Short Maid of Honor Speech for a Sister: 3 Full Examples

I'm Mara, Erin's big sister. I was given three minutes up here and a warning look about four specific stories, so we'll see how it goes. I'm three years older than the bride, and I was the only witness to most of what comes next.

Here's what everyone learns about Erin sooner or later. She brings things home. The pigeon with the bent wing that lived in our bathroom for a month. The kitten she swore followed her, which was technically true, for four blocks, inside her backpack. A quiet kid named Kevin from her second grade class, who ate dinner at our house most nights for a year because his mom worked doubles. Our mother never made it a thing. She just set another plate. After the frog incident, Dad started checking Erin's coat pockets at the front door, the way other dads check curfews.

She never grew out of it. She got a license for it. Erin is a social worker now, which surprised exactly no one, and on hard days she still texts me photos of dogs she has nearly adopted from the parking lot outside her office. The current total is zero dogs, and that's only because Cole reads their lease to her out loud in a calm voice, like a hostage negotiator. It has worked so far. Nobody tell the dogs.

Erin, I want you to hear this next part, because you'll argue with me about it in the car. You spent our whole childhood noticing whoever was about to slip through a crack, and you never once walked past one. You handed your gloves to a kid at the bus stop in January and told Mom you lost them. I shared a room with you for fifteen years. I know what it costs you. I watched you cry over that pigeon into the laundry hamper so nobody would hear, and I let you believe it worked.

Then Cole showed up, and we braced ourselves, because Erin's projects had historically arrived with a limp. Cole arrived fine. Steady job. Calls his grandmother on Sundays. For the first time in her life, my sister had found something that didn't need fixing, and she had no idea what to do. She called me a month in and said, he's just nice to me, what's his angle. It took her a full year to accept that there wasn't one.

What Cole has is the thing she needed. Erin gives until the tank is empty, and Cole is the one watching the gauge. He's the man with the granola bar in the glove box. The night she lost a case she had fought two years for, he didn't offer one wise word about it. He just drove her to the coast and let her be sad at the ocean until she was done. Then they got pancakes.

Cole, welcome to the family, officially. She picked you on purpose. For Erin, that is brand new, and we could not love you more for it.

Erin, I have watched you take care of every living thing in three zip codes. Tonight this whole room gets to watch somebody take care of you. I love you, and I am so glad it's him.

Everyone, please raise your glasses. To Erin and Cole. May there always be room for one more plate.

Good evening. I'm Lowri, the little sister. Cerys gave me three minutes up here, and I wasn't surprised. She trims my words the way she trims my hair. I ask for an inch off and I lose four.

Cerys decided at eleven that she was going to be a hairdresser, and I want this room to understand what that meant for me. I was the practice head. For most of 2009 I walked around Cardiff with a fringe that can only be described as a cry for help. My school photo from that year looks like I lost a bet. Mam framed it anyway. It still hangs in the hall, at eye level, because this family believes in consequences.

It took me years to work out the truth about those haircuts. They were never the point. The chair was. From the start, my sister understood that if you sit a person down and keep your eyes on the scissors, they will tell you the truth. I told that chair everything. The failed maths test. The boy from chapel. None of it gets repeated tonight, relax.

Every big day of my life since has started in that chair. Results day, my first job interview, our nan's funeral. Cerys does my hair and we sort my head out from the outside in. When I got dumped three weeks before my graduation ball, she shut the salon early and washed my hair like I was eight again. No advice. Just warm water. She wouldn't even let me pay for the chips after.

Now, Owen. Owen came in four years ago for a trim. He came back the next week. For another trim. The man held a standing weekly appointment for hair that, and I say this with love, was mostly rumor by week six. Cerys charged him every single time. She claims she never noticed what he was up to. My sister notices a split end across a crowded room. She noticed. His appointments were Fridays, and somewhere around month two she started wearing lipstick to work on Fridays. Stocktake, she said.

When she finally agreed to dinner, he arrived with a thank you card for, and I quote, her professionalism. That is how nervous my sister makes him. She kept the card. It lives in the till at the salon, and she taps it twice before she opens up each morning. She thinks nobody has seen her do it. Owen, everybody has seen.

And this is why he got my vote so early. Cerys spends all day listening to half of Cardiff, six customers deep on a Saturday, everybody's news and everybody's worries. Then at six o'clock Owen puts the kettle on and listens to her. Somebody finally takes the chair for my sister. He doesn't even fidget.

Cerys, you gave me one catastrophic fringe and twenty years of the safest seat in Wales, and I would sit down in it tomorrow. You are the best of us. You can tell because of how loudly Mam is crying already.

Friends, please stand and raise your glasses to Cerys and Owen. May he keep every appointment for the rest of his life.

Evening, everyone. I'm Sal, Bridie's big sister, and I was asked to keep this short because we are, no surprises anywhere, running behind.

Bridie has been late since before she was born. Due in March, arrived in April. The pattern has held for thirty two years. Our school bus passed the front gate at ten past seven, and for six years Mum stood at that gate holding Bridie's shoes, because shoes were something my sister finished on the bus. She was forty minutes late to her own engagement party. Lachie started the speeches without her, and she walked in during the applause and took a bow.

So if you felt today's ceremony start a little late, I can tell you exactly why. The flowers. Every stem in this room is hers. She finished the last arrangement at eleven this morning because she pulled her own bridal bouquet apart twice. And look at the room. She is never wrong. Just late.

Late people have a reputation for selfishness. With Bridie it's the opposite. She runs late to the next thing because she will not shortchange the person in front of her. She is the last to leave every funeral. She is the one still in the car park an hour after a party, hearing out somebody's troubles. Tonight she will be the last person on this dance floor, and the staff will have to negotiate.

The year my marriage came apart, Bridie let herself in every Friday night with a boot full of flowers that hadn't sold and sat in my kitchen until the kettle had nothing left to say. Half of them were peonies. There is no use for peonies on a cattle place, and she kept bringing them, and I kept putting them in water. She never arrived when she said she would. She never left early either. I learned to take that trade.

Then there's Lachie. They met because she missed the 3:40 to Sydney and sat down next to him on the 4:15. Her timekeeping has cost this family years in cold dinners and held curtains, and in one afternoon it paid the whole bill back. His first move as a boyfriend was to tell her the movie started at seven when it started at half past. She was on time for a year. She worked it out eventually, because she's not daft, and she lets him keep doing it anyway. Your invitations said half past four. The ceremony was at five. All of you were part of the system, and it worked. They're married.

Lachie, you are a patient man and a sneaky one, which is exactly the combination my sister requires. Don't fix the lateness. It's where the best of her lives. Keep a book in the ute.

Bridie, you have spent fifteen years making other people's weddings beautiful from behind the buckets, and today I watched my little sister be the one holding the bouquet. It wrecked me before lunch and took the mascara with it.

Now charge your glasses, everyone. To Bridie and Lachie. May he always tell her it starts at seven.