely why it needed witnesses.

Allie. At ten you knew exactly what you wanted, and you grew into a woman who knows exactly what matters. You picked me on a playground and I've been showing off about it ever since.

Ben. The first time she brought you home, she watched the door whenever you left the room, like you might not come back. I had never once seen her nervous. So I went out and bought a hat.

The tin goes back in the ground tonight with a new note inside, and no, you can't know what it says. Please stand and raise your glasses. To Allie and Ben. No horse, no fame, and never once boring.

Maddie and I met nineteen years ago behind the counter of a mall smoothie kiosk called Blend City, where we were paid seven dollars an hour to commit crimes against fruit.

I'm Carmen. I teach high school art now, and I still can't smell pineapple without my eye twitching.

If you want to know who Maddie is, I can give it to you in one shift. I was sixteen, three weeks into the job, and I loaded a large strawberry banana into the blender and hit the button with no lid on. I want you to picture the ceiling. Now picture the ceiling fan. People by the pretzel stand were finding strawberry in their hair. Our manager, Gary, a man with no detectable inner life, came around the corner demanding a name. Before I'd even wiped my eyes, Maddie said, it was me.

She did four weekends of inventory for that. When I finally asked her why, she shrugged and said, you've got your art school interview Saturday, and I can afford to be the blender girl. She was sixteen too.

It's been the same deal for nineteen years. When my mom got sick a few years back, Maddie drove down from Dallas twice a month with groceries and terrible gas station coffee, and she never once made it a thing. I'd open the door and she'd already be mid-sentence about something else, like she'd just been in the neighborhood. Dallas is three hours away. She thought I hadn't done the math.

It never stopped, either. My first year teaching, I mentioned being nervous about back to school night, and she came to it. A grown woman with no kids, folded into a tiny chair at the back, nodding through my supply list like it was a TED talk.

Then there's Theo. Maddie met him at the farmers market when she bought one of his cutting boards and then returned it three times. Theo, you build furniture for a living, so you knew that board was fine. You let my best friend stand at your stall inventing complaints about walnut grain for three Saturdays in a row, and I've never respected a sales strategy more.

Here's what he's changed. Maddie has spent her whole life being first through the door for other people and treating rest like a rumor she refused to confirm. Last summer I came over and found her in a chair in the yard, doing nothing, on purpose. Theo built the chair. I took a photo because the group chat demanded proof.

Maddie. You took the blame for me when we were sixteen, and you've been taking hits for the people you love ever since, quietly, like it costs you nothing. We both know it does. I'm a teacher because you decided my Saturday mattered more than your clean record, and I've never said that out loud until today.

Theo, one piece of advice. She will try to take every hit for you too. Beat her to the door once in a while.

Now everyone, lids on, glasses up. To Maddie and Theo. May married life blend smoother than anything we ever served at Blend City.

Nat and I met eight years ago when she moved into the flat next door and set off the building's smoke alarm making toast. Not burnt toast. Toast. The fire brigade checked. There was no fire. There was only Nat.

I'm Zoe, from 4B. The next morning she knocked on my door holding the world's most traumatised toaster and asked if I knew anything about appliances. I'm a radiographer. I take pictures of bones. She said close enough, and the position of best friend was filled on the spot.

Within a month she had her own key and her own mug at mine, and my houseplants have never been watered so erratically or loved so much.

Now, you should know that the woman in the white dress runs about forty minutes behind the rest of the southern hemisphere. Nat was late to her own engagement party. She missed her own surprise. We had to surprise her in waves. Her car is called Bruce, and Bruce's check engine light has been on so long she calls it mood lighting. She once rang me from the airport, furious, because her flight to Perth was somehow leaving from Sydney.

So when my ankle shattered two winters ago, I expected flowers and maybe a casserole. What I got was Nat outside my place at quarter to six the next morning, engine running, waiting to drive me to my shift. I work the early kind, the ones she considers a human rights violation. She did that every morning for eight weeks and was never late once. I asked her how. She said, turns out I can do mornings, I just need a reason. My ankle felt better by week six. I kept that to myself. I didn't want the lifts to stop.

Then she met Owen, at my birthday barbecue no less. I introduced them, so I'll be taking full credit and accepting no blame. And I need everyone to sit with what Owen does for a living. He's an air traffic controller. A man professionally responsible for things arriving on time and in the right order. The universe is not subtle.

But watch them together. Owen has never once tried to fix her. He tells her dinner is at seven when it's at eight, and she knows he does it, and she lets him, and somehow that adds up to the calmest couple I know. Last winter he came off the worst shift of his year, and Nat had already driven Bruce across the city to wait for him outside, engine light glowing like a candle. He got in and laughed the whole way home.

Nat. You knocked on my door a stranger and stayed family. You make every room warmer and most of them louder, and I'd sign up again today, same terms, no questions.

Owen. You took one look at her clock and left it alone. She tells me that's when she knew.

So, glasses up, everyone. To Nat and Owen. Safe landings, the pair of you, and never more than forty minutes behind schedule.